10 Video Game Origins You Never Knew
4. Resident Evil Was Based On A Niche 1989 Japanese Horror Movie
Though the Resident Evil franchise is obviously inspired by the legendary zombie movies of George A. Romero, there's actually a far more specific - and niche! - touchstone for the series.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 1989 Japanese horror movie Sweet Home follows a TV documentary crew who visit the abandoned mansion of a famous artist, only to find themselves haunted by the ghost of the artist's dead wife.
Kurosawa also supervised production of a video game adaptation developed and published by, you guessed it, Capcom.
The result, a top-down RPG, effectively birthed the survival horror genre, to the extent that when Resident Evil went into production in 1993, it was actually intended to be a 3D remake of Sweet Home.
As the rights to the movie IP had lapsed, Capcom decided to reinvent their game as a new property, and so Resident Evil was born.
But make no mistake, Sweet Home's fingerprints are all over it, in not only its setting but also its focus on resource management and survival mechanics.