Set in the fictional Arklay mountain region in the Midwest, players control Chris Redfield and Jill Valentine, members of the elite task force S.T.A.R.S., who must escape a mansion infested with zombies and other monsters.

In Resident Evil, the player chooses to play as either Chris Redfield or Jill Valentine as they explore the Spencer Mansion to find their missing compatriots and secure an escape route.

Each character has a supporting partner that joins them during the story – field medic Rebecca Chambers for Chris, weapons specialist Barry Burton for Jill.

When contact with them is lost, Alpha Team is sent out to investigate – consisting of Chris Redfield, Jill Valentine, Barry Burton, Joseph Frost, Brad Vickers, and captain Albert Wesker.

When Wesker mysteriously vanishes (alongside Jill in Chris’ story), the player is left to explore the mansion alone and attempt to find their allies.

As they explore, they find that Bravo Team has been massacred – Forest Speyer was pecked to death by infected crows and has zombified, while Richard Aiken dies from venom poisoning after being bitten by Yawn, a giant mutated snake, and captain Enrico Marini is shot dead by a mysterious sniper just after revealing that there is a mole in S.T.A.R.S..

The player eventually comes to discover that the mansion was a research facility of Umbrella, a pharmaceutical corporation that was secretly producing Bio Organic Weapons (B.O.W.s) to sell on the black market.

The cannibalistic murders were caused by an outbreak of the “Tyrant Virus” (t-Virus for short), a virulent agent capable of turning any species it infects into flesh-eating zombies.

[13] Fujiwara said the "basic premise was that I'd be able to do the things that I wasn't able to include" in Sweet Home, "mainly on the graphics front", and that he was "confident that horror games could become a genre in themselves."

[15] Resident Evil was based on Sweet Home's gameplay system, adopting many elements from the game, including the limited item inventory management,[15] the mansion setting, the puzzles, the emphasis on survival, the door loading screen,[16][17] the use of scattered notes and diary entries as storytelling mechanics, multiple endings depending on how many characters survive, backtracking to previous locations in order to solve puzzles later on, the use of death animations,[18] individual character items such as a lockpick or lighter,[19] restoring health through items scattered across the mansion, the intricate layout of the mansion,[20] and the brutally horrific imagery.

[12] Part of the inspiration for limited ammunition came from the MSX port of the game Alcazar: The Forgotten Fortress, according to scenario writer Kenichi Iwao.

Iwao wanted to take more elements from the game, such as adding more ways to attack zombies with items such as mines and traps, but was unable to due to schedule constraints.

A later demo made for the 1995 V Jump Festival presentation in Japan featured real-time weapon changes, with the co-op mode removed and rudimentary character models and textures.

[35] The live action full-motion video sequences were filmed in Japan with a cast of American actors; Charlie Kraslavsky (Chris), Inez Jesionowski (Jill), Greg Smith (Barry), Linda (Rebecca), Eric Pirius (Albert), and Jason Durkee (Joseph).

[22][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] All Japanese releases contain English voice acting with Japanese captions and text, recorded at a recording studio in Tokyo and provided by Scott McCulloch (Chris, Narrator), Lisa Faye (Jill), Barry Gjerde (Barry), Lynn Harris (Rebecca, Triggering System), Sergio Alarcon (Brad, Joseph), Clay Alarcon (Richard, Zombie Forest Speyer, Zombies), Dean Harrington (Enrico, additional voices), Pablo Kuntz (Albert, Radio Transmissions), and Ward E. Sexton (Title and Character Names Announcer).

Harris was also the voice director for the game, basing her direction on making it camp, loosely on Dawn of the Dead, The Blob and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

[50] However, lead programmer Yasuhiro Anpo later said that, due to all of the development staff being Japanese, they were unaware of the "poor localization" that apparently "hindered the realism and immersion of the title" for the international release, which was one of the reasons for the re-dub in the 2002 remake.

[15] Bio Hazard was renamed for the North American and European markets after Chris Kramer, the director of communications at Capcom, pointed out that it would be impossible to trademark it in the United States.

Director's Cut was produced to compensate for the highly publicized delay of the sequel, Resident Evil 2, and was originally bundled with a playable pre-release demo of that game.

The main addition to Director's Cut is an "arranged" version of the game that changes the location of nearly every vital item in the mansion, as well as the enemy placement.

The main characters, as well as Rebecca, are given a new wardrobe and the player's handgun is replaced by an improved model where any shot fired has a random chance of decapitating a zombie, killing it instantly.

The original version of the game is included as well,[66] along with a new "beginner" mode where the enemies are easier to kill and the amount of ammunition that can be found by the player is doubled.

Rather than remove the individual line, Capcom Japan decided to save time and simply swap in the cinematics from the U.S. release of the original Resident Evil.

The soundtrack was generally deemed inferior to the original, with the ambient theme for the mansion's basement considered to be one of the worst video game compositions of all time.

Genesis was developed from the ground up as a mobile phone title and designed to work more effectively with the limited control scheme and screen size.

[93] GamePro described the storyline and cinematics as "mostly laughable", but felt the gameplay's "gripping pace" and the heavy challenge of both the combat and the puzzles make the game effectively terrifying.

[113] Computer Gaming World gave a more mixed review for the Windows version, explaining that they "tried to hate it with its graphic violence, rampant sexism, poor voice acting and use of every horror cliché, however...it's actually fun.

"[88] GamePro, which gave it identical scores to the PlayStation version (a 4.0 out of 5 for control, and a perfect 5.0 for graphics, sound, and funfactor), summarized that "It would have been nice to have it on the Saturn sooner, but this is as close to a sure thing as you could ask for.

"[130] Sega Saturn Magazine said that "the intense feeling of terror heightened by the chilling music and eerie silences ... sets Resident Evil apart from any other adventure game you may care to mention.

[159] Shaun of the Dead (2004) star and co-writer Simon Pegg also credits the original Resident Evil game with starting the zombie revival in popular culture.