A near-complete version of the cancelled Game Boy Color port of Resident Evil has been preserved and shared online.
In 1999, London-based studio HotGen was given the intimidating task of porting the PS1 and Saturn game to Nintendo‘s handheld, somehow turning a 32-bit console game that came on two CDs into an 8-bit handheld game on a 2 MB cartridge.
Despite appearing impossible, HotGen managed an impressive job of downgrading Resident Evil for the Game Boy Color, and the game was actually nearing completion when it was cancelled in mid-2000.
Work-in-progress versions of the “impossible” Game Boy Color of Resident Evil have been doing the rounds online ever since prototype ROMs were shared in 2011, but even the most ‘complete’ of these was in enough of an unfinished state that players couldn’t reach the end.
Now, Games That Weren’t has preserved and shared a build of the game in its most complete state possible – taken at the point it was cancelled – and it’s believed this version may finally be playable from start to finish.
Assistant programmer Pete Frith, who provided the new build, believes this newly shared version is around 98% complete, because he recalls a lot of communication between the development team and QA testers before it was cancelled, implying the project was nearly finished.
As Frith remembers it, the team at HotGen were told the game had been cancelled because the “original creator of Resident Evil” didn’t believe the Game Boy Color was worthy of the game and ordered that it be cancelled. It’s not known whether this refers to the game’s director Shinji Mikami, or producer Tokuro Fujiwara, who originally conceived the idea of remaking his NES survival horror Sweet Home.
Our first big Christmas update is with an amazing recovery of the final build of Resident Evil on Gameboy Color. Hotgen’s impressive conversion that got canned. This is much closer to completion, and seems completable too. Lots to discover!https://t.co/PqnSERyZuP pic.twitter.com/u2sPODb7dS
— Games That Weren’t (@fgasking) December 17, 2025
This ‘final’ build of the game – in that it was the last one made before cancellation – contains content that wasn’t in previously leaked earlier builds, including the Tyrant enemy and the the game’s ending.
Given this, it’s believed that it could be possible to play through the game in its entirety, but Games That Weren’t hasn’t tested this yet. In case it isn’t, the site has also provided hacks to let players skip to the final boss battle with Tyrant, or skip straight to the ending.
Given that the game isn’t 100% complete, there are still some issues. Some cutscenes are unfinished, some sprite colours are wrong and Wesker and Barry have the same sprites, for example. Zombies also drop to their knees when killed instead of falling over, but it’s not known if this was deliberate to satisfy Nintendo, to make it seem less violent.
Reacting to the news that the point-of-cancellation build had been preserved and shared, artist Simon Butler commented: “Good to see my sprites again after all these years. It wasn’t the most fun I’ve had on a project by a long shot, but it was interesting to say the least.”
The Game Boy Color did get a Resident Evil game, but it was made specifically with the handheld in mind. Resident Evil Gaiden was developed by M4 and had Leon exploring an ocean cruiser. The game was played from an overhead perspective, with first-person shooting sections.
