The lost media website Games That Weren't has delivered an early Christmas present for Resident Evil fans: the "final build" of HotGen & Fluid Studios' ambitious never-released Resident Evil port for the Game Boy Color (thank VGC!).
Two builds have previously been recovered back in 2011 (by Kiff Storey and Bowker), but neither of these was able to be completed. As a result, it's hoped that this new version may finally allow players to beat the game once and for all. At the moment, Games That Weren't has stated, there are some encouraging signs, such as Tyrant being present at the end, and the end sequence reportedly being triggerable, in contrast to the earlier builds, but "due to time constraints," they have yet to put this to the test in a legitimate playthrough.
Though the Game Boy Color would eventually get a Resident Evil title, in the form of the M4-developed top-down spin-off Resident Evil Gaiden in the year 2000, this version of the game has long been a source of interest and speculation for fans of the series, thanks to its ambitious attempts to match the 3D environments of the 32-bit game with 2D sprite work.
From what we've heard in the past, it came about due to talks between Capcom, Virgin, and the London-based developer HotGen studios (a company co-founded by Probe Entertainment's Fergus McGovern), and was developed in collaboration with the former Ocean Software producer Jon Oldham's Fluid Studios.
We spoke to Oldham a few years ago about the project: "Fergus McGovern, who was a good friend, approached me to try and do Resident Evil on the Game Boy. Fluid Studios, with Nigel Speight, made the whole game with a forced 3D perspective; it worked and was ready to test. Apparently, Mikami had said it couldn't be done and refused to allow it to be finished. We all got paid up, but it never saw the light of day. I was involved in doing the deal and managing the project, but the person to speak to would be Nigel. Not sure what he's up to these days."
We tried to speak to Speight about the project around the same time we got in touch with Oldham, but were unsuccessful. Luckily, though, it appears Games That Weren't beat us to the punch, giving us a record of the programmer's memories of the cancelled game:
"If I remember correctly, I would say the game was about 75-85% complete. Originally the game was supposed to be about 35% of the original PlayStation version and we were going to elongate the storyline to keep reusing the rooms. However, as time went along Virgin kept upping the cartridge size and wanting more of the original content in. If I remember correctly I’d created an editor that allowed the 3d to be aligned to the screens and objects placed etc and I think that the last build we made didn’t include the final amount of content me and the artist Martin Smith had created.”
According to Games That Weren't, Smith was responsible for the game's backgrounds, whereas Simon Butler did the game's sprite work. An assistant programmer, called Pete Frith, was also involved. Fritht told Games That Weren't in 2020, he expected the game's completion to be more akin to 98% than the 75-85% amount Speight mentioned, and seemed to support Oldham's reasons for why the game was cancelled.
You can read Games That Weren't's main article on the discovery here, which is also where you'll find the link to the ROM.