Resident Evil Gaiden (Game Boy Color) Playthrough - NintendoComplete
1,371A playthrough of Capcom's 2001 survival horror game for the Nintendo Game Boy Color, Resident Evil Gaiden.
Speed 2: Cruise Control meets Resident Evil aboard the Starlight, a cruise liner that has come under attack by the Umbrella Corp's latest "bio organic weapon." (Because yay for super redundant names?)
In Resident Evil Gaiden, you start out as STARS agent Barry Burton who has just landed onboard to look for police officer Leon S. Kennedy. Leon has fallen out of radio contact while looking into the outbreak on the ship, and it doesn't take long for Barry to discover what's going on: everyone that was onboard is now a zombie.
Of course it's zombies. It's a Resident Evil game, after all.
You'll meet up with a girl with special powers named Lucia who was apparently working with Leon, and the BOW, a huge monster that has a mouth full of tentacles for a belly. It really is about as gross as it sounds.
The story really isn't the strength of Resident Evil Gaiden - it hits dizzying levels of stupid, even by RE standards, by the time you're on the final stretch - but the game does know how to create an dark and oppressive atmosphere.
(But why is Leon so angry? All he does is yell at poor Barry the entire time!)
It doesn't look like a Resident Evil game, but the graphics are excellent for the GBC. The sprites are smoothly animated, the wide variety of areas on the ship are packed with detail, and the battle scenes showcase some impressive monster art. The art in the cutscenes is generally ugly, but that's a small nitpick in light of everything else.
The sound is surprisingly good, too. There are lots of digitized grunts and moans, and the music is creepy and suits the setting nicely. The music changes dynamically based on the action (like it did in Rescue: The Embassy Mission on NES) which is a really cool thing to hear in 8-bit music. I just wish that there were a few more tracks.
(Did the music that plays when a zombie grabs you remind anyone else of "Making Christmas" from The Nightmare Before Christmas? I know it's a shoutout to the Dies Irae, but it still reminded me of that one movie.)
And finally, there's the gameplay. Gaiden plays about as closely to the PlayStation RE games as you could reasonably expect for a Game Boy. You explore from an RPG-style overhead view, and when you encounter an enemy, the game cuts to a first-person battle system. As the enemies approach, you've got to attack by timing your button presses with the movement of an icon that slides back-and-forth across the bottom of the screen. It's a novel approach, and it's one that I thought worked really well. It helps to place the focus in battle on things like ammo and health conservation, giving it a similar feeling to the balancing in a regular RE title.
The exploration works well, but the ship is huge and a labeled map would've really been appreciated. You'll find yourself regularly trying every item you have on locked doors since you often won't know what you're trying to unlock until you've already unlocked it.
Besides that annoying quirk and the absurd story, I found there to be a lot to like in this unfairly maligned 2D take on the classic horror series. In *many* ways, from atmosphere to enemy design to resource management, it reminded me of Capcom's 1989 NES game Sweet Home (https://youtu.be/n5JqOc-8zBU). It's not as good, but it does strike a number of familiar chords.
It's not perfect, but that didn't stop me from enjoying my time with Resident Evil Gaiden. If you go into it with an open mind, you might be pleasantly surprised at what it delivers.
*Played using an LCD shader in Retroarch to mimic the look of the original hardware.*
And if your looking for any further Halloween/horror style games, check out my playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3gSj_kh1fHuN8U3j4lnYxDOPIpgoQNv3
_____________
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
NintendoComplete (http://www.nintendocomplete.com/) punches you in the face with in-depth reviews, screenshot archives, and music from classic 8-bit NES games!