A Very Special Episode

As it’s been 24 years since the release of the original Resident Evil 3, Squidge and Nomad decided to team up and try to convince Jay to play it.

Players

Squidge

Nomad

Jay

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Show Notes

Did you know that Jay had never played the original Resident Evil 3? Like, the PlayStation game. He’s played the remake, but never played the OG through to completion. Well, Squidge and Nomad wanted to team up and try to convince Jay to see the error of his ways. As such, this special episode is a slight departure from the normal state of affairs around here - and just in time for the 24th anniversary of Jill’s epic escape from the city.

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

Today we’re diving into the world of raccoon city zombies and the relentless Nemesis Jay’s in the hot seat. And today it’s our job to try and convince Jay to play more than ten minutes of the original.

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

So let’s grab your green herbs and let’s get ready to waffle about a game that made our hearts race faster than a survivor encountering nemesis in a tight corridor.

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

That’s right. Let’s brace ourselves to give Jay STARS and start the show.

But before they could do that, Jay wanted Nomad to describe his podcast

which you should DEFINITELY listen to, by the way

to everyone listening in:

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

So I have a podcast, it is called the Retro Wildlands.

And in this podcast, I myself play retro games either for the first time or I go back and play them again when I used to play them when I was a child. And the idea behind the podcast is I just want to immerse you in the experience of that game. Whether you’ve played it before, you’ll get a nice hit of nostalgia as I take you down memory lane, or if you’ve never played the game before, you’ll know what it is that it’s all about in case maybe you want to play it someday.

My podcast is on all the major services you can find us on Spotify, iTunes, all the big ones. I have a link tree. That sounds cool. So I made one. You can go to linktr.ee/retrowildlands and it’ll take us to all of my socials: Facebook, Instagram - I’m just running around in the wildlands everywhere on the Internet, so that’s how you can find me.

And yeah, I’d love to have you guys join the expedition.

Announcements

Before the episode could start properly, there were a few announcements to make. Firstly (and most importantly):

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

Today I celebrate my 39th year on this planet. It is my birthday.

And it was a great honour to have Nomad share part of his level 39 celebrations with us.

And secondly:

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

So the day that this is going to be released is what I refer to as “Resident Evil 3 day,” this is going out on September 28th. I would say “daylight”, it’s already scorched my eyes - that’s why I had to close the curtains.

…

So it’s going to be a Resident Evil 3 day. And it came to an idea that maybe we should, I don’t know, ask Jay about his experiences with Resident Evil 3. But watch out! A wild alert appears.

What we’ve decided to do is first of all, I’ve decided that I know how the soundboard works, so you’re in trouble. What we’ve decided to do is co conspire against Jay, stick him in the hot seat. Me and Nomad are going to be hosting the show.

The Questions

Squidge and Nomad split their questions into two categories:

  • Specifically about the remake (or “Three-make”)
  • Specifically about the original

We’ve included some quotes for some of the questions, but this episode went DEEP into Jay’s thoughts about the 1999 original and the 2020 remake. There’s a tonne of stuff in the episode

which you can download or play above

that we couldn’t include in these show notes. so definitely give the episode a listen.

Questions About The Three-Make

These questions are about the 2020 remake, simply titled “Resident Evil 3” .

What About The Three-make?

Before they could question Jay on the original, Squidge wanted to know his thoughts on 2020’s remake of Resident Evil 3:

Jay's Avatar Jay

So here’s the thing, right:

I knew going in that it wouldn’t be the same kind of experience as the Resident Evil 2 remake, which was totally fine. Because in the very short 20 years between the Resident Evil 2 and Resident Evil 2 remake, the technological advances - and I’m a developer, so I’m kind of part of that, a very small part of those technological advances were astounding.

…

I had played the second remake, and when it came around to playing remake for the third one - the “Three-make” I guess - I knew it was not going to be the same going in because the original was not the same going in. But I kind of enjoyed it.

…

But I thought it was great. I fully understand and appreciate why a lot of people had experienced the Resident Evil 2 remake, went to the Resident Evil 3 remake and went, “wait, this isn’t my Resident Evil. #notMyResidentEvil.”

But I felt like a lot of those folks had come up through the more action orientated Resident Evil games, and Resident Evil 2 remake isn’t very action orientated. It’s more horror and survival horror. But there are elements of the action stuff in there. Whereas I feel like, and I might be way off the mark here, but I feel like the Resident Evil 3 and Resident Evil 3 remake have always been more action than survival horror. So there was this pivot to pure survival horror with lots of action and then a pivot again for the remake back to action. But I feel like if they’d have gone the same way they did with Resident Evil 2 remake, it have done Resident Evil 3 make badly.

Because it’s a remake of the third game, which was made by the folks who weren’t such big fans of survival horror. They wanted an action game rather than a survival horror game because, as far as I’m aware, it was built using some of the tech that went on to make Devil May Cry.

…

But yes, that’s my overall thoughts. It was a very good effort. The problem is you’re comparing what I think is a masterpiece of Resident Evil Two to what I think is a masterpiece of Resident Evil Three. It’s like comparing the Mona Lisa to, like, Bohemian Rhapsody. They’re both amazing, but in different ways, right?

Both Nomad and Squidge agreed that the Resident Evil 3 remake was a fantastic effort and a pretty faithful remake of the original Resident Evil 3. It was just a shame that folks came to the remakes expecting different things.

Squidge also mentions the fantastic book “Itchy, Tasty - A Unofficial History of Resident Evil” by Alex Aniel

someone who was on the show, back in episode 79: Itchy, Tasty with Alex Aniel

which you should all go read, because it really is that good.

Moar Three Make, But What Parts?

Nomad wanted to talk a little more about the remake:

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

What parts about the remake really stood out to you as memorable? Was it a specific set piece? Was it a game mechanic? What really etched itself into your mind?

It’s all about getting to see the city, for Jay. Even if it meant that you saw less of it.

Jay's Avatar Jay

So what I really liked, and I saw a lot of discourse about this at the time that it came out, was and there’s a lot of people saying that progressively, as you play through the Resident Evil games, you play less and less of Raccoon City… But a lot of people were saying, “there’s not much of Raccoon City to run around in.” And I totally get that. It’s a little disappointing. But I think, like you’d said, Squidge, they took parts out of it for a reason. And most of that reason is that parts were put into [the original] Resident Evil 3 to extend it. It was kind of artificially extended. “How do we make this a little bit longer?”

…

I never really played much of the original, but I felt like a lot of the original was, “there’s not much of Raccoon City to actually explore.” There’s a couple of labyrinthian streets that are connected and a couple of places you have to get to, which is really well replicated in the remake. And I really liked that, running around in [and] taking that outside of the police department area of Raccoon City and expanding it so there’s loads more of it. I really liked that.

And as I mentioned earlier on about the scene where the doughnut or whatever is running down the stairs after you rolling down the stairs after you. I kind of disliked that in the remake. But not because of the remake itself, because of the controller I was using. I really did like running around outside of in the in the external environments in the outside of Raccoon City, just because there’s so much of that there that we never got to see in Resident Evil 2. And do I dare bring up [Operation Raccoon City]? The non canon one where you’ve got to chase down Leon and Claire and all that kind of stuff.

There’s a lot of outside environments for that, too, but that was more action orientated, so you weren’t really supposed to focus on the things you’re running past. Whereas I feel like with all of the polish and the effort that was put into Resident Evil 3 remake, there was loads more for you to see.

And both Jay and Nomad agreed that they used the “I’ll give you stars!” line way too early in the game, and that the dodge mechanic in the remake seemed a little too easy to do - considering that it back very easy to do it accidentally sometimes…

Death By Hunters!

Suqidge’s next question was deceptively simple:

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

Did you always die in the hospital to the Hunters, as Carlos, like I bloody did in the Three-make?

As with all good questions, it contains multiple layers and prompted a long and detailed conversation about the Hunters, the Hospital, and the controls.

Jay's Avatar Jay

Absolutely.

Aside from the doughnut or whatever it is chasing me down the stairs, the Hospital was the most infuriating part for me; because I constantly got lost, and it seemed like the Hunters would just spawn out of nowhere, in front of me, in the middle of that leap that they do where they take out your head and kill you in one hit.

Like, I’d go around the corner and there it is. It’s already mid-air and at a point where it’s too close for me to actually hit the button to bring up the weapon and fire it and blow it out of the sky and stuff like that.

So I kept having to… what I would do was I would walk backwards around the corner so that I could then leg it back down the corridor. I’d just come down and I would do that just regardless of whether I heard anything. Just sort of like moonwalk my way around the corner and then run back to the corridor I was in and spin round and wait for a few seconds, and if an enemy appeared, blast it into the next world and then go to the next corner and walk my way around it.

That was my “winning” strategy. Winning, in inverted commas.

The Story and Game Length

Nomad’s next question was on something which was very controversial when the remake first came out:

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

So having played the Resident Evil 3 remake, how did you like the story overall? Did you like how it played out? And when you think about the total runtime of the Resident Evil Three remake, was it the right amount of time? Did it seem too short? Was it too long? What are your thoughts?

Squidge's Avatar Squidge

Did you always die in the hospital to the Hunters, as Carlos, like I bloody did in the Three-make?

As with all good questions, it contains multiple layers and prompted a long and detailed conversation about the Hunters, the Hospital, and the controls.

Jay's Avatar Jay

So I’m one of these who’s like, I’m very happy for the story to play out in the time it takes for the story to play out, right?

As much as I love the standard JRPG story, which is a" bunch of teenagers use the power of friendship to kill God," what I don’t like about JRPGs is that there seems to be a lot of grind and that’s kind of accepted. You will grind to level up. There’ll be loads of side quests for you to do, lots of character development. Because the difference is that things with JRPGs, they’re story driven. You’re going to learn the mechanic of, “this enemy is an ice type, so I will use a fire attack against it.” And once you’ve learned those mechanics, the game is essentially going to play itself because you’re playing it on autopilot. You’re not playing a JRPG for the battle mechanic, you’re playing a JRPG to go on a quest for a big overarching story.

…

But when it comes down to a game with the story, I prefer when the writers of the story know, “we have to get to this beat and this bit of the story is over. Let’s move to the next bit.”

And so, again, it goes back to what I know of the original because we’ll come back to it, I’m sure, but I didn’t get very far into the original because there isn’t a great deal of story to do. There’s a lot of backtracking and puzzle solving and blasting the enemies and stuff like that. But when you actually boil the story down, it’s, “we need to get out the city. How do we get out the city? This is how we do it. Oh, we’ve done it now that’s the story over, because our goal was to get out the city.”

So for the length of time that the game lasts, I felt like it was perfect for the story that they were trying to tell. The last thing you want is to be sitting or watching a movie, for instance, and, you know, it’s an hour, there’s 90 minutes of story, but the movie is 2 hours long because, “oh, well, we’ll have the character go into this room and have a conversation that’s got nothing to do with the story.” Maybe they’re doing character bits, but maybe it’s not a character driven story.

…

And I genuinely felt like the Resident Evil Three-make story, the length of it, was perfect for the type of game it is. It’s an action orientated game. It’s a game where you’re going to get in, you’re going to get all of the endorphins and stuff and the adrenaline rush.

Questions About The Original

These questions were about the 1999 release of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis.

Why You Bo Play It Proper?

Squidge wanted to know just why in the heck Jay hadn’t put more than 10 minutes into the original. Like, seriously dude!

Jay's Avatar Jay

So there’s a couple of different factors involved in this, and I will hand on my heart say that originally it was because it was so different to Resident Evil 2.

Like, you think about Resident Evil 2: when you take control of a character, regardless of whether it’s Leon or Claire. At the beginning of the game, you have almost no supplies. You’re at the site of a crash and an explosion, and you have to get from where you are to the police building through a set of labyrinthine corridors and back alleys and through buildings and stuff with almost nothing.

Now, you fast forward a year, you drop Resident Evil 3 into the PlayStation, you start it up, and depending on which mode you choose, you’ve got a machine gun with [near] infinite ammo… It’s immediately different. And so that difference is one of the reasons I didn’t enjoy playing more than ten minutes of it.

The second bit, which I think is more important to me, but fits perfectly within the aesthetic and the idea behind the game, is: I got lost. I’m like, “where am I supposed to go? I don’t know where I’m supposed to go. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do what’s going on?” And that, to me, didn’t make sense because Jill lives in Raccoon City.

…Okay. So she doesn’t know every single [Racoon City] street ever because she’s not a beat cop, and she doesn’t walk the streets her entire life. But I’d have thought that part of the journey would be, “oh, right. Okay. Now I need to go left, because when I get to 56th and 8th and I turn west, that takes me closer to RPD.” But there’s literally nothing. But then I suppose that fits with the original game.

You see, I’m unjustifying my justifications. Because in the original game, when you first played that, you have no idea where you’re supposed to go. You get told, “go to the dining room.” You come back from the dining room, “go to the other side of the building,” and you’re left to your own devices.

But I will then counter that. Counterpoint with there is a defined loop around the mansion. You can only really deviate once or twice, and once you learn your particular favourite path around the mansion, you’re good to go. Because it is just a loop. I think on the original, there’s like, three or four loops that, if you learn the layout of the loops, you’re good.

…

And I felt like it was the lack of guidance of where to go. At least with Resident Evil 2, there’s clues laying around. You go into the RPD building, and again, you can only go one particular path or maybe one or two particular paths, but there’s lots of files and lots of things strewn about to tell you subtly through the dialogue of the file, “if you go into the next rope, you will get the thing you’re looking for.” You have to read between the lines, but it tells you where to go to get to the next bit.

I did feel like Resident Evil 3 was just like, “good luck. Work it out.” But then again, to counter that counterpoint that makes perfect sense because the world is falling to pieces, and Jill literally doesn’t know where to go because there isn’t a God in the machine, a deus ex machina, whatever, guiding your decisions, telling you, “go over here, go over there, go over there.”

Did You Talk Yourself Out Of Completing It?

Nomad wanted to know whether Jay was ever serious about playing Nemesis back in the day:

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

So, Jay, when you popped in Resident Evil Three and played it for the all of ten minutes that you did when you went into it originally, did you fully intend to see this thing through the end and just talked yourself out of it based on what you said, or were you just testing the waters initially? Where was your mind at when you first played it?

Jay's Avatar Jay

Oh, man. I will say that the original Resident Evil 2 is one of my top games of all time.

The lineage of those first three or four Resident Evil games released in order that they were released in is amazing to me. Those Resident Evil One to Code Veronica, and it kind of slipped off a little bit by the time we got to 4, I’m there for the survival horror.

So going in, I was like, “I’m going to love this. This is brilliant. I’m going to absolutely love this game, and I’m going to play it, and it’s going to be amazing, and I want to see what happens,” because I’d read a little bit about it, but I’m sure that Squidge will elaborate. We certainly didn’t have internet access when around the time that Resident Evil 3 came out, and we only had, like, word of mouth from our friends at school and the occasional video game magazine; because I certainly wasn’t interested in video game journalism at the time.

And that’s not to say that video game journalism doesn’t have its place. It certainly does. At the time, I felt that video game journalism in the specific magazines that Squidge and I used to pick up were essentially just paid adverts because everything got a 7 or 8 out of ten. And if everything’s getting a 7 or 8 out of 10, then 7 doesn’t mean anything. 8 doesn’t mean anything.

…

And so the fever pitch that I was at for Resident Evil 3 was like palpable. People were standing next to me going, “wow, you really are looking forward to Resident Evil 3, aren’t you?” And I haven’t said anything.

And I think the biggest thing that let me down is that the very first time I played it, it was at a friend’s house and it was a pirated copy. And I’m not condoning piracy of any kind when I say this, but what they’d done is they’d somehow gotten a pirated copy, which had the cheats built in. So for those of you who’ve never done it before, back in the day, when you booted up a pirated version of a PlayStation game, it was a crap shoot as to whether you got a menu before the game started, like, before the game. So you could say, “oh, I’ll have infinite life, and infinite ammo, and the enemies can’t grab me,” and stuff like that.

And my very first experience was infinite health, infinite ammo, the enemies can’t grab you because Jill would auto dodge. And I’m like, “well, what’s the point of this?” Because I didn’t know that he’d put this trainer on. He was just like, “hey, here’s the controller.” And I go and I’m like, “this is too easy. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. But also, there’s no lose condition. What’s going on?” But, yeah, I originally wanted to see it through, but then obviously that experience was like, “well, maybe I don’t want to see it through. Maybe they’ve dropped the ball. Maybe Resident Evil 2 is too tough, and they made Resident Evil 3 too easy.”

And it even got to a point where I stepped that far away from Resident Evil 3 that I was way more excited about Resident Evil 2 being made for the N64.

So, yeah, I wanted to originally sit through it, but just the situation of how I first encountered it after those first ten minutes, I was like, “maybe not. I’ll wait for Squidge to finish it, and he can tell me what it’s like.”

If you haven’t read it, the post-mortem on Angel Studios’ work on porting the entirety of Resident Evil 2 to the N64 is a fantastic read, by the way.

We intentionally left the short section round out of the show notes; you’ll have to listen to the episode to hear that section, as it’s quite detailed. Squidge and Nomad go low input and list a bunch of things about Resident Evil 3: Nemesis that Jay would love. Things like knowledge of the memes, the intrinsic rewards of the puzzles, the randomisation, that ending and the satisfaction it provides, and the ammo creation mechanic.

The Nest Lab Hideout

During their planning sessions for this episode, Nomad came up with a new segment specifically for this episode called: The Nest Lab Hideout

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

So now we’re going to have fun by playing a game, which is a remixed version of a game that you two played with me on a previous episode. This game is called The Nest Lab Hideout, which is the resident evil version of the Thunderplane Games.

Okay, so here’s how it works: now, you, in your quick thinking, have managed to secure a hideout in the Umbrella Nest, the research facility below Raccoon City. You should be safe there until you can steal a ride from the emergency tram at the bottom platform as the city goes kaput.

My question for you, Jay, is what food items would you take with you? And what two weapons, one one handed and the other two handed, will you take with you in the nest to keep the scientists at bay, as well as the zombies off of you until it is time to make your way to the Tram of Freedom ©.

But to get Jay’s answers, you’ll need to listen to the episode. It’ll be worth it, for sure - if only to hear Jay’s justifications for the food items he takes with him, and why Nomad was driven to say this:

Nomad's Avatar Nomad

If a spam version of myself is what determines whether I live or die, I will happily construct that and throw that at my foes.

Late Breaking Update

After we recorded this episode, and in the lead up to it’s release, Jay actually went and live streamed this game over on our Twitch channel

which you can follow here

Anyway, in the time between recording and releasing, the streams of Jay’s first escape from Raccoon City have been uploaded to our YouTube channel. We’ll embed them below for your viewing pleasure.

First up: pre-clock tower

And secondly: clock tower and end-game

Music

Links to the music used in the podcast can be found below. Definitely check them out, because they're amazing tracks by awesome musicians.

All copyrighted material contained within this podcast is the property of their respective rights owners. Please see the above list for copyright details pertaining to music used.

Games Covered

We mentioned 33 games in this podcast. In the following order, those games where: