Strange monitor text...and a little story (Resident Evil GC)

[Ed Oscuro]

In Laboratory B3 of the GameCube remake of Resident Evil you'll find a working monitor with the Umbrella logo on it. Use this terminal. Before the onscreen keyboard shows up, you'll notice a few text boxes in the background. Here's the text:

A showcase of the best customer work using Softimage tools, our compilation reels are featured during tradeshows, events and product demonstrations. To secure your spot, reels and finished projects may be submitted to Softimage in either Beta SP or Digital Beta format at the following address, and don't forget to include your consent form. Deadline for GDC 2002 submissions is March 10, 2002.

Send your materials to:

Brett Lush
RE: Demo Reels
Softimage Co.
3510, boulevard St-Laurent
Montreal, Quebec
H2X 2V2
CANADA

That's copied from this page at Softimage's XSI Newsletter pages.

What's Umbrella using Softimage for, and why are they preparing for GDC 2002 (it was known as the CGDC until 1999)? What secrets does Softimage have regarding the incident in the Arklay Mountains? Resolved to find out, I snuck onto Softimage's site to see where their offices are located in order to conduct closer surveilance. Turns out all my preparation was for naught, as it turns out Softimage's relationship with the fictional company is managed via Capcom.

There are a number of articles about Capcom's use of Softimage modeling programs, including for Resident Evil 4. First things first, though:

"[url=http://www.softimage.com/community/xsi/mag/cs/volume_2/issue_5/capcom.htm]ESSENCE OF EVIL:[/quote] Capcom Creates A Whole New Level of Fear with Biohazard for GameCube." Cool read with some nice renders from all across the game, even a shot from the modeling program of Jill walking across a grid in the digital void. That's not all, however; there's a few words from "Capcom Animator" Shinji Utsunomiya.

Note that the writer, Michael Abraham, is not Michael Abrams whom you may have heard of from the PC games world. I don't know who this guy is, actually, but his revelation that he didn't know of Biohazard seems less unusual given his recommendation to "load up your joystick" for Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, a game that has shooting sequences and ground vehicles only...but I'm getting off track...

Resident Evil 0. Features more commentary from Mr. Utsunomiya, and probably more renders of Billy Cohen and Rebecca than you can handle. Well, there's fifteen - but they all feature Billy, Rebecca, or both of them.

Now here's the highlight of the bunch. A Resident Evil 4 article! If you've never seen Leon and Ashley with purple hair, here's your chance. It's just the wireframe version, however. Very cool for showing both finished "art renders," ingame scenes, and screencaps taken right from the artist's console of various famous scenes from the game, as they look when being edited. This time we talk with one Yoshiaki Hirabayashi. Of note:

In the past, Capcom used both SOFTIMAGE|XSI and SOFTIMAGE|3D for the development of the Resident Evil franchise, including on Resident Evil for Game Cube. For Resident Evil 4, however, the development environment was migrated to SOFTIMAGE|XSI exclusively for everything from character modeling to animation as well as to the outputting of scene data to actual equipment.

I also found an article about a striking Game Boy Advance commercial I'd never seen before (see the commercial here), "Mappy Park," related to the classic Namco title, and a page of modern games and other random things which includes articles on Sega's Shinobi, Square's FFXI, and Valve's Half-Life 2.

Now, if you ask me...that was one hell of an easter egg!

[joshnickerson]

That's actually pretty cool.

[heybtbm]

Is anyone else lost?

[max 330 mega]

Is anyone else lost?

yea, i understood alot of it , or atleast that its an easter egg in resident evil, but other parts have me scratching my head as well (arklay mountains???)

[Nez]

Arkely mountains is the forest area in RE were the copper when down, watch the intro in remake.

I think thats what its refering to.

[EricRyan34]

That is effin cool! Was kinda lost, but I understood it the 3rd time reading through it!

[Ed Oscuro]

Ah, so that's why it took so long for some replies to show up.

Yes, that's one of the "security computers" you'll find in the B3 level of the Lab (which is pretty far into the game - start of the second disc actually).

Once you find the codes (going a bit further off topic - did you ever notice that "JOHN" and "ADA" both fit on one line for the keyboards, or that the names of the patients on the X-Rays are all alphabetical - AB, CD, EF, GH for their intials), you can unlock the doors.

A spinning 3D map graphic will show up each time, and along the top left and bottom right borders there's more "hidden text." On the top left, it's probably supposed to to say "July 24 is Chimera's birthday," but I honestly couldn't see that - looked more like "Chikara's" or "Chihara's," must be a romanization thing.