Games of Yore: Resident Evil

After picking up my copy of Biohazard 5 (which was released this Thursday in Japan) and seeing first hand the dramatic changes Capcom has made in this incarnation of its zombie saga, I have decided that the subject of my second Games of Yore feature will be the game that started it all.

Game: Resident Evil (Capcom; 1996)
Console: PlayStation
Genre: Action/Adventure (later categorized as "Survival Horror")

I was in my final year of high school when this landmark title came out. My friends and I, none of whom owned a PlayStation at the time of the game's release, rented a console and a copy of the game and sat down for a long night of zombie intrigue. We screamed our heads off every time a giant tarantula dropped down from the ceiling or a diseased dog crashed through the window. It was a damn good time. Unfortunately, there were two things about the game we had to learn the hard way.

Thing one: We really should have pooled our cash together for a memory card. Without one, we faced the epic challenge of playing the game without dying (since, after the player died, his only recourse was to load his last saved game from the title screen). We actually became pretty good at this after a while. In fact, one of my friends finally mustered the stamina to finish the whole game on a single life. Soon after completing this task, he lost his mind and disappeared into the uncharted wilds of Wisconsin.

Thing two: Not even Sewer Shark could have prepared us for the sober truth that, with the quantum leap forward in game audio technology provided by a CD-based console like the PlayStation, would inevitably come a quantum leap backward in the quality of voice acting. Come to think of it, Sewer Shark didn't even succeed in preparing us for the part in Resident Evil where there were actual sharks in the sewer.

My buddies and I initially found great entertainment in the goofy lines uttered by the game's protagonists. But with repeated deaths and subsequent viewings of the game's opening scenes (which, cruelly, could not be skipped), it became apparent that "WHAT IS IT?" was to Resident Evil as "SMOKIN'!" was to The Mask. Fun at first, but ultimately exasperating. I'd be lying, however, if I said that I don't still get a little laugh out of golden classics like "You were almost a Jill Sandwich!"

After getting these two hard lessons behind us, Resident Evil proved to us that the video game format was capable of delivering a sense of dread more palpable than that of most horror movies. We learned to be afraid of certain hallways based solely on the music and the color of the wallpaper. For teenagers like my friends and me, that dread value alone was enough to make the game an integral part of our lives during the spring and summer of 1996.

Games of Yore: Life Force

Feeling the need to further rationalize my tendency to write about what ever the hell I please, I am starting a new games-related feature on Chorus, Isolate, Confirm. However much hullabaloo there may be over the latest title for this console or that, it's sometimes important for a gamer to reflect on his heritage. Hence, Games of Yore.

The games I write about in this column must meet only two requirements. They must have been released at least ten years ago, and they must have some significance to me. That's it. I like to keep the rules simple. Now, then...ARE YOU READY FOR YORE?

Game: Life Force (Konami; 1988)
Console: NES
Genre: Scrolling shooter

One Christmas morning, my friend Peter got an NES from Santa Claus. He graciously called me that same day to invite me over to play, as my household had not yet graduated from the Atari 2600 School of Hard Knocks. Over the phone, he told me that he had three games: Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda and Life Force. I had never heard of Life Force, and asked him what it was. His response, as best I can remember:

"I'm playing it right now. It's pretty cool. I'm in a space fighter flying through something that looks like intestines, blowing up these things that look like giant polyps."

Repulsive as it sounded, I had to know what this bizarre marriage of outer space action and medical drama was all about, so I headed straight over to his house to investigate.

Life Force (also known as Salamander in Japan) turned out to be, for lack of a better analogy, like a drastic re-write of Fantastic Voyage in which the protagonists had no vested interest whatsoever in preserving the life of the organism into which they'd been injected. (Or, if you're not into books, imagine a remake of Innerspace in which Dennis Quaid's sole purpose is the destruction of Martin Short.)

As the game's instruction manual explains, a rather large alien called Zelos has become over-zealous in his eating habits. He has basically eaten everything in the universe, including Easter Island and ancient Egypt, and now must be destroyed from the inside. The 80s kid in me hears that plot description and can't help but yell, "TOTALLY AWESOME, DUDE!"

And it was awesome. But I have to say, a lot of stuff about Life Force didn't make a whole lot of sense. For example, why is the very first boss a huge, flying brain with arms and an eyeball? And why is Stage Five full of all that King Tut crap? And why is Stage Six infested with leaping moai heads that spit donuts?

In retrospect, however, my young mind didn't dwell for very long on such technicalities. I was too busy marveling at how radical it was to play a cooperative two-player game with my best friend, and not have to keep dropping quarters into it. I was too busy improving my Vic Viper space fighter with enough SPEED, MISSILE, LASER and OPTION upgrades to make it an unstoppable storm of flying firepower. I was too busy swearing at the hundreds of dirty tricks the game pulled, specifically for the purpose of killing me. Especially those damn solar flares in Stage Three.

Life Force's winning combination of giant brains, challenging gameplay and memorable music (a cornerstone of Konami's scrolling shooters) quickly endeared the game to my younger sister and I. We teamed up to plow through all six stages while singing impromptu lyrics to the game's soundtrack. We fought over who would pick up which power-ups. We were Konami kids, once and for all time.