Resident Evil How Sweet Home Inspired The Series

This article originally appeared at Den of Geek UK.

Ring, Audition, Dark Water, Onibaba, House, Kuroneko… Ask most film fans to name a prominent Japanese horror, and one of those titles would probably come up. Ask most video game fanatics to name a Japanese horror game, and they’d probably reply with Resident Evil, Silent Hill, or, if they’re feeling a bit retro, Splatterhouse or Castlevania.

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Kurosawa and Itami appeared to have a fair bit of input into the video game, since they’re credited as the designer and producer respectively. In an interview with Japanese magazine Continue, Fujiawara also recalls that he was allowed to visit the film’s studio and “use the movie as reference.”

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“I got to see the movie and take a tour of the film studio,” Fujiwara said, “and use whatever essence I thought would work in the game. I carefully considered how to go about bringing elements from the movie to the game screen.”

While the game departs from the movie in some ways, it’s also one of the most cinematic console titles of its era. The characters in the film appear in the game, each with their own specific abilities – the director has a cigarette lighter, the art restorer carries a vacuum cleaner – which come in handy at specific moments of the game. The film’s deadly shadows are replaced by randomly-spawning monsters, but an air of horror tension still remains. When a character dies, they’re gone for good, and the game’s ending changes depending on who makes it out of the mansion alive. Some of the movie’s set-pieces remain, too, including the cameraman who’s cut in half and the incredible melting old man.

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Shinji Mikami, who would eventually direct under Fujiwara’s guidance, recalls that he was less certain that a horror title would be a sales success.

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