Shinji Mikami is often considered the Godfather of survival horror. Best known for creating the Resident Evil series, the veteran game designer helped shaped the video game industry and introduced gamers to some of the scariest titles to ever grace home consoles.
In honor of his 30th anniversary as a game designer, the Archipel documentary team made a film highlighting Mikami's extensive career. In the film, Mikami explains that the first Resident Evil game was far different from what he imagined. He goes on to explain that he envisioned the game being entirely in first-person. The slight change would have transformed Resident Evil's iconic gameplay while completely reshaping the early survival horror format.
According to the documentary, Resident Evil started after one of Mikami's superiors asked him to make a horror title inspired by a Japanese Famicom game Sweet Home. Although Sweet Home is considered an RPG, it utilized many horror elements within its gameplay. The game had a top-down view but moved into first-person during combat scenarios. Most of the enemies were grotesque creatures that were pretty terrifying, considering its 8-bit graphics. After deconstructing the game, Mikami came up with his own horror concept that would eventually turn into Resident Evil.
In order to capture the same ominous feeling Sweet Home created during its combat sections, Mikami decided to base Resident Evil around the first-person perspective. He believed it would give players a more terrifying experience while immersing them into the game even further. However, technical limitations and Capcom's inexperience with 3D modeling derailed Mikami's innovative idea. The team was unable to recreate Mikami's vision, causing him to rethink Resident Evil's entire structure.
Mikami's new game seemed to come to a standstill until Alone in the Dark debuted in 1992. The up and coming game designer wanted to incorporate similar camera angles and pre-rendered backgrounds within his own game. The only problem was the new layout forced Mikami to change how characters walked around the game's environment. Despite Mikami's reluctance, tank controls were implemented into the game. Although Mikami wasn't thrilled about the game's drastic overhaul, many of the new features would later become staples within the genre and change the course of horror games forever.
It's hard to imagine the original Resident Evil without all of its distinctive characteristics. While it wasn't the first horror game ever created, it paved the way for countless survival horror titles while singlehandedly revolutionizing the industry. Despite Resident Evil's legacy as one of the most successful horror games of all time, Mikami is still embarrassed that he couldn't make the game entirely first-person. He writes off the fixed camera and third-person view as a "workaround" and believes he could have enhanced the player's experience if he could have figured out how to make it completely first-person. Although Resident Evil didn't turn out the way Mikami envisioned, it will always be remembered as one of the most important video games in modern history.