Resident Evil Gaiden is the series' first attempt at a handheld game, coming out on the GameBoy Color when the series was still only a few entries in. While it's not awful and I actually respect some of its innovation a lot, it is mostly a failed experiment. This is one of those games where I do think ultimately, it is fatally flawed...and yet there are aspects of it that I find not quite redeeming, but enjoyable and impressive in their own right.

To achieve the low-tech handheld adaption of the original Resident Evil style, the game takes serious departures from the original formula while maintaining much of the core concept. You are still generally alone in tight corridors with shambling monsters using limited ammo to make your way to the next key, scene, or area. However, the fixed camera angle 3rd-person style is replaced with a top-down look. Further, combat does not occur in the general exploration screen but in a first person encounter screen where you have to time a rather quick slider as it lines up with enemies. While the presentation and controls are obviously significantly different, the Resident Evil premise I found intact to a surprising extent. And it actually kind of works. By coincidence, I played the GBC version of Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare almost concurrently with this game. The difference was stark in highlighting the many mistakes in that title of trying too hard to faithfully port a Playstation game onto a handheld not nearly up to the task. Gaiden's approach is at least more successful in that it has some resemblance in concept to its core series, while being willing to sufficiently depart from formula to fit the confines of its medium much more appropriately.

However, despite what praise I can offer, I want to emphasize that it only kind of works. Sadly, while I think the general gameplay ideas were quite good, they mostly fall flat from poor implementation in balancing and plotting out the game. Enemies are completely replenished throughout the ship way too frequently throughout the story and while a few of them drop helpful items (some of them essential key items, others valuable resources), the slog through so many enemies gets old quickly and sadly the tension of being forced into a fight when you're low on resources gets replaced with a tension of "dammit, I just wanted to get to the next room and I have to deal with another combat encounter if I don't dodge that zombie, ugh." Further, there's tons of backtracking and with the simplicity of the graphics on the GameBoy Color, areas don't look distinct enough to form as strong of a mental map and seeing the same areas again is less interesting than in the games with evocative pre-rendered backgrounds (though they certainly could've done a worse job in this respect). I at first found the game surprisingly pretty engaging, but it wore on me very quickly despite the game being fairly short. I also ended up really abusing save states and without that, would've had a ton of extra replay time due to the kind of bullshit difficulty and swingy nature of the encounters. I don't usually like to overuse save states, but I felt 0 guilt with this title given the extent of those issues.

The game...has a story, sort of. You control Barry and Leon, investigating a ship said to contain a dangerous Umbrella BOW. There is actually a good deal of plot development and text dialogue and it mostly fits the kind of story you might expect from the series, if a little barebones. However, despite the fact the game is marketing on bringing back two beloved characters from previous games, they might as well be skins for entirely different characters as their characterization is pretty weird and doesn't really align with prior development other than Barry somewhat hilariously having almost the exact same plot arc as in Resident Evil 1. The game is also pretty clearly non-canon given its treatment with some important recurring characters.

At the end of the day, I didn't regret my time with Resident Evil Gaiden. I think it took me about 4 hours and despite all its flaws, it was at least interesting, even when painful. That said, it's not a game I feel I could recommend strongly and even others like me aiming to do a full series playthrough could certainly consider skipping it without losing out on much. I think the best way to summarize its issues is that it does a surprisingly good job of translating the series to the GameBoy Color; however—like this and Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare demonstrate—maybe that's a project that simply shouldn't have been undertaken in the first place? Though I must admit, the soundtrack kind of slaps.

My other Resident Evil reviews:

• Resident Evil (1996) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 2 (1998) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 3 (1999) - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil: Survivor - ★★★
• Resident Evil: Survivor 2 – Code Veronica - ★★
• Resident Evil Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 2 Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 3 Remake - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 4 VR - ★★★★★
• Resident Evil 4 Remake - ★★★★★

Released in 2001, this bizarre non-canon Resident Evil game has Barry and Leon teaming up on a passenger ship full of zombies, with the objective of destroying a B.O.W developed by Umbrella Corporation.

Being on the GBC, the traditional gameplay is changed for a top-down perspective and the battles function just like in Undertale (2015), with you trying to align your aim with a line to do maximum damage. However, you can't avoid attacks, and the zombies attack at random. Sometimes they attack you as soon as the battle starts, and other times they miss and you can defeat them without suffering any damage.

At first, this mechanic feels unique and entertaining, but the zombies respawn every time you advance the plot, and you have to backtrack even more than in Code Veronica (2000). Additionally, some zombies have keys and cards that you need to progress, so after a while, you will be annoyed every time you are forced to kill an enemy every 5 steps, especially when they can poison you or attack at a distance.

Also, sometimes they drop ammo or health, and you could think this is random and if you kill everything you will have lots of resources, but the zombies that drop items are actually predetermined, so it's a bad idea to waste ammo in every single enemy you encounter, but you won't know which one is useless and which one has a key item or herbs/bullets unless you look up a guide, which means that resource management is impossible without playing the game multiple times, but the replay value is non-existent, so I don't think many people will want to experience this more than once.

Related to replay value, the story is linear and there is a single ending, but the plot is pretty silly and has awful characterization from both Barry and Leon. They don't feel at all like their versions of RE1 and RE2, and instead, as annoyed employees that hate their jobs and everybody. The worst part is that the ending has a plot twist that is the single reason all the events are non-canon, as it implies Leon is dead or kidnapped, so you can skip the game if you only care about continuity.

In conclusion, you should only play Resident Evil: Gaiden if you are a huge fan of the franchise and want to experience every single entry, but you can skip it without missing out on anything, as the whole plot is non-canon, and the gameplay, while interesting at first, becomes tedious after you have to travel through the entire ship for the 5th time because you got a key that can unlock a single room where you get another key that unlocks another room that is in the other extreme of the map.

So I just beat Resident Evil Gaiden, the two decade old oddity from M4 and Capcom.

I think the experience overall is worth a peek if you have it to hand or you’re not averse to emulators, but there’s lots of issues found in the game that make the promising concept a big ask to complete.

Gaiden is as close to the Resident Evil experience as you can expect from a staff that had never made a Resident Game, on a handheld that had never seen a Resident Evil Game. There were a lot of demake ambitions for the GameBoy line through its three phases (most bad) so it’s refreshing just how much thought and effort went in to this title despite obvious limitations. Moving around the ship environment is natural and well designed, observing the crucial law of Metroidvanias to have memorable surroundings you can pathfind and backtrack easily. The almost rhythm-based first-person combat is a clever analogue that demands accuracy and delivers tension. And the story… is easy to skip!

Altogether there’s a conceptually sound game in Gaiden on the surface that I want to recommend more than I will, because in practice it’s just not that straight forward.

The biggest issue the game has is to do with enemy respawn. Seasoned players of Resident Evil know zombies are in most circumstances not worth wasting bullets on if they can be avoided, but defeating one at least meant they couldn’t come back.

Resident Evil Gaiden throws that rule out of the window.

Enemies respawn, and its detrimental to the entire ecosystem most survival horrors rely on. Killing enemies still takes a lot of bullets, bullets are still hard to find, but the enemies are aplenty. Investing ammunition for clearing key paths no longer has a utility and if you’re spent ammo wise too early in the game you might as well start over. And I did – over, and over, and over.

Resident Evil Gaiden turned into an overlong experience where I was using playthroughs as collateral to scout the fastest paths to key items - before hitting reset. That’s fine if you’re looking to speedrun, but I’m just trying to survive. The game has a save system, but unlike using ink ribbons, its on its terms rather than yours and you’ll have to wait for key plot moments before you get a chance to bank your progress. In the end Gaiden’s demand for the clinical makes the game a lot less accessible.

It’s also the least-essential Resident Evil game when it comes to lore, with the entirety of its events non-canon and largely derivative anyway. It’s a vehicle for putting Barry Burton & Leon Kennedy together as a team, but it’s fairly run of the mill so don’t jump into this game just for that. Or the soundtrack - which bops or has the capacity to bop, but you’re mostly going to be listening to abstract chirping when you’re exploring and my ears didn’t really take to it, but now I’m really nit-picking.

This latter half of my review might come off as harsh, but I want to make it clear I think this game is closer to being good than it is to being bad. A few tweaks could have turned this into a handheld classic and prompted a successor on the looming GBA. It certainly had the looks to back it up, and there’s still a lot of heart there, so I hope people continue to seek it out and play it all these years later.

If you can be as forgiving to Gaiden as Gaiden can be unforgiving, there’s a unique and imprinting weekend of portable zombie killing to enjoy here.

-and I’m giving it three S.T.A.R.S out of five!