Having existed for three whole decades, the Resident Evil series naturally has a number of casualties – games that were halted and culled mid-way through development. Some of those lost games have been recovered by an army of faithful fans, such as the infamous “Resident Evil 1.5” and a Game Boy Color port of the classic 1996 original. But some lost Resident Evil games are purely ethereal – no build to recover, no demo to play, no grainy trailers captured on a MiniDV camcorder in Kentia Hall. Just rumors of what could have been. A ghost, like RE2 director Hideki Kamiya’s original vision for Resident Evil 3.
Codenamed “Ship Bio,” the sequel starred HUNK, the gas-masked Umbrella mercenary from Resident Evil 2’s brutal bonus scenario The 4th Survivor, sent to recover the G-Virus from a cruise ship overrun with human-plant hybrids. When Sony announced the PlayStation 2 in 1998, though, Capcom grew nervous about releasing a major title on dying hardware and pulled the plug.
Instead, an internal side project called Resident Evil: Gaiden was hastily promoted to mainline status and became Resident Evil 3: Nemesis – not to be confused with the 2001’s Resident Evil: Gaiden for the Game Boy Color, which was set on a ship, or the original concept for Resident Evil 3, which was also set on a ship. Capcom was clearly scared shipless by the advent of new hardware, and Kamiya’s project was redirected toward a next-gen PS2 game.
Resident Evil 4 was famously, controversially a GameCube exclusive, at least before it was ported to practically everything with integrated circuits, but the game Kamiya began developing was unrecognizable from the RE4 we’ve come to know. No sass-talking Leon, no Plagas, no pro wrestling moves. An unthinkable alternate universe in which Ingrid Hunnigan never existed.
Resi-storians have cataloged at least four distinct versions of the game, each unique enough to earn its own name and all of which left their mark on the eventual classic. Hideki Kamyia’s version came first. Today, it’s called “Stylish”.
Stylish
Starring Tony Redgrave, the red-and-black clad superpowered son of Umbrella founder and Mansion namesake Oswell E. Spencer, the so-called “Stylish” version of Resident Evil 4 ditched pre-rendered backgrounds for the heroism and agency of an active camera as we stormed the castle stronghold of Mallet Island with aura and rizz to spare.
If any of this sounds familiar, that’s because it’s literally Devil May Cry, and fans of the series have veteran Resident Evil director and producer Shinji Mikami to thank for its existence. He felt the concept was too flashy for survival horror and firmly encouraged Kamiya to transition the game into a fresh IP more suited to his sensibilities, so RE4 became 2001’s Devil May Cry.
The goopy sci-fi body horror of Resident Evil got a mythological makeover. Tony and his Les Enfants Terribles twin Paul became the dashing, demonmaxxing Dante and Vergil. DMC willed itself into existence from the cutting room floor by being cool, outrageous, and addictive, birthing a hit franchise and arguably the entire character action genre from the recycle bin.
The DNA of Resident Evil 4 is all over the final game, with much of the enemy and character design legwork coming from Resi-era concept art. The Stylish RE4 was never previewed, and little of it survives today. It’s lost by any definition of the word, except for the fact you can buy and play Devil May Cry on modern hardware right now. Kamiya transmogrified his last attempt at Resident Evil into an SSS-ranked swansong from Capcom, the only DMC he directed before leaving to co-found PlatinumGames and create Bayonetta.
With Kamiya occupied, Capcom tapped director Hiroshi Shibata to build a new RE4 from the bones of his original pitch, resulting in another abandoned attempt dubbed “Castle”.
