Resident Evil, known as Biohazard in Japan, is a highly successful franchise of survival-horror that started life as video games developed by Capcom and created by Shinji Mikami. The games have sold over 30 million copies as of February 2006[1]. The series is credited with popularizing the survival horror game genre.
The success of this franchise has spawned several video games, a comic book series, novelizations, two (soon to be three) Hollywood action films, and a variety of action figures. While the games mostly adhere to a consistent storyline, there are enough deviations from the game plot within the films and novels to be considered alternate story lines.
Resident Evil made its 1996 debut on the Sony PlayStation and later on the Sega Saturn. It was a critical and commercial success, leading to the production of two sequels, Resident Evil 2 in 1998 and Resident Evil 3: Nemesis in 1999, both for the PlayStation. A port of Resident Evil 2 was released for the Nintendo 64. In addition, ports of all three were released for Windows. The fourth game in the series, Resident Evil Code: Veronica, was developed for the Sega Dreamcast and released in 2000, followed by ports of 2 and 3. Resident Evil Code: Veronica was later re-released for Dreamcast in updated form as Code: Veronica Complete, which included slight changes, many of which revolved around the story cutscenes. Code: Veronica was later ported to PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube under the title Code: Veronica X.
