Editorials
The Fabled, Playable Version of ‘Resident Evil 1.5’
Nearly everyone who played Resident Evil 2 remembers it fondly. An ambitious follow-up to one of the most well-loved horror games of its era, RE2 pushed the boundaries of the still-nascent survival horror genre and vaulted the Resident Evil name to the top of the horror heap.
But fewer people are aware that a half-completed version of the sequel has been floating around on the internet for nearly twenty years in one form or another. Video surfaced from playable builds the team at Capcom had produced, but an official version has never been released.
Granted, it is basically a skeletal version of the eventual RE2, with some major modifications and changes. The basic premise and some of the characters are the same. What seems to draw people to RE1.5 is the “What If?” factor. What if this game had been released? What if the team had just pushed through and completed something with which they were not entirely pleased?
That, and the fact that footage of the game actually exists, perpetually brings people to speculate about what it would be like to play such a thing. That dream is growing ever more possible, as leaked code has motivated fans to attempt a recreation of that original, “lost” game.
Shortly after the astoundingly popular release of the first Resident Evil game in 1996, the team at Capcom immediately began work on a follow-up. Raccoon City had been overrun with zombies, and the Umbrella Corporation had been closed. This may sound familiar to those who played the proper sequel.
Similarly, it featured the introduction of Leon Kennedy as one of the few remaining police officers left in Raccoon City. Leon would become a series staple, and his characterization in the final game is largely reflective of this early version, called even by director Shinji Mikami as Resident Evil 1.5.
However, the other new character in this early version of the game was a college student (and motorcycle enthusiast) named Elza Walker. She would later be changed dramatically and renamed Claire Redfield, traveling to Raccoon City on a mission to find her brother Chris.
This version also features a police station, but one that is vastly different from the one that most players would recognize. The weapons are different, and the game just doesn’t have the same nerve-wracking tension of the original, which is perhaps why producer Shinji Mikami had it scrapped in favor of a complete overhaul.
Estimates have it that Resident Evil 1.5 was 60-80% done when the decision to redo it was handed down, which is another element that contributes to the continued interest in it. That game has always been at the heart of tons of discussion and available only in the form of incomplete video footage. For years, people have uploaded and re-uploaded the same content, speculating about what it would be like to play the game but incapable of doing so.
Until now.
Or, at least, a year ago.
According to a post on NeoGAF, a playable build of the game is available online. An ISO group used leaked code in order to create something approximating the lost game. Eurogamer reported in February of last year that the idea was to release a fully realized version, but some individuals attempting to sell their incomplete work pushed them to release their current build.
This fan-made version is entirely not-for-profit — obviously — and the group behind it, Team IGAS, does not condone anyone trying to make money from their work. Taking a look at the YouTube channel reveals some developer commentary of the mundane work of transforming the hypothetical into something real, and there is a weird kind of magic to it.
The project has been updated somewhat since February 2013, but no finished product has been released. In terms of quality, those who have played it admit the game is, in the words of NeoGAF user randomwab, “an unfinished mess.”
Players will need to work some debugging magic to be able to travel from area to area and so on, and no word has been released on when a more complete, less broken version might appear. Anyone interested in speculation about the game can follow now-lengthy NeoGAF thread.
Still, any playable version is better than no playable version, and the community at Team IGAS is intent upon making something complete to release to the public. You can follow their updates on FaceBook and keep track of when you, too, might be able to play the lost version of RE1.5
Some movies are just so beloved that you can experience them through cultural osmosis without ever sitting down to actually watch them. From loving parodies to meticulous recreations of iconic scenes, memorable filmmaking lives on even after the curtains close on the silver screen. And when it comes to horror, few films can compete with the massive impact that Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining had on popular culture as a whole.
Whether or not you think the flick is a good adaptation of Stephen King’s seminal novel, 1980’s The Shining slowly but surely grew into one of the most influential genre movies ever made, inspiring everything from surprisingly heartfelt sequels to classic episodes of The Simpsons. However, not all The Shining references are created equal, and today I’d like to shine a light on six unexpected homages to Kubrick’s iconic film.
In this list, we’ll be focusing on references and Easter eggs that either came out of the blue or came from creators that you wouldn’t expect to be fans of this classic ghost story. That being said, don’t forget to comment below with your own favorite references to the Torrance family and the Overlook Hotel if you think we missed a particularly memorable one.
With that out of the way, onto the list!
5. A Nightmare on FaceTime – South Park (2012)
Regardless of the brand’s iffy reputation among former employees, the death of Blockbuster Video was a serious blow to fans of physical media. Of course, some folks were more affected by this than others, and South Park’s Randy Marsh definitely took things a little too far in the twelfth episode of the show’s sixteenth season.
Titled A Nightmare on FaceTime, the main plot of this 2012 story is a surprisingly faithful recreation of The Shining where Randy purchases an empty Blockbuster store and begins to go mad once he realizes that his investment may not have been a very good idea due to the rise of streaming and the now-defunct RedBox storefronts.
4. The Overlook Hotel Level – Ready Player One (2018)
I was never really a fan of Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One, so I viewed Stephen Spielberg’s divisive adaptation of the novel as an improvement over the source material despite having its own narrative issues. In fact, I actually prefer how Spielberg changed the story by removing several references to his own work and replacing a lengthy Blade Runner detour with an over-the-top homage to The Shining.
A CGI-heavy recreation of the film’s most iconic moments that feels like a big-budget ghost train ride set within the Overlook Hotel, this intense sequence is more of a recreation of the freaky aesthetics of The Shining rather than its mind-bending narrative. However, it’s still fun to see Spielberg make a heartfelt tribute to a filmmaker that was once his close personal friend.
3. IKEA Singapore Halloween Ad (2014)
It makes sense that commercials don’t typically borrow from the horror genre, as it might be a bad idea to scare away potential customers, but some references are just too much fun to pass up.
That’s probably why the publicists behind this Ikea ad from Singapore were allowed to turn their commercial into a genuinely unsettling recreation of Danny’s tricycle scene from The Shining. After all, nobody cares if your store is haunted so long as it offers late-night shopping hours and a large selection of merchandise that you can become lost in forever and ever…
2. The End of ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’ – Community (2014)
Community is no stranger to recreating iconic movie moments within the show, and the series had previously tackled horror tropes in episodes like the fan-favorite Epidemiology. However, the most laugh-out-loud moment on this particular list comes from a brief gag towards the end of the season five episode ‘Bondage and Beta Male Sexuality’.
The majority of this episode has nothing to do with scary movies, but there’s a brief subplot involving supporting character Chang and a possible encounter with ghosts that leads him to question his own existence. This subplot culminates in the episode’s hilarious ending where the camera zooms in on a black-and-white photograph of Chang in period clothing at some kind of celebration, just like Jack Nicholson at the end of The Shining.
However, the picture’s subtitle eventually reveals that it’s merely a conveniently placed keepsake from the ‘Old Timey Photo Club’.
1. The Overlook Hedge Maze Sequence – Zootopia 2 (2025)
Disney movies are pretty far removed from both the gruesome horror of Stephen King and the heady filmmaking of Stanley Kubrick, so I don’t think anyone was expecting the climax of last year’s Zootopia sequel to take place in an animated version of the snowy hedge maze from The Shining.
In this unexpectedly intense sequence, friend-turned-villain Pawbert Lynxley (an unhinged lynx cat played by Andy Samberg) chases our protagonists through a creepy labyrinth in a loving recreation of Jack Nicholson’s icy demise outside the Overlook Hotel. The actual ending here might be a little more child-friendly than what’s being referenced, but it’s amazing that the filmmakers were able to push the horror elements as far as they did – especially since the scene doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the movie.
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