Resident Evil: Grim Beginnings (Game Boy Demake)

ARROW KEYS - MOVE

Z - INTERACT

X - CANCEL

ENTER - INVENTORY

SHIFT - MAP

Estimated completion time: ∼2 hours

Welcome to Resident Evil: Grim Beginnings - an unfinished, yet fully playable, solo developed, Game Boy demake of the original Resident Evil. The game was developed over an extended stay when I was stranded across seas during the height of the Pandemic. Not knowing when the flight embargo were going to be lifted, I worked on this project as a way to keep myself sane and creatively engaged. What started as a simple toy-around with the GB Studio seeing if I could recreate a room or two with some zombies slowly expanded into an attempt to fully recreate the original game.

But, the flight embargo lifted as the game was only 90% complete, life got in the way and I never got around to finishing up the rest. It has been sitting on a shelf collecting dust for the past year and a half, which never sat right with me. I decided to release the game as it currently stands and offer some comments down below explaining all that is missing, glitched or otherwise.

This project was my first time making any sort of video game. A few notes:

-I recommend playing the game via the downloaded ROM file on a Game Boy emulator rather than playing the the browser. The ROM version is a newer version of the game and has some bug fixes and some additonal content. The files I have for the game have become corrupted so I cannot upload the newer version of the game to be played in browser, unfortunately. 

-The main thing that you will notice about the game is that there is no background music or sound effects for the vast majority of the game. This was to be the last thing I incorporated into the game but I did not get a chance to complete it.

-The game is faithful to the original but I did infuse this version with my own irreverent humor and selected to alter things to make the tone more comical. 

-The game covers the first mansion segment of the original game and ends when you have collected all the mansion masks. 

-The Merchant offers all the mansion keys if you wanted to explore the mansion without limits.

-You can only play as Jill (costume switching available)

-You can only use the handgun (additional weapons was ambitious for me)

-The game was developed with an early build of GB Studio where limited colors were available. I would have used more than two colors if it were possible.

-Zombies do not move outside of combat due to software limitations at the time of development.

MISSING:

-An opening story prelude prior to the helicopter crash akin to the 2002 remake. (This was almost complete but I lost the files)

-All background music and sound effect. (Any music and SFX in this build are temporary placeholders and some music does not end when intended thus bleeding into the next scene)

-Story scene/ puzzle in the booby-trapped shotgun room.

-Story scene with Chris stuck up the tree outside the mansion.

-Some inventory items have no text boxes when viewing/ inspecting them.

-Barry story scenes in Shotgun & Butterfly rooms.

-Puzzle in the Crow hallway. 

-Second Yawn boss battle in the Mansion Library.

-Story scene with Wesker introducing the birthday party after collecting all the Masks.

-Hunter enemies in mansion. (you can fight one Hunter in the Mansion Library)

BUGS:

-Some music will flow over to the next scene and continue indefinitely or until another music cue is activated.

-There is a debug space in the bottom left corner of the helicopter opening which skips all story scenes leading up to the mansion. (It also skips the combat tutorial)

-Some symbols are incorrect in text boxes such as: #,&,+,* etc. and are displayed as random red letters. If you see 'enemy speed h1' it is supposed to read 'enemy speed +1', for example.

-Player can get stuck when lighting the Warp Point in the mask room when done so from the top. (you can use the Warp Point to travel to unstick yourself if you have another one lit)

-Player can get softlocked if box spawns on player location in Zora Mask room.

-Any non-headshot on a Web Spinner is also a critical hit and causes the bonus round.

I liked this game so much that I have already started translating it into French (I'm doing this for myself and I won't make it public without your permission).
To translate it, I directly edit the “.gb” file using a hexadecimal editor. 
It is very long and tedious. Ideally, I would need the GBStudio sources, it would be much simpler, but I would understand if you don't want to share them. 
Otherwise, I would need the font file (ascii.png from memory in GB Studio), because I would need to move characters around to get access to some that are useful in French (ô ï ù é è ê ç …).  
Thank you in advance, here is my email: mr.benoit.bertrand@gmail.com