Poor Resident Evil—CODE: Veronica. At no point in its now 25-year history has it ever seemed like Capcom was giving it the attention it merited. This isn’t to say that they ignored it outright or anything like that, because that’s untrue, but it was positioned in a way that practically guaranteed it wouldn’t see the same success as its predecessors, and now, in a present loaded with remakes, it’s been skipped in line so that a Resident Evil 4 remake could sell a whole lot of copies… without necessarily even being, well, necessary.
Also they named it Resident Evil—CODE: Veronica. An em-dash, an all-caps word, and a colon? All in one title? Capcom must have eventually realized the problem, since the HD remaster is listed on storefronts without the em-dash, at least. Still! It was a ridiculous thing to do even before you realize that it was supposed to just be “Resident Evil 3.”
That’s right: the game we know as Resident Evil 3: Nemesis was actually supposed to be a spin-off, which is part of why the structure is so different from both Resident Evil 2 and CODE: Veronica, but for reasons that are still contested a bit, things didn’t end up working out that way. Here’s what we think we know, based on the responses of Capcom’s own executives and investigations throughout the years. The game Capcom was making for Sega’s Dreamcast, starring Claire Redfield of Resident Evil 2 fame in a search for her brother, Chris, from the original Resident Evil—who was also playable in this parallel tale—was supposed to be the next mainline Resident Evil title, while the aging Playstation was supposed to receive a spin-off. Which makes sense, both in terms of potential new hotness vs. old, and the fact that the game that ended up being Resident Evil 3 has always been something of a black sheep in the series.
Here’s what IGN’s 2009 history of the series said on the subject:
Foremost among their projects were a “gaiden” or side-story game following Jill Valentine’s adventures leading up to the events of Resident Evil 2, and a true next-gen sequel for the Dreamcast. When Sony bartered for a limited exclusivity deal on Resident Evil 3, the gaiden title was re-branded and the sequel labeled the spin-off, but the projects themselves remained essentially unchanged. Capcom even went as far as to promote the upcoming Dreamcast game as the true sequel despite the lack of a numeral in the title.
Back in 2000, IGN reported that Shinji Mikami—who served as a producer on both Nemesis and CODE: Veronica—wanted to keep the numbered titles on the Playstation, which was corroborated by Flagship president Yoshiki Okamoto in the August 1999 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. “If we go by the time sequence, Veronica is actually Resident Evil 3… Every Resident Evil game on the PSX is numbered, like one to three. On other platforms, we put names on the game, like Veronica.” Flagship’s founder and president would know, considering it was a studio funded by all three of Capcom, Nintendo, and Sega that came up with the scenario for CODE: Veronica. Which also had Mikami as producer, and Nextech (known as GAU Entertainment or Nex Entertainment, depending on when you’re talking about in time) working on the title along with Capcom Production Studio 4. It was a significant production.
Of course, this company policy was thrown out the window in time for Resident Evil 4, which, ever-so-briefly, was supposed to be a Nintendo GameCube exclusive and not appear on a Playstation platform at all. Which lends some credence to the idea that Sony “bartered” for the spin-off to become a numbered mainline entry, as IGN stated, but Mikami, in a 2020 interview, said that the decision was not made for “political reasons between Capcom and the console manufacturing company.” However, he did also say that CODE: Veronica deserved to be numbered, so it’s likely that Capcom just decided without external pressure that this way of doing things made sense for the moment. A coup for Sega’s new platform would have been great and all, but the Playstation already had a significant install base to cater to.
All sensible, yes, but we can still count it as disrespect toward a game that was being designed as a mainline entry in the popular franchise, with the kinds of resources poured into such a title, and then it ended up on the Dreamcast as a spin-off. Would the Dreamcast’s fate have been any different if Sega could have touted exclusivity for the new mainline Resident Evil? Would they have sold more consoles in anticipation of that release? We’ll never be able to know, because CODE: Veronica wasn’t given the chance to be Resident Evil 3 in name.
CODE: Veronica received critical acclaim when it was released, after slight delays, in 2000. The Dreamcast did not prove to be popular enough for Capcom to keep the game exclusive to the system, though, so, a slightly expanded version—Resident Evil—CODE: Veronica X—came out for the Playstation 2 and GameCube, roughly a week before Sega officially discontinued production of the Dreamcast. By the time X released on these newer, more powerful platforms, the reasons to praise it that had existed just the year before had dwindled. It no longer looked so cutting edge, and whatever annoyances it possessed from the era of Resident Evil games it was designed from persisted. It’s the kind of thing that happens in a space as fast-moving as videogames of this era, which saw some massive jumps in technology from the time of the Playstation and Saturn to the GameCube and Xbox, with the Dreamcast, as wonderful as it was, sitting a little behind the latter in this regard.
That’s not to say that the Dreamcast lacked power (it didn’t) or that it wouldn’t have been able to hold its own against the three consoles that released after it did (it could have), just that last year’s news was considered last year’s news. Which might be part of why, despite an install base that was nearly the equal of the Dreamcast by the time CODE: Veronica released, the Playstation 2 version of the game barely sold more copies of it than the original did. (CODE: Veronica did, however, between its original, X, and HD re-release on the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, end up outselling Nemesis in the end by nearly 700,000 copies.)
It’s a shame that CODE: Veronica wasn’t considered a bigger deal by the time it arrived on the newer consoles, considering that it was rightfully the third installment, but everyone was waiting for news of whatever Resident Evil 4 was by then, since they’d already had 3. And CODE: Veronica, for all that was great about it, was also obviously in between what Resident Evil was and whatever it was going to become. It’s not that people knew that Resident Evil 4 was going to become what it was or anything, but CODE: Veronica was sort of a bridge between series past and future, given that it transitioned to full 3D without the pre-rendered backgrounds, but still played mostly like its predecessor, full of fixed camera angles and the traditionally functional, but also a little off (complimentary0, controls. It looked new but felt old, at a time when action games were coming into their dual analog future—remember that Capcom themselves were pushing forward in this way, with Devil May Cry releasing the same year that CODE: Veronica X did.
“Who cares,” you might rightfully wonder in this day and age, when games are very purposefully designed with an old-school sheen or concept or graphics right alongside AAA titles with more visible pores than there are grains of sand on the beach. 25 years ago was a different time, though, much closer to the embarrassing era of “why are these games 2D anymore, this is the era of 3D” than our present existence. These things mattered more than they should have to more people than they should have. Which is one reason that a CODE: Veronica remake was such a tantalizing proposition. Finally! It would get its moment with the tech of now, and cleaned up in the same way Resident Evil 2 had been in its remake. Which is to say, it was already great, but now it could be great in a different but similar way. Like with much different notes for the voice actor for Steve Burnside, and a move away from Capcom’s insistence that every protagonist must start to fall for the random character they meet during their game, even if they’re extremely annoying and difficult to enjoy being around.
More seriously, CODE: Veronica does need a remake for a number of reasons, not least of all that CODE: Veronica deserves the spotlight it was never allowed to have before, but there are other matters just as pressing. There’s fixing Steve Burnside’s whole deal, yes, but Capcom should also utilize the design and gameplay of Resident Evil 2’s remake to bring the old-school Resident Evil of CODE: Veronica into the present. They need to bring Alfred Ashford’s entire arc out of the many phobias of the ‘90s that it perpetuated—there have got to be other ways of getting the points across that they wanted there besides what they ended up going with, especially in a series that leans as heavily as it does on science experiments gone wrong and the like. And, less significant but important to my own mental health, they need to give Claire Redfield a jacket or something when she ends up in Antarctica. She can’t be going around there in a crop top! It’s cold down there! That was an intentional choice much like Jill Valentine’s miniskirt in the original RE3, and we know this because the game was two discs. There was room for a change of clothes in there, you can’t fool me.
Ahem. Officially, a remake is not yet the plan. Capcom went from Resident Evil 2 to Resident Evil 3 to Resident Evil 4, skipping right over CODE: Veronica despite the fact that it has far more in common with those other titles than it does with its successor in the timeline. There are rumors that CODE: Veronica (and Resident Evil Zero) is in the mix for a remake, albeit one that’s “less ambitious” than Resident Evil 4’s remake was. Rumors being what they are, you can only pay so much attention to them, but it’s hard not to feel like there’s some truth in there regarding the ambition and scope, given everything you’ve read here to this point about the game being pushed out of the timeline on not just one, but two occasions.
At least CODE: Veronica remains available at all, with it still being something you can purchase on modern console storefronts (though, not on PC). Like with Resident Evil 3: Nemesis getting a second life via remake, however—while the original Nemesis sold just under 3.7 million copies on the Playstation, the 2020 remake moved 9.6 million—CODE: Veronica deserves that shiny new toy boost. Resident Evil 4 didn’t need a remake because it’s a perfect game that’s perfectly playable and widely available. CODE: Veronica is a great game with some issues of varying degrees, that could be an even greater game if only Capcom would give it the makeover it deserves.
Marc Normandin covers retro videogames at Retro XP, which you can read for free but support through his Patreon, and can be found on Twitter at @Marc_Normandin.
