Original: PlayStation · 1998
Two CD-ROMs of up to 700MB each, squeezed onto a single 64MB Nintendo 64 cartridge — with the full-motion video cutscenes intact. It is widely considered the most improbable port ever completed.
Resident Evil 2 shipped on two PlayStation discs, and the reason is straightforward: it is enormous, and most of the bulk is pre-rendered backgrounds and full-motion video. Moving it to the Nintendo 64 meant fitting content that occupied well over a gigabyte into a 64-megabyte cartridge — a compression ratio that most of the industry regarded as simply impossible, and Capcom appears to have agreed until Angel Studios (later Rockstar San Diego) proposed doing it anyway. The team was small: nine full-time staff and one part-timer, twelve months, and a budget of roughly $1 million. Their solution was to move the problem from storage to computation. Rather than storing decompressed assets, they wrote an entirely new video codec built specifically for the N64's hardware — cutting resolution, restricting the colour palette, and lowering the frame rate of the FMV, then leaning on the console's comparatively strong real-time processing to decode it on the fly. The cartridge holds far less data; the console does far more work. The result, released on 16 November 1999, is one of very few N64 games with full-motion video cutscenes at all, and it includes enhancements the PlayStation version lacks. It impressed Capcom and, reportedly, Nintendo.
The original release, spread across two CD-ROMs — one per scenario.
Over 1GB of content compressed onto a single 64MB cartridge by Angel Studios, using a bespoke video codec. Retains the FMV cutscenes and adds enhancements.
Higher-resolution output, benefiting from the console's greater power and disc capacity.
Higher resolutions available; the most straightforward conversion of the lot.
A direct port of the existing game rather than a remake, unlike the first game's GameCube treatment.