Resident Evil and the House of the Dead have almost the EXACT same storyline. But who copied who?
0This Halloween season we wanted to explore one of our favorite SEGA arcade games, the House of the Dead, but we were also playing through Resident Evil when it dawned on us that these games have an astonishing number of similarities. Not as it pertains to their gameplay, obviously, one game is a light gun shooter while the other is a pioneering survival horror game. No, rather, the similarities are with regard to the games’s basic story structure and themes. Check it out:
Both games are set in 1998. Both games take place in a spooky mansion that doubles as a secret biology laboratory. In both games the villain is a James Bond-like mad scientist who wants to take over the world somehow.....by starting a zombie apocalypse. Thus, in both games, you spend most of your time dealing with biologically created zombies. Further, in both games, the good guys are American para-military police agents who arrive after receiving a distress signal from less fortunate compatriots who are killed by the villain. Eventually, when you confront the villain, he reveals that, central to his plan, is a giant humanoid monster. In both games this monster is unleashed, from a giant chambers, only to ironically kill his creator and then serve as the game’s final boss.
Those are incredible similarities! Obviously someone got ripped off!......Right?
Wrong.
Both games were released in 1996 and underdevelopment at around the same time period. By the time the developers of the House of the Dead knew anything about Resident Evil at all it would have been too late to change their story and characters to be like Capcom’s game.....and there would have been little reason too! No one in 1995 or early 1996 actually knew if Resident Evil was going to be a hit. In fact, even Capcom was betting against their strange new horror game.
So what on earth happened?
That’s what we explore in this video! But suffice it to say that sometimes, people from similar social groups and backgrounds, are prone to producing products or ideas to their peers.....like clock work. In fact, people are so often conditioned by their cultural and social circumstances that, perhaps, it would have been to much to ask either Capcom or SEGA to be more original than they, in fact, already were!
We did a lot of research for this one. Here are some helpful sources for your own curiosity:
"Interview with Takashi Oda" by Official Sega Saturn Magazine (September, 1997)
"Exclusive interview with Takashi Oda" @ the Website of the Dead (September 7, 2012)
Resident Evil VS the House of the Dead by Thequietone8843 @ r/residentevil
"How Italian Horror Cinema Inspired Survival Horror videogames" by Jacob Davidson @ 13th Floor (January 10, 2017)
"Resident Evil creator talks zombies in 2020 and how his game will change post pademic" by James Mielke @IGN (June 3, 2020)
"House of the Dead is actually high art" by Avery Xavier Chu @ Rely on Horror (June 24th, 2019)
"Great artists steal" by Jim Connolly @ Creative Thinking Hub
"The House of the Dead Complete History" by Daniel Ibertson (Slopes Game Room) @YouTube (November 4, 2018)
The Website of the Dead by Kori
Podcast of the Dead #1 @ SegaBits
The Making of Resident Evil (1996) by Leosayssays @ YouTube
Interview with Kenichi Iwao by Heidi Kemps @ Gaming.Moe (January 29, 2016)
Dark Horse comics interview with Masamune Shirow (1995)
The Cthulu Mythos in Japan by Justin Mulius @ LoveCraft eZine (2012)
"The birth and the evolution of the internet in Japan" by Murai Jun @ nippon.com (October 9, 2015)
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