In the 90s for one of the Resident Evil games their was a British poster campaign that featured a bathtub full of blood on a black and white check floor with bloody footprints leading away from it.
This poster was banned however and there's no trace on the internet that it existed apart from a forum thread that leads nowhere.
Would anyone know where to look?
In order to make this a bit more interesting what was everyone's favourite Resi?
My personal choice is the N64 port of the 2nd game. Has all of the wonderful content of the playstation original with less shite controls and some content that helps link other games in the series together and it comes across as a minor miracle getting 2 CDs of content into a 64MB cartridge.
Did the posters run with any games magazines as a freebie or an advert? Resident Evil games were highly publicised and there's probably an outlet for old issues of certain magazines. If you look around the time that RE2 was released (keeping in mind the magazine's country of origin) you may well find a copy.
As for my favourite Resi, 3 had the best extras and minigames, 2 had the best atmosphere and scope, and 1 came out at a time where I was young enough for it to genuinely put the shits up me. That first CGI zombie, man and their awful brown-green jackets.
>>17591 My favourite has to be the racist one, whereby you go around killing spear-chuckers. I almost felt like a colonialist—bringing civility to the dark corners of the world.
2 is probs my fave. Fuck knows whats going on with the story these days. By going FULL GLOBAL SATURATION they've taken most of the horror away. 6 was a fine action game, but an awful Resident Evil.
I think the best in terms of being a survival horror game is the Gamecube remake of the first game. It still looks great, even though it's over a decade old, and it's definitely the scariest in the series. The Crimson Heads are especially scary, and I always feel on edge.
Resi 2 is probably my overall favourite though, even though it's not that scary and seems a lot easier than RE1. I liked the two characters having interweaving stories, the city setting was cool and so was the RCPD building with all its elaborate mechanisms, and the gameplay was just plain fun. And even though most of the game isn't scary, the bit with Mr X in the CCTV was great and it proper shit me up.
RE4 has the most polished gameplay, and it's very good and full of content, but I can't help but dislike it for leading to less good games. 5 was mediocre, but amazingly fun in co-op. 6 was just a bad game that I struggled to enjoy. It looked pretty, but it wasn't fun. Tried to be a full on TPS, but the controls weren't very suited to it, and the enemies took way too many bullets to die that it just felt boring. Revelations was quite fun though, I must say.
Resident Evil 4 gets my vote. It did away with the irritating shit out the previous games, and struck just the right balance of scares and action. I love RE5 but it did swing too far in the direction of gun play.
I bought the Gamecube remake of the first game but having never played much of the original I found it too hard. Apparently this is quite common.
>>17608 That's survival horror for you mate, it is a bit old-school I suppose. Try playing some of the earlier games though if you think RE5's bad, all the games prior to 4 really make a point of being fucking difficult to control. Part of the scariness, innit.
>>17610 I think it's because they used a lot of fixed camera angles that changed quite a bit. Tank controls like in the early Resi games are necessary when the camera changes so much, as it allows you to move relative to the character so it's a constant. If it used proper controls where you move in relation to the camera, every time the camera angle shifted you'd end up running in a direction different to the one you want to run in. I quite like tank controls if I'm honest.
>>17611 >If it used proper controls where you move in relation to the camera, every time the camera angle shifted you'd end up running in a direction different to the one you want to run in.
RE2 on the N64 had an alternative control scheme that was exactly what you're describing and pretty much everyone agreed it was better. But anyway, like I say I think the difficult controls were a fairly deliberate ploy to make the player feel helpless and amp up the tension.
I got into the series with the Resident Evil Remake on Game Cube so that is undoubtedly my favorite. Not so long ago I bought a decent library of the older titles ported to GC. I've yet to play them extensively after finding you have the option to 'power mode' through them with the cheats you'd normally get after completing it. Don't get me wrong, I didn't 'power mode', it just discouraged me.
RE4 purely for the starting village battle. More panic than horror but it was definitely an experience having that first run through the village, fighting as you go building to building before that bloke with the sack on his head gets you.
I'd be happy if 7 opens up on a similar premise with a bloke waking up in central London one day, living a normal morning until he finds his face on the front page of the Daily Star with 'hang the pedo' as the headline. Then some fast paced music kicks in as he has to fight his way across London with various racial stereotypes thrown in like RE6.
>>17614 According to my interpretation of Ebay I could get £30-40 and £20-30 for RE2 and 3 respectively. Not quite the wedge I imagined. The games seems to have kept their value rather than going up in.
Right, so I know the two of you like your Resident Evil games. I bought the Re-Remake on PS4 and it's sort of pissing me off. I played the game when it came out when I was 11 or so and never got very far, the tank controls were horrible and I was too busy playing Quake instead. The controls this time are less irritating, I guess? Not that much of an improvement though.
The dumb black background door openings are starting to really get to me. They take forever and I'm constantly having to walk through them. I really can't believe that that time is needed for loading the next area, not in this day and age and on this platform. It just looks shit and I find it really jarring.
I'm also impressed that saving takes almost as long as I remember on the original. And all this inventory management, ugh.
It gets better, right? There must be a reason so many people love this game despite its flaws.
The loading screens are there to build suspense, because quite often you'll be attacked as soon as the new area loads.
I think it looks like cash grab bollocks, personally, but it's important that you know that it is not a remake of the remake. They've just remastered it for a new gen and kept the old game pretty much exactly the same. Were you expecting RE4 or something?
>>21467 No, I was expecting something that got rid of the shit that was necessary on a Playstation 1 but not necessary on a Playstation 4.
Maybe the loading screens build tension for you, but they do nothing but frustrate me. Each to their own though, I guess.
Anyway, you didn't answer my question. Is the rest of the game a maze of keys and loading screens and inventory management with the odd zombie here or there, or does it change things up a bit towards the end? I could watch a let's play to find out but that'd kind of spoil it.
I didn't imply that they did, I simply stated their intended function.
It's almost the exact same game you would have played on Gamecube 10 years ago. That is what a Remaster is. The same game, but with polish. The word "remaster" and not "remake" should have really given this away for you from the outset.
>>21469 I understand that, and I'm fine with you disagreeing with my complaints. I'm asking what the game is like later on. Is it more of the same or does it go somewhere?
Where would it go differently? It gets harder as you progress, enemy variety increases and they get tougher, puzzles get harder. It's the same game. You'll uncover the story as you go along by discovering notes, etc. There will be the odd boss fight. You'll have to jump through hoops to get a decent weapon and even then, you'll still get killed by a random mob at some point, because it was round a corner you couldn't see and the camera angle was elsewhere.
In the face of all that if you think it sounds meh and If the controls are that much of a ball ache, then maybe the survival horror genre isn't for you.
>>21471 >If the controls are that much of a ball ache
It's been a long time since clunky controls were a defining feature of the genre. RE4 started the change and Dead Space finished it. I can't think of a notable survival horror game with tank controls, or anything close, since.
>Where would it go differently?
It could go to new and different locales. It could add new, terrifying enemies, like RE2 did with lickers (a game I completed years back; I'm also pretty sure I completed at least one of the discs of Code Veronica on the Dreamcast way back in the day when it was newish). I've explored quite a bit of RE1 now and it's seeming like it's going to be essentially based in this one building (a bit like Clock Tower), which is disappointing, but at least I can adjust my expectations accordingly. I'm glad to hear there are at least a few boss encounters. If the harder "puzzles" are anything like the ones so far then fuck it, I'll use a walkthrough, I don't have the patience.
>>21472 Nah, RE1 isn't just based in the mansion. There's quite a lot of it taking place in the grounds, which incorporates a large hunting lodge thing, a water treatment plant, and a cave system. Then there's a significant portion in the Umbrella Research labs. It does add more enemies too. There's giant spiders, Hunters which are hardier licker type things, sharks, wasps, and probably a few more I forgot. And a bunch of interesting bosses.
Unfortunately the fannying about with inventory remains, which can get annoying when there's multiple components to a puzzle behind a locked door etc so you have to make a few trips. Think that sort of busywork remains a major part of RE2, RE3 and RE:CV. Resident Evil Zero (also recently remastered) tries to fix it somewhat by allowing you to drop items and marking them on the map, but it still doesn't completely fix the problem.
I can't think of a notable survival horror since RE4 and Dead Space. Action shooters with jump scares are not the same thing.
I'm not saying tank controls are a feature, if I remember correctly the remaster even had the option to use real analog control; however, the slow pace, inventory management and adventure game style puzzles very much are a feature, and it sounds like those things aren't your cup of tea.
Even by survival horror standards, the first RE was very slow and spartan. Perhaps you'd enjoy 2 more when they get around to remaking that, it had a much better balance of action and exploration in my opinion.
>>21474 Survival horror video games have been dying for a while. The big names turned action shooter with jump scares, like Silent Hill Downpour, Resident Evil 5/6, The Evil Within, Alone In The Dark. Most horror games now are indie walking simulators with jump scares and/or pretentious narration. Survival games are much of a muchness, and personally I hate the genre because having to manage hunger and tiredness while harvesting items and crafting seems like a fucking chore. But The Forest on Steam Early Access looked like a good survival game with horror elements.
Hopefully the success of the REmake and RE0 ports, along with the upcoming RE2 remake, should make survival horror a bit more respected again. And there's been buzz about Kojima collaborating with Del Toro and Norman Reedus to make Silent Hills in all but name and without Konami, so that might be good?
>>21474 SOMA was amazing, though I'm sure it would come under >>21475's umbrella of "indie walking simulators with jump scares and/or pretentious narration".
(I completed and enjoyed RE2 a while back, did mention this in >>21472 - hence my curiosity about the scope of RE1. I don't remember RE2 having so much fucking around with keys and whatnot, not to the same degree.)
>>21473 Appreciate the summary and details, thank you.
The poster you're looking for is mentioned (in text only) in a book called The International Business Environment by Brooks, Wilkinson and Weatherston. The bit you're interested in reads:
"Virgin Interactive Entertainment (Europe) Ltd produced a poster for a Sony computer game 'Resident Evil', showing a bath full of blood. The ASA decided that the advertisement should only be allowed in adult magazines." (p294)
Unfortunately, they don't give a citation for the ASA ruling, and the ASA themselves only keep 5 years of archives on their website (and charge money for any further digging). However, the Internet Wayback Machine has archives of the ASA's website throughout the years, and, after more sleuthing, I found the ruling at https://web.archive.org/web/19971017075622/http://www.asa.org.uk/adj/adj_1051.htm
The downside to the ruling is that Virgin apparently said that this particular campaign was already over, so the possibility of finding it in back issues of adult magazines like Loaded or Maxim sounds slim, but it's still one avenue for you.
I'm also presuming the forum you found is
https://www.idlethumbs.net/forums/topic/2755-banned-resident-evil-promo-poster/ The OP there, twmac, posted a photo of the poster from an MCV article on shock advertising. The photo is displayed as 'not found', and I couldn't find any archived version, but maybe there is one out there somewhere, if you can find a filename (which might be a string of numbers untagged to anything RE related, which would also explain why it doesn't come up on a google search). MCV's online archives
http://www.mcvuk.com/digital-edition/archive/ only go back to 2007, but the article on shock advertising must have been from before July 2005 (twmac's OP date). Getting print back issues is another possibility though, maybe.
twmac's signature mentions that he writes for arcadianrhythms.com, which seems to now be defunct. However, their Twitter, whilst a bot, is still active and links to three other handles, @shanucore @badgercommander and @sw0llengoat.
You could try tweeting them to see if they are or if they know twmac, and see if he at least still has the photo or magazine he got the photo from?
Or, you could try contacting Virgin directly and ask if they have an archived copy of it (I'd be very surprised if they destroyed all copies of it). You never know, if you're complimentary enough about some of their current services, the PR team might send you out a large print (according to the idlethumbs thread, someone there once had a 30 foot tall version). Companies love feedback and do give out small rewards on occasion.
>It's a shame so much stuff gets lost to time even in an era where we can record virtually limitless amounts of data.
It's a credit to the internet today that we assume so much has been archived, and that we assume it's permanent. The internet has come such a long way in such a short period of time, that it's a credit to human evolution that we've been able to cope. Historians will see this as a border between periods of History, but also a culture shock of which we ourselves are unaware. I'm kind of glad I can remember a time when 'rare' really meant something (as opposed to a word in a YouTube video), and there was a sense of accomplishment in having found something you were looking for (by frequenting obscure second hand shops with a wide enough interest to spot the diamond in the rough, or by subscribing to weird underground videotape networks, rather than just looking at the wrong websites).
I only included what I thought was relevant to OP's search, but since you seem interested generally:
* The ASA adjudication is from November 1996, so it is probably tied in to the first Resident Evil game (this may actually help OP and I should have mentioned it)
>>21479 The first one is much better in my opinion. I'd call it a masterpiece, it's got a sense of atmosphere that is so rare in games. It's also scary as shit, but mostly not the "monster coming through the window" shock scare kind of scary (though there is a bit of that), it's audio scary and environment scary, which are much more subtle.
The third starts off ok but goes downhill rapidly; it wants to be Gears of War but ends up being a tiring slog through endless hordes of the same enemies, with terrible Hollywood-wannabe sci-fi cutscenes shoehorned in every once in a while. By the end I was legitimately sad; the first is so good that it was just depressing to watch the series get churned into forgettable pap. There was also a Wii game (which came as a bonus with one of the PS3 games) if you need more Dead Space, it wasn't particularly good as I recall, and a mobile/tablet game that looked incredible at the time but was completely unplayable due to the touchscreen interface.
>>21481 Regret to inform sir that OP is from 2013. I do hope they're still around.
