It looks like the original Resident Evil is headed (back) to PC

The original Resident Evil might be returning to PC - and soon! - if recent signs hold true. An age rating for the 1996 survival-horror classic was recently confirmed by European suitability judges PEGI, hinting at an impending (re-)release for the almost three-decade-old zombie game.

Before you butt in to tell me that Resident Evil 1 is already on PC, it’s time for some clarification! The new PEGI rating spotted by Gematsu refers specifically to a PC port of the very original Resident Evil released on PlayStation in 1996, rather than the later remake released first for GameCube in 2002 before then serving as the basis for the more recent (relatively, anyway) HD remaster from 2015. (If you’re wondering: it’s a PEGI 18, obviously.)

A second point of clarification for those smart-asses still holding up their hands: yes, the original Resident Evil from 1996 has technically already been released on PC before, hitting Japanese computers the year of its release before finding its way to North American and European keyboards-and-mice the following year.

However, that PC version dates from the age of disc drives and CRT monitors - both of which are now dead enough to rise from the grave as shambling techno-corpses themselves - and has never been released digitally through the likes of Steam, Epic Games Store or GOG. So this’ll mark the first time in almost 30 years that the very first, non-remake Resident Evil has been available to play without hunting down a secondhand physical disc or taking, ahem, other routes.

There’s still time to squeeze in one more clarification, don’t you fear. The PEGI rating doesn’t make completely clear if this Resident Evil will be the very original or its expanded Director’s Cut, featuring rearranged item and enemy placements alongside some new costumes, a better gun (which had a random chance to blow zombies’ heads off, like in the remake) and a beginner difficulty mode, which was only ever released for PlayStation in 1997. However, given that the PEGI entry does specify "Resident Evil (1996)" and the Director’s Cut has never escaped PlayStation, it may well be the vanilla original for now.

Intriguingly, PEGI's entry states the release date of the Resident Evil PC port as June 18th - yesterday. That might be a mix-up with the date the rating was approved, or it might mean that a surprise re-release isn’t very far away…