I can’t remember the last time I played a game without already knowing a ton about it, but generally, that’s not a huge problem: Controls and ideas carry from game to game. Conventions are strong; genres are sturdy. That was not the case on the day many years ago when I went to the house of a friend who had recently come into ownership of a Sega Saturn. We immediately gravitated toward the most evil-sounding game imaginable—Resident Evil—and proceeded to spend the remainder of the evening figuring out how you even moved in the game. (So, you just rotated? And you held a button to hold a gun? And you had to activate stairs?) A huge part of this was the fact that Resident Evil was inventing a new genre, but, for all the game’s legendary hamminess, it was still a genuinely terrifying experience. And when those dogs came crashing through the window in one of the game’s most famous scenes, I do not need to tell you how goddamn terrified we were. [Clayton Purdom]
