You can now play the original Resident Evil on PC in all its retro glory

By Carli Velocci June 26, 2024

Chris Redfield shooting a zombie in a hallway looking at a door behind him in the original Resident Evil game. — Capcom

Capcom has made it easy to experience older Resident Evil titles with the help of its many recent remakes, but you were mostly out of luck on modern platforms if you wanted to actually play the original versions of those titles. Well, the GOG PC gaming storefront announced Wednesday that you’ll soon be able to play the first three Resident Evil games in their (mostly) original forms.

Right now, however, only Resident Evil is available. For $10, you can play the iconic 1997 survival horror game with just a few quality-of-life improvements to make it run well on your Windows 10 or 11 PC. The GOG version makes some very small changes to the gameplay, including improving the timing of cutscenes and making it easier to exit the game, and it now has support for most modern controllers.

Recommended Videos

Otherwise, this is the full version of Resident Evil, “completely uncut, with even more blood, graphic violence and gory scenes than the worldwide monster hit version on PlayStation,” the description reads. As is the case with most GOG titles, it’s also DRM-free.

GOG didn’t announce specific release windows for Resident Evil 2 or Resident Evil 3 yet (although they’re due out this year), but you can wishlist them separately on the store or purchase a $25 trilogy bundle. Buying the bundle gets you just Resident Evil for now, with the other two games added to your library once they’re released.

Unless you found a used copy or wanted to go through the complicated emulation process, there was no way to play the first Resident Evil on PC until this GOG release. You could check out the 2002 remake or the 2015 HD remaster of that remake, but there’s no true replacement for the original’s blocky graphics and delightfully awkward dialogue. Plus, in each of these the developers made large changes to elements like the control scheme and the inventory. Besides the aforementioned tweaks, the GOG version changes almost nothing, so it’s the closest you can get to experiencing it like it’s 1997.

If you can’t wait for Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 3 on GOG, there are the two recent remakes, which are quite good, even if they’re based on Capcom’s way more modern Resident Evil sensibilities.

Topics

Contributor, Games

Carli is a technology, culture, and games editor and journalist. They were the Gaming Lead and Copy Chief at Windows Central…

Gaming

Resident Evil 4, Death Stranding barely miss a step on iPhone and iPad

El Gigante raises its foot over Leon in Resident Evil 4.

Just two months ago, I had my mind blown when I saw Resident Evil Village running on an iPad. While I expected a very compromised experience, I was shocked when I saw how the horror game barely lost a step on the device. I pushed its settings to their limits and still came out with a fairly smooth experience capable of hitting high frame rates. Suddenly, the idea of playing a console quality game entirely on a mobile device didn’t seem like a far-fetched idea.

That was an impressive feat, but Resident Evil Village was built for the PS4 generation. The bigger test would come from more technically ambitious games that are either exclusive to new consoles or rebuilt with them in mind. I wouldn’t have to wait long to see that in action. At a recent Apple gaming showcase, I went hands-on with both Death Stranding: Director’s Cut and Resident Evil 4 running on a bevy of Apple devices, from the iPhone 15 Pro to a Mac Mini.

Gaming

You can kill your 2023 backlog and prepare for Halloween with these 7 creepy games

The Garrador stands tall in the Resident Evil 4 remake.

Dedicated gamers have two specific, and often competing, goals whenever October comes around. On one hand, the fall season is a sign that the year is winding down. Anyone who wants to finish off their backlog of games released in 2023 before the 2024 flood begins needs to start finding ways to cut down their backlog. Though there are even more pressing matters in October: it's spooky season! With a month-long Halloween celebration in full swing, October is also the perfect time to marathon some creepy games. Usually, that might mean going back to play some classics like Silent Hill 2, leaving little room to catch up on new games.

But what if you could kill two vampires with one stake? Well, you can this year because 2023 has been a wild year for horror video games. From two high-profile remakes to a slew of indie greats, your backlog this year might already be full of great, creepy games. To help organize your October, we've put together a list of seven eerie 2023 releases that double as great Halloween games. You can fly your freak flag and cut down your list of game to play in one go -- that's efficiency!
Resident Evil 4

Gaming

Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways leaves me hopeful for a Resident Evil 6 remake

Ada Wong holds a gun in Resident Evil 4: Separate Ways.

This year’s Resident Evil 4 remake was an important victory for the horror series. Not only did it successfully reimagine a beloved classic, but it finally concocted the perfect action formula for the series at large. That’s an important milestone considering that Resident Evil has historically run into trouble when fully dropping survival horror in favor of blockbuster action (see the misunderstood, but undeniably sloppy Resident Evil 6). The remake paves the way for Capcom to once again evolve its series, taking another crack at the third-person shooter genre it struggled to nail.

In that sense, Resident Evil 4’s new Separate Ways DLC feels like a taste of what’s to come. Capcom uses Ada Wong’s solo chapter to push its action formula even further, weaving in some exciting new tricks that are already leaving me hungry for a true spinoff. It’s not the series’ finest DLC, playing more as an asset-reusing victory lap, but it gives me hope that Resident Evil’s second decent into pure action will be much more successful this time.
Grappling forward
Separate Ways follows Ada Wong, the anti-hero mercenary on a quest to retrieve a Plaga sample for Albert Wesker during the main game. The lengthy bonus episode is a remake in itself, but it's perhaps even more radical than the base game’s reinvention. Right from its completely new opening scene, it's clear that Separate Ways is diverting pretty far from the original DLC. That’s a sensible decision considering how much the new version of Resident Evil 4 reworks Ada Wong. She’s no longer a careless hired gun, but a nuanced character struggling to balance her professional responsibilities with her moral ones.