I’m feeling nostalgic. I just saw Resident Evil 2: The Movie on a whim, and it started to bring back memories of my old Cube. While we’re all waiting for Resident Evil 5, let’s look back at the game that launched a genre, or rather the remake of a game that launched a genre. Resident Evil 1 for the Game cube.

Just a few months after the launch of the Game cube, Nintendo still struggled to rid itself of its “kiddy image”, and what better game to pull in the teenage crowd than the premier survival horror series of the previous generation, Resident Evil. Resident Evil 2: The Movie itself can pass for a decent “date movie”, if you like scream fests in the cinema.

Inspired by the Alone in the Dark series, Capcom developed a game that would spawn clones, sequels, and spin-offs rivaling their previous mega-hit Street Fighter. Konami answered with their excellent Silent Hill series, but no other company has since made a survival horror game that could rival Capcom’s original. Nintendo made closed door deals to secure several exclusive installments of the series for their console.

Arguably the best pre-RE4 Resident Evil title, the remake of the first game originally released for Sony’s Playstation was nothing short of remarkable. Photo-realistic pre-rendered backgrounds and highly detailed characters were thrown about effortlessly on screen by Nintendo’s little purple cube.

In-game character models for this game wouldn’t look out of place in some of the more recent Capcom efforts like dead-rising for the Xbox 360. It’s certainly a wonder why most other developers have such problems implementing simple shading techniques on their cube games while Capcom has managed to cram in real time lighting, high resolution pre-rendered backgrounds, real-time reflections and particle effects. Blow a zombie’s head off in close range, and watch the reflections on the water ripple, the effects used in this game were breathtaking.

New to the game where the different defensive items available for each character, for Chris you get grenades to plunge in the zombie’s mouth to blow his skull to pieces, while Jill gets a taser that fries the enemy with electricity when they get too close. If there were any doubts of the power of Nintendo’s console, this game made it all go away.

When Capcom announced that the Resident Evil series were going to be exclusive to Nintendo’s “little system that could” many people were surprised, but few could argue the about the quality of the game at the end. Even with the PS3 and the Xbox 360’s impressive visuals, this game certainly doesn’t look dated. A must play to appreciate history.