Biohazard 1.25

[Enigmatism415]

Alright, I know there isn't much info on this but I thought i would ask for everything the community might have...

I remember reading about a series installment that was to take place between Biohazard 1 and Biohazard 2. It would take place in and around the ruins of the Spencer Mansion and would involve killer plants and plant zombies. Ring a bell? Does anyone have anything on this? Even a magazine article? An interview? Anything to prove that the idea officially existed in the minds of Capcom?

[Ys1]

Biohazard Dash?

[Enigmatism415]

Yeah, that sounds about right!

[Ridley W. Hayes]

There's very little information about DASH really. Survivhor has a section for it here, but it's on French, so here's the translation:

Genki Playstation interview with Yoshiki Okamoto, overseer of development for all Capcom games.

Biohazard Dash was thought of between the development of BH1 and BH2. The starting point of the scenario is that there exists a room underneath the Tyrant’s incubation room. The story of the game unfolds three years after the events of BH1. The characters are different and this time infected plants have attacked the inhabitants of Raccoon City. The victims have changed partially into plants. It is as if everyone is slowly transforming into some plant.

The developers wanted to use the same areas (that were in BH1) but with cracks, spiders’ webs, etc added in order to indicate the flow of the time, as well as some new rooms.

But this would have taken too much time to be developed and the release of BH2 would have been pushed back, so the idea of Biohazard Dash was abandoned.

That's the general idea for the scenario. As far as I know it was planned without the involvement of the original BH staff. There was also a confusion relating BH DASH to the BH port for Sega Saturn that originated from the UK press. On February 17, 1997 Capcom held a conference in Japan to address the current state of development of both BH2 (BH1.5) and the SS port of BH. It was stated that once BH was complete, they came with the idea of DASH which would feature small tweaks of the gameplay along with some changes to the plot, but since it was canned, Capcom wanted to hold onto the ideas and include them in the SS port. BH for the SS was mentioned a few times by the UK press as BH DASH due to this. So, probably the Tick, Golden Tyrant and such were planned for DASH but moved to the port instead, who knows.

There are also a bunch of sketches of unknown areas featured on the Biohazard Archives book that some believe to be somewhat reminiscent to the original idea of DASH.

[yurieu]

only plants?! eheh

im a crazy or there was also a RE with the snapshot feature? on n64 maybe?

[Enigmatism415]

Gee golly, thanks for all that info! I bet if they had went ahead with its production it would have been a terrible game...

[please_REboot]

Just noticed:

Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_Evil_2#Initial_version

apparently also quotes another article:

http://www.psu.com/a006698/The-History-of-Resident-Evil--The-Beginning?page=2

[imacwesker]

I bet if they had went ahead with its production it would have been a terrible game...

Why? The Ivy monster-plant in RE2 is clearly what's left of the spider-monster from RE1.5 and the main idea behind RE Dash.
Here are the 2 backgrounds from "The True Story Behind BH" japanese book. I believe that they come either from Dash, or from unexploited ideas in RE1 that moved to Dash:

http://survivhor.biohazardfrance.net/RE1/BETA01/DECORS/20/index.html

http://survivhor.biohazardfrance.net/RE1/BETA01/DECORS/21/index.html

Also, the part where Okamoto speaks about Dash comes from a Famitsu magazine interview, where Okamoto was talking about RE1 and RE2. The part about Dash was only one paragraph long, and there was no visuals provided with this part of the interview. Doughboy, who did the translation, told me that the way the text was written, it sounded almost like Capcom developers just talked about the concept of Dash, but they never spend any time on its production . So, except maybe for these 2 artworks above and some concept art of Ivy (http://survivhor.biohazardfrance.net.../23/index.html and following), there are no official artworks for Dash.

[Ridley W. Hayes]

^ Most likely. They did say they had a lot of ideas they could not implement after finishing BH, and they wanted to include them on a future game. For example the Forest with the Scissor Tails on Outbreak's Flashback scenario is the recycled idea of the Forest of BH:


BH Sketch.


Flashback scenario.

Also, Wesker, do you happen to know what magazine issue was that or have scans of it at hand?

[Ridley W. Hayes]

EDIT: Crap, sorry, double-post. Can someone delete this one?

[imacwesker]

@Ridley: Good point.
My bad, it isn't a Famitsu interview but a Genki Playstation's one. I got read of 99% of my scans but you can still read the cover: Vol 7, released October 1995

http://survivhor.biohazardfrance.net/RE_DASH/images/index_07.jpg

[Rombie]

There was discussion over at PU about the training facility coming up in early notes from something, I forget what exactly but that was from early 1997, so I figure it may also have been part of a possible Dash plan that got moved to RE Zero when that started being planned in late 1997. It's all a guess though.

[Ridley W. Hayes]

@Wesker: That's unfortunate to hear. I don't want to sound like an ass correcting people, but I think it's Dengeki (電撃) PlayStation instead of Genki (元気) PlayStation. I can't tell for sure what year it is from since it's such a small image, but I think it's most likely to be from 1996, it'd be funny that the interview included questions about BH2 even before finishing BH.

@Rombie: I remember the discussion. The notes came from new translations of the leftovers of the Trevor files found on the BH Trial disc, I think, or one of the BH protos for that matter.

[Enigmatism415]

I was under the impression that REmake incorporated most of the original Biohazard ideas that didn't make it onto the first version (due to lack of space, power, and time). Biohazard Dash, on the other hand, sounds just like the Flashback scenario of Outbreak File#2; as Ridley alluded to, this particular Outbreak scenario borrowed a substantial amount of concepts from the Dash idea.

[Biohazard 1995]

I think it's Dengeki (電撃) PlayStation instead of Genki (元気) PlayStation. I can't tell for sure what year it is from since it's such a small image, but I think it's most likely to be from 1996, it'd be funny that the interview included questions about BH2 even before finishing BH.

(Dengeki) 電撃PlayStation [Vol.07] October 1995