Some cool 1.5 exclusive screenshots (**As seen on TV!**)

[Darkness]

Blame all the asshats, whiners, purists and beggars.

[Guest]

Man, there are no works.

[Gemini]

I'm more in favor of something like this;

And so Elza became the manliest character in game, even manlier than John and Marvin combined. Twenty years later, Roy and Leon accept that fact with a huge grin on their faces:

[Zombie_X]

I think all the complainers drove them into hiding. That or it's crunch time for the demo!

[Gemini]

I still see BZork rather active on YouTube. He even posted a "least wanted feature" sort of poll a few hours ago.

[RMandel]

Since it's gotten slow around here, perhaps now's the time to ask this question.

I'm researching the past history of RE15, as well as the effort that's been made to find it over the past 16 years. I've found a lot of data (not surprisingly, the Internet is a big place); however, there's a major gap from 1999 to 2003. This would be in the earliest days of Bioflames - the original version (Geocities?) - and as you know, all of the stuff that was on their boards back then was lost. I've found bits and pieces of it here and there, but there's still some things I'd like to know about that happened back then. Things like the story of White Umbrella - the early days of Bioflames, The Right Game (TRG), REhorror (?), and a lot of the old RE boards involved in the RE15 hunt that are now dead and gone. The early claimers, RE15 news and rumors that might have missed the mainstream or got lost with the old Bioflames posts from back then. Things like that.

Also, don't you new guys feel left out of that question, either. I just got a kick out of reading Eteponge's story of his personal brush with an RE15 claimer back in 2000-ish. Tales like that you might have experienced are welcome, too.

I'm writing all of this up in a big RE15 history FAQ for your eventual enjoyment, once it's done. If you like, I can post part of it to stir the memories of the old hands and educate those newer to the hunt (like me).

You can PM me on this with whatever you might like to share if you'd rather not post in Aleff's thread. If you go that route, anything you want to keep confidential stays confidential.

Thanks.

[Carnivol]

Things like the story of White Umbrella - the early days of Bioflames, The Right Game (TRG), REhorror (?), and a lot of the old RE boards involved in the RE15 hunt that are now dead and gone.

I think Bioflames had a board reset at some point at the end of your time frame, iirc.
White Umbrella was always fronted by Scream (who's still around), the staff list was quite huge (heh, remember me and Darkbeat joined up in like 2001/2002 or something, doing research on 1.5, as we were quite heavily interested in the PS1 scene at the time and basically just wanted to find "anothere game to kill time with") - Members like Project_Omega and Nemesis556 (James) can also share stories of the days of olde, I guess - In short, I'd say I feel Project Umbrella is more or less what the whole White Umbrella "Ultimate Resident Evil Site" project was sort of intended to be. Just that the lack of simple solutions like Wikis and wordpress made the initial database just a huge download archive and the later forum incarnations with attachments/galleries a personal playground for weird fan art. THIA kinda, for a while, acted as the resting place for large portions of the White Umbrella community/staff. Probably lots of drama from the past that could be shared/told about that place, but nothing that really matters now. Maybe good for a few laughs over beers, though

TRG was ... I never had any proper contact with staff there, but Colvin was in touch with one of the owners for quite a while + at least one of them used to post around here, White Umbrella and so forth, iirc (Matt/Ozon?). Colvin's probably the best guy to ask about TRG stuff. Think he even has full backups/mirrors of some versions of the site.

REHorror is what's now RELY ON HORROR (or whatever). The site has a bit of history and the former owner, before selling it, had rather huge fueds with Dot50Cal - mainly over the different approaches to running the site. THIA remained independent and staff funded (and whilst we often pushed it in terms of content that could serve us C&Ds, we always maintained a very good and healthy relationship with Capcom from start to Dot50Cal's discovery of WoW), whilst Dama's REHorror went full force on ad revenue and profiteering, tabloid headlines, "exclusives" and so forth. Anything for "clicks/views", basically. Don't recall them ever participating in any "hunts" though. I don't mean the start any wars now, or reopen old wounds, but REHorror was always sort of a GameFAQs-ish community in many ways. They're also the reason why we often refer to insane fans as "mutants".

BioHaze (run by Yama and, I guess, CVXFreak) and REFan (Rombie could fill you in there) are sites from the days of olde too.

[Greko]

I think Bioflames had a board reset at some point at the end of your time frame, iirc.
White Umbrella was always fronted by Scream (who's still around), the staff list was quite huge (heh, remember me and Darkbeat joined up in like 2001/2002 or something, doing research on 1.5, as we were quite heavily interested in the PS1 scene at the time and basically just wanted to find "anothere game to kill time with") - Members like Project_Omega and Nemesis556 (James) can also share stories of the days of olde, I guess - In short, I'd say I feel Project Umbrella is more or less what the whole White Umbrella "Ultimate Resident Evil Site" project was sort of intended to be. Just that the lack of simple solutions like Wikis and wordpress made the initial database just a huge download archive and the later forum incarnations with attachments/galleries a personal playground for weird fan art. THIA kinda, for a while, acted as the resting place for large portions of the White Umbrella community/staff. Probably lots of drama from the past that could be shared/told about that place, but nothing that really matters now. Maybe good for a few laughs over beers, though

TRG was ... I never had any proper contact with staff there, but Colvin was in touch with one of the owners for quite a while + at least one of them used to post around here, White Umbrella and so forth, iirc (Matt/Ozon?). Colvin's probably the best guy to ask about TRG stuff. Think he even has full backups/mirrors of some versions of the site.

REHorror is what's now RELY ON HORROR (or whatever). The site has a bit of history and the former owner, before selling it, had rather huge fueds with Dot50Cal - mainly over the different approaches to running the site. THIA remained independent and staff funded (and whilst we often pushed it in terms of content that could serve us C&Ds, we always maintained a very good and healthy relationship with Capcom from start to Dot50Cal's discovery of WoW), whilst Dama's REHorror went full force on ad revenue and profiteering, tabloid headlines, "exclusives" and so forth. Anything for "clicks/views", basically. Don't recall them ever participating in any "hunts" though. I don't mean the start any wars now, or reopen old wounds, but REHorror was always sort of a GameFAQs-ish community in many ways. They're also the reason why we often refer to insane fans as "mutants".

BioHaze (run by Yama and, I guess, CVXFreak) and REFan (Rombie could fill you in there) are sites from the days of olde too.

I would say "the good old days" but they were just as drama filled back then as these days...

[RMandel]

Thanks, Carny. That's a lot. Now I'll have more data to throw at the Wayback Machine.

For those who were wondering, here's a "small" sample of what I'm up to with this ....

-----------

6 September 1998

- Google Groups user Jolan Martinez is the first RE fan on record to start an
Internet petition for the release of RE15.

PLEASE HELP US GET RESIDENT EVIL 1.5 RELEASED! I am sending this post to
please ask for your help. As most of you know Capcom Did not release the
first version they created of RESIDENT EVIL 2, but started again on a new
version. This unreleased version is affectionatly known as RE 1.5. This is
a totally different Resident evil game. There are a number of us trying to
gain enough names and Emails to send to Capcom, so that they realise that
releasing RE 1.5 would be good for both us and them. If you would like to
help us get RE 1.5 released , please email me at the email address below.
You will have your name displayed on the web site below in a special
section in the next few weeks. Your email address will be seen by no-one
except Capcom , and will definatly NOT be given to any mailing companies.
Please help, as we realy need the support. Thanks again for taking the time
to read this post.

1 October 1998

- The following information was retrieved from the archives of the Legends World
Forums. It refers to events that took place back in late 1997 with regards to
RE15 ....

There is a rumor in Japan that a playable version of RE 1.5 will be coming
out and it won't come out in the U.S., so then import it.

sometime in late 1998 or early 1999

- Evilude, the person in charge of the French language version of the Biohazard
Extreme website, finds a copy of RE2 Beta 2 for sale "on an Italian beach with
a lot of other videogames (pirate versions)." He sends a copy to imacwesker,
who is in charge of the SuvivHor website. This is the origin of the copy of
RE2 Beta 2 that was originally distributed to a select group of RE fans on the
former White Umbrella file server ... and which has also been mistaken for RE15
ever since, especially on the eDonkey/eMule file sharing network.

14 September 1998

- RE1 Dual Shock Edition is released, along with the Biohazard Complete video
collection. Among its many treasures are four lengthy clips from the final 80%
build of RE15.

29 September 1998

- Resident Evil 2 is released in Europe.

================================================== ===

end of 1998

- The copy of the 40% build of RE15 that is in the hands of Capcom USA disappears
from the public eye. It will not be seen again, save for the stills and video
clips recorded from it (and the occasional lucky fan or collector), for the next
decade or so.

================================================== ===

... more later ...

[Scream]

Good point there Carnivol.. The lack of stable tools like WordPress and even forum software caused many headaches for lots of sites (*shivers thinking about cgi-bin*).

Most of the WU staff members were interested in side projects, beta content and just posting on the forum rather than the game's canon, so we didn't really get very far on that PU-type site, it was just me and Solidus IIRC.. we had an early wiki-looking database of characters and content on every version of every RE (such as RE DC german etc.). Using "PHP Nuke" as a CMS made things hell

Seeing what PU is now, I really do not envy their job It's a hell of a lot of work to cover a game's canon. Though it so obviously had to be done sometime, so I wasn't surprised at all to see it.

Basically the idea with WU was we wanted a community less focused on the game's canon and more on the general spirit/atmosphere of RE. Our model of allowing people to join, contribute to various RE projects, and be recognised for it meant we grew quickly and also attracted interesting members/contributors. Bioflames (and Biohazard France) were some of the sites we used to check out a lot and discuss, so its not a surprise some of us went the Bioflames >> THIA route. THIA has the right mix of hardcoreness/casualness. It's in the spirit of RE, rather than RE absolute! I still enjoy seeing what people are discussing about RE these days, I think its the same for quite a few of the old webmasters like imacwesker etc who sometimes pops up from time to time.

[Carnivol]

Kinda miss the data archive that was gathered, though. Think I might have a few DVD-Rs somewhere with a partial backup of scans and ISOs of everything. Archiving regional versions and stuff was pretty neat.

[Scream]

Indeed - my RE folder is pathetic now I only have what I can play (a handful of betas and alphas). I think before HDD space and bandwidth was more of a premium. It wouldn't be uncommon to burn a beta, delete the beta file, and rerip it later for archiving lol. I think a lot of people including myself just got tired of "having to" keep every single RE cutscene and character art on their HDDs. Now I just redownload old game stuff if I find I need it. You generally can find most stuff online these days with a little effort. It's not perfect, especially when you had things in a much higher resolution/bitrate before.

[imacwesker]

sometime in late 1998 or early 1999

- Evilude, the person in charge of the French language version of the Biohazard
Extreme website, finds a copy of RE2 Beta 2 for sale "on an Italian beach with
a lot of other videogames (pirate versions)." He sends a copy to imacwesker,
who is in charge of the SuvivHor website. This is the origin of the copy of
RE2 Beta 2 that was originally distributed to a select group of RE fans on the
former White Umbrella file server ... and which has also been mistaken for RE15
ever since, especially on the eDonkey/eMule file sharing network.

A few things here:
- I am "imacwesker" only on THIA. I am "Wesker" everywhere else, in the old RE community (from 1997 to 2007)
- There are 2 stories, at least, about the "origins" of the RE2 beta vers2.
A) Tyrant, webmaster of Evil Online, released screenshots made with the emulator Bleem of the beta in 1997-1998. His source for the beta is unknown, but he is the first RE webmaster to show them.
B) Evilude contacted me in 1998-1999 about a copy of the beta. He bought it on an Italian beach with a lot of other pirated games. According to him, there was a guy selling them openly on the beach. He gave me this beta and I fall in love with it. I loved to check all the changes between the beta and the retail game. It is because of this beta that I changed the focus of my website from "survival-horror games" to "Resident Evil betas only".
I didn't know that Evilude gave it also to the guys from WU.

REHorror is what's now RELY ON HORROR (or whatever). The site has a bit of history and the former owner, before selling it, had rather huge fueds with Dot50Cal

I had my share of problems with Dama and his henchman Trent. Trent can read French and took most of my exclusive texts, and presented them as his/REHs'. I went into many arguments with him and Dama on this subject and you can find a few of them in Bioflames forums.
It is because of him (and a few other people but mostly Trent) that I made my layout into Photoshop, preventing English-speaking people to copy paste the French texts into Google Translator and use the translations on their own websites.

[Jesus Romero]

bad news forum friends canceled the team to play the reason is that various team member abandonaro game development.
and because of that Mr.birkir Bzork and prepares an iso game with which it already has developed and is soon to release the game. sorry for the bad news.

[Darkness]

bad news forum friends canceled the team to play the reason is that various team member abandonaro game development.
and because of that Mr.birkir Bzork and prepares an iso game with which it already has developed and is soon to release the game. sorry for the bad news.

You best be fucking trolling