GOG, also known as Good Old Games, is a company that restores and preserves video game history. While it might not be gamers' first choice for purchasing digital games thanks to the behemoths that are Steam and the Epic Games Store, the CD Projekt subsidiary has come a long way after almost two decades of restoring classic titles,with thousands of games in its library.
Last year, GOG surprised us with the release of three classic titles that popularized and helped establish the survival horror genre: the first three Resident Evil games. Originally published on PlayStation, the original versions of these games have never been available to buy online on PC.
While you can play the remakes of RE2 and RE3, they are entirely different games from the originals. 2015’s Resident Evil HD remake is closest to the first game, but it’s still a whole new experience.
GOG not only made these games available for purchase again, but also enhanced them with modern controller support and addressed several technical issues. This was one of the longest projects the company has ever worked on, taking a couple of years to complete. I spoke with senior business development manager Marcin Paczyński and technical engineer Adam Ziółkowski to learn more about the process and challenges of resurrecting these survival horror classics..
How To Restore And Upgrade A Zombie
Paczyński says the restoration process usually starts with his team contacting the developer or publisher and sending them a proposal. Once both parties agree, they sign an agreement contract, solving any copyright and licensing issues along the way, and then the technical part of the work starts. However, sometimes the first part is the most complicated one.
“The first step was actually convincing Capcom that we are the right people to trust with a project like this,” explains Paczyński. “It took a lot of time. We signed an agreement with Capcom, which itself took a couple of years. From my experience, basically every Japanese company really wants the release to be perfect in absolutely every way.”
This is something that Capcom is well-known for, be it withthe in-house developed fighting games collectionsor other compilations of classic games that it co-develops with other companies. These always feel like premium releases, with high-quality ports, restored cut content, and extras like concept art galleries.
For example, Digital Eclipse’s Frank Cifaldi spoke about the process of making the Mega Man Legacy Collection and working with Capcomin a 2016 GDC talk.
“Capcom wanted to have all the level of involvement it could,” explains Ziółkowski. “They basically treated our release as a new one, so it would [need to pass] all of the quality checks that they do for all their new titles.
Ziółkowski goes on explaining that Capcom sent a list of instructions with all the expectations the company had for the project. Fortunately for Ziółkowski and his team, Capcom also told him that it would do “several full playthroughs through all of the languages”. Back in the day, video games would have different versions for each language, with bugs and glitches of their own.
Ziółkowski tells me that it took the team around six months to deliver the final restored version of Resident Evil. While they are always working on multiple projects at the same time, this would end up being much longer than the other two games in the series because of all the fixes and technical tweaks they added.
The team sent around 50 different iterations of the game to Capcom, making every little tweak it requested along the way. Sometimes the team was tasked to fix issues that were present in the original release.
“For example, ‘Oh, there is an ammo clip that is not pickable,’” Ziółkowski says. “It was never pickable because that was always how the game worked. We fixed so many weird things, like music not looping correctly or footsteps not being heard in some of the levels.”
GOG also added some features and made adjustments to make sure launching and playing the game was a smooth experience. This version of Resident Evil has full compatibility with Windows 10 and Windows 11, as well as new rendering options, including windowed mode, anti-aliasing, and gamma correction.
Although it was an intense project with multiple revisions, Ziółkowski and Paczyński agree that they didn’t feel pressured by Capcom. Rather, it was a “cooperative” project, and Paczyński is grateful for Capcom’s aid in fields like age rating, testing the Japanese version, and identifying the bugs and technical issues.
“It took a while, but we’re happy with what we were able to achieve here,” explains Paczyński. “This set a new standard for all of our future releases and how we work with our preservation program as well.”
You can buy the Resident Evil Bundle for $12.49on GOG’s storeand try the remastered version of the first three games for yourself.
