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Resident Evil 3 ‘remastered’ with fan-made HD upgrade

For the original on GameCube

Remasters and remakes of Residents Evil 1 and 2 have come to modern hardware in 2015 and 2019. If you’re hankering for an upgrade for Resident Evil 3 (originally launched for GameCube in 2003; PlayStation in 1999), these fans have a treat for you: RE3SHDP which is shorthand for Resident Evil 3: Seamless HD Project.

First, this is a non-official and totally free fan project. You’ll need a PC and the Dolphin GameCube emulator. The Seamless HD Project is an upscaled, restored and in some cases manually edited remaster that brings old environments, visual effects and game elements into sharper detail. Here’s a gallery of select images, all from the project’s homepage, but the better comparison is the before/after image slider they’ve put atop the page.

Even more impressive is what the project does for the game’s full-motion video, which you can see in the 10-minute video above (and in another image-slider gallery further down the linked page).

You’ll need an .ISO of the game itself, and the methods for obtaining that are easily Google-able. But because Dolphin is involved that means the mod is for the GameCube version, not the PC version.

The creators admit some imperfections, such as mask textures that don’t line up perfectly (not noticeable on CRT displays of the day) and “melting” artifacts. On the whole, for fans who don’t mind doing a little bit of work, it’s a great way to replay a 20-year-old staple.

As for whether an official Resident Evil 3 remaster is coming from Capcom, the only word there came back around February, when producer Yoshiaki Hirabayashi made the obligatory “if fans really want it” comment. Not at all a confirmation, but at least it’s not ruled out on something like technical grounds.

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