8 Impossible Games That Pushed Consoles To Their Limits
2. Resident Evil 2 (N64)
Porting a hit game from one platform to another can be hugely tricky business, and in the grand pantheon of "impossible" ports, there are few more fascinating or impressive than the Nintendo 64 version of Resident Evil 2.
The big problem with porting the survival horror sequel from the PlayStation to the N64 is that the PS1 release weighed in at a then-hefty 1.2GB across two discs, while the N64's cartridges were limited to a capacity of just 64MB.
Over the course of a year and at a cost of $1 million, Angel Studios employed aggressive and creative compression techniques to ensure that all of the audio and video from the PS1 release could fit, albeit in lower-fidelity form, on an N64 cart.
Though the PS1 version is the definitive iteration of the game, the N64 port is a mind-bogglingly impressive technical achievement to this very day, retaining the essence of the original game at barely 5% of the storage size.