Resident Evil Zero

Resident Evil Zero is a third-person survival horror video game. The gameplay remains largely the same as previous entries in the series. However, unlike controlling one sole character like the previous games, the player controls two protagonists throughout the game. The player may switch between police officer and medic Rebecca Chambers and convicted former Force Reconnaissance Officer Billy Coen.

If they travel together, either one of them can be controlled while the other character is handled by the game's artificial intelligence (AI). The player may also control both simultaneously or split them up to explore areas separately. Each character has unique abilities. Rebecca has a mixing kit which allows her to combine herbs and other chemicals, but she is weak defensively.

On July 23, 1998, a train owned by the pharmaceutical company Umbrella, the Ecliptic Express, comes under attack from a swarm of leeches. As the passengers and crew are attacked, a mysterious young man watches from a hillside. ), is sent to investigate a series of cannibalistic murders in the Arklay Mountains outside of Raccoon City. On the way to the scene, its helicopter has an engine failure and crash-lands in a forest.

Searching the area, officer Rebecca Chambers of Bravo Team comes across the Express, now motionless. She begins to investigate the scene, only to find the passengers and crew transformed into zombies. She is unaware their transformation is a result of exposure to Umbrella's T-virus contained within the leeches. As she explores the train, she teams up with Billy Coen—a former Marine Force Reconnaissance officer, who was to be executed for killing 23 people until the military police van transporting him crashed in the region.

While the original Resident Evil (1996) was still in development, the idea for a prequel came up shortly after the 64DD peripheral for the Nintendo 64 was announced in 1995. Following the 64DD's low sales four years later, Capcom developed Resident Evil Zero as a cartridge-based Nintendo 64 game. Capcom started development on the Nintendo 64 version in mid-1998, one of many Resident Evil games being developed at the time. One of these was Resident Evil – Code: Veronica (2000) which was taking full advantage of the capacities of the GD-ROM format.

The Nintendo 64 cartridge could only store 64MB of data, one tenth that of a traditional CD-ROM. For these reasons, the team approached Resident Evil Zero with different ideas for gameplay and visual design that would function better with less storage space. After the script had been completed in early 1999, the production of a Resident Evil game for Nintendo 64 was revealed to the public by Yoshiki Okamoto, the president of Capcom's screenplay company Flagship.

Resident Evil Zero received generally positive reviews after its initial GameCube release in 2002. The graphics and atmosphere were universally praised, being described as "wonderfully spooky" and "moody" with an "astonishing level of detail". Scott Steinberg of GameSpy noted how the animated backgrounds, such as flickering lights and dripping water, brought the environments to life. Giancarlo Varanini of GameSpot shared these sentiments, and complimented Capcom on how they were able to blend the game's models with pre-rendered backgrounds to create highly detailed visuals.

The sound design was also complimented, with Matt Casamassina of IGN noting that "Capcom uses silence at times, too, to scare, which is brilliant." Varanini described the soundtrack as one "that will keep you in constant fear." Louis Bedigian of GameZone praised the sound effect work, such as thunder, gunshots, and footsteps for building a scary environment. The controls were universally panned as archaic, and the series was criticized for not evolving the control scheme to something more similar to Devil May Cry (2001) or Eternal Darkness (2002).

An unofficial "demake" was created in 2023 by fans. The game is a mod of Resident Evil 2 for the PlayStation, and only features the first section of the game.