It remains one of the most terrifying games of all time. The Evil Within is the pinnacle achievement in Shinji Mikami’s quest to create the perfect horror title. Let’s take a look at the bio of this prolific game designer, director, and producer. Without his farsightedness and commitment, the survival horror genre would not be what it is today.
Ghost stories
Remember that funny meme about a young Stephen King reading a story in front of the class and making all the other kids run away in terror? In the case of Shinji Mikami, that image is not far from the truth. Mikami’s first contact with the horror genre was reading a famous Japanese ghost story titled Yotsuya Kaidan in front of his fellow classmates in elementary school.
The whole scene seems somewhat prophetic – the story he was reciting was the inspiration for many Japanese horror movies, like The Ring, Dark Water, and The Grudge. Shinji Mikami, on the other hand, went on to become one of the most renowned survival horror creators, having developed series like Resident Evil and The Evil Within.
In the business of generating authentic scares among gamers, Japanese producers have always been way ahead of the competition. Let’s remind ourselves that the first survival horror ever created, Sweet Home, was made in Japan in 1989. It was a game adaptation of a film about a group of people stuck in a haunted mansion. Interestingly, even though the movie underperformed in theaters, the game version was popular enough to pave the road for future survival horrors and Shinji Mikami himself.
Zombies and dinosaurs
A spiritual successor of Sweet Home was exactly what Capcom company heads had in mind in the mid-1990s when they approved the Biohazard project. It fell on their designer, Shinji Mikami, to …read more
Source:: GOG – Good Old Games
