Had Alone In The Dark never existed, there would have been no Resident Evil – at least, not in the form that we know it. Capcom's survival horror title was originally envisaged as a spiritual successor to the 1989 NES RPG Sweet Home, which was based on the Japanese horror film of the same name. In the end, very little of that game's DNA made it into Resident Evil, save for the mansion setting. Instead, director Shinji Mikami played Alone In The Dark, and was captivated by its expressive fixed-camera viewpoints. If it hadn't been for Mikami playing that game, he told Le Monde in 2014, "Resident Evil would probably have become a first-person shooter"
In addition to those horror-movie-inspired camera angles, Mikami's game apes Infogrames' groundbreaking 1992 title in other ways. Both feature a choice of two protagonists, with scarce ammo and limited inventory space. Arcane puzzles abound. Alone In The Dark even had creatures crashing through windows, long before zombie dogs showed up in Resident Evil.
