Itchy, Tasty: An Unofficial History of Resident Evil

Alex Aniel’s comprehensive and detailed examination of the first ten years of Resident Evil is a worthy read. As a longtime fan of the series, I appreciate the extensive and illuminating look into the development of the franchise’s classic era. Gaining insight into the mindsets of the series’ creators has only enhanced my love of the games.To anyone who has grown up with these titles - or to those who simply desire a closer examination of the pitfalls, perils, and triumphs behind video game development - I highly recommend this book.

If you are like me, a latecomer to the Resident Evil franchise (I just started playing the main series last year during the COVID shutdowns), this is an invaluable overview of the first decade of Resident Evil. I will try to avoid spoilers here, but I will say that there is detailed information about Capcom's development of a "prequel" game for the Famicom that directly motivated the original Playstation release. Names, dates, successes, failures, re-imaginings before REmake even hit the drawing board (e.g., "Resident Evil 3: Nemesis" was supposed to be "Resident Evil 1.9", and as another example, the game now called "Resident Evil 4" was intended to be "Resident Evil 3") are all here for the RE enthusiast. Even the spinoff games are included. The book begins with the prehistory and Capcom's beginnings and ends somewhere around 2005/2006. I highly recommend this book if you want a detailed account from someone I believe to be a credible source, based on outside knowledge I gained before reading this book.

As unfortunate as this is to say, I believe most except for the very least informed should pass on this book.Most of the information contained within is a synopsis of how the games work/are played (which will be obvious to anyone with even an iota of playtime in any of the classic releases), trivia that could be found easily through Google searches or YouTube viewing, and tiny snippits of interesting quotes and thoughts from those who worked on the games.The typeface is very large and compressed into the pages (of a relatively cheap-feeling paper stock and binding), giving the impression that the scant material is being stretched to its limits, and would have served better as a long web article.At the asking price (nearly 30 dollars US) only fans will be buying this unofficial book, and they will not be getting almost anything new or unique from it if they have been fans for any length of time.As someone who both bought this book and has been viewing & playing RE games since the first released on Playstation, I was deeply disappointed with this book, and would not generally recommend it.

I love video games and this tells a good story of one of my favorites!!

I've been gaming since the early 80's and the RE franchise is one of my all-time favorites so this book was an easy sell for me. The real meat here is the content from the developers themselves. It's fun to read their thought processes behind the development and the challenges they faced. I just wish it was presented by a writer with a little more subtlety, skill, and restraint. The book generally feels more like a blog post than proper non-fiction and the subjective nature of the writing eventually had me skipping entire paragraphs. Still, if you're a fan of RE and old-school gaming in general it's worth a read.

If you're a fan of Resident Evil in any capacity and have a love for the history of, and creation of, video games in any form: this book is for you.It is very clear that Alex Aniel has such a love and respect for the franchise and that this book was a work of fandom and passion. For fans, by a fan.

A good read but I wish it would've gone past part 4 and talked about the rest of the series, especially parts 7/8.

If you're a RE fan and want to know the whole history, this is the right book for you!! Very good ready. Definitely recommend it! :)

The book follows a commitment to cover the development of every Resident Evil game for the first decade of the series' history, and it's hurt by that. Some games get great coverage with fresh insight via interviews from key members of their development. Others get dry, passionless descriptions that drag on for multiple pages. The value of each section of the book is largely matched with the level of access the writer had to exclusive knowledge. Accepting that, there is a lot of valuable insight into the conditions that lead to the development of the original game, Resident Evil 2's wild and frequently irresponsible development process and the many attempts to create whatever game would eventually be released with the "Resident Evil 4" title. If you have a lot interest in the series, Capcom or 90s Japanese game development in general, there's real appeal to this book. I wouldn't worry too much about skipping the boring parts though.

As a fan of the games since I first got my shoulder chewed off back in '96, I was looking forward to this resume of the Resident Evil games. I wasn't disappointed. Alex's book is an in-depth look at all the games and includes plenty of nuggets of info for even a hard core fan such as myself.It's written in a really relaxed style and includes lots of quotes from original developers, also making it an invaluable resource for a games journalist. Every Resi fan should buy this.

An absolute must have for any fan of the "RESIDENT EVIL" Saga, Some of the things in the book I knew about, others I didn't.A fantastic insight to the behind the scenes creation of these epic games.

Fantastic book. My partner really enjoyed it

Das Buch ist sicherlich eine nette Unterhaltung, vor allem für die, die schon in den Neunzigern dabei waren und die ersten Teile mitbekommen haben. Aber obwohl das Buch 2020 erschienen ist, ist nicht einmal das Remake von Resident Evil 2 erwähnt (obwohl es sich seit 2015 in Entwicklung befand). Kleinere Fehler haben sich zudem ebenso eingeschlichen. Insgesamt leider enttäuschend.