26 Years Ago Today, Capcom Introduced An All-Time Great Video Game Villain

Resident Evil 3: Nemesis came out 26 years ago today and introduced one of gaming’s best-ever monsters. Resident Evil has been scaring gamers for decades, with countless undead creatures and mutated monsters stalking after players. The best scares in the game have stemmed from these creations, but it’s rare that the action-survival game doesn’t give players the chance to fight back.

However, that central idea was at the heart of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. As players fight their way through Raccoon City, they find themselves constantly chased by an unstoppable creature known only as the Nemesis. Effectively the Jason Vorhees of the franchise, Nemesis was only really central to one game but remains one of the most iconic threats in the series, even over a quarter century since it debuted.

How Nemesis Came Into Resident Evil

Coming to North America on November 11, 1999, Resident Evil 3: Nemesis introduced gamers to the titular monster — who remains one of the most memorable and threatening antagonists in the franchise and horror gaming as a whole. Set concurrently alongside the events of Resident Evil 2, Nemesis follows Jill Valentine and new character Carlos Oliveira as they try to escape Raccoon City before its imminent destruction.

Initially intended as a more action-packed take on the franchise, the third entry in the series retained its central horror focus by introducing the Nemesis. Producer Shinji Mikami and director Kazuhiro Aoyama were keen to keep the game’s underlying gameplay frightening by establishing a consistent sense of paranoia. Directly inspired by the T-1000 from Terminator 2: Judgement Day and its cold hunt to find and kill John Connor, the creatives expanded on the distinctly hulking Tyrant enemy types from the first Resident Evil.

Given a greater level of intellect than other monsters in the game, the Nemesis was then unleashed by the Umbrella Corporation to hunt down the remaining S.T.A.R.S. members who survived the events of the first game — starting with Jill Valentine. The Nemesis was the key to the third game, retaining the horrifying core of the franchise that was there from the very beginning.

The Simple Beauty Of The Horrifying Nemesis

The Nemesis was a terrific addition to the series that naturally infused the standard gameplay with a terrifying core. No matter how skilled the player is at fighting or running, the Nemesis keeps coming. It can’t be stopped, it can’t be killed, it can’t be reasoned with. No matter what the player does, the Nemesis is coming, and it will kill you if it catches you. This was a wonderfully simple way to give Resident Evil 3 an ever-present ticking timer without the need to add extra layers of danger.

Instead, the knowledge that the Nemesis could break through a wall and give chase at any point raised the tension of every scene. It wasn’t just that the monster was haunting Jill, but that it was specifically trying to catch you. Outfitted with a better mind for strategy than most of the enemies’ players encountered, along with some very dangerous weapons, the Nemesis was the worst-case scenario to encounter after just barely escaping a zombie encounter.

The mere presence of the Nemesis meant that every run down a regular hall could turn cinematically terrifying with a moment’s notice. It ensured that, even as the player collected more weapons and proved themselves against bigger threats, the Umbrella Corporation’s creations could overcome anything the player throws at them. It also made the player’s eventual defeat of the creature and escape from Raccoon City all the more rewarding, as the player had finally escaped the most dangerous thing in the franchise. This integration of the narrative and the gameplay, coupled with the Nemesis’s “Frankenstein’s Monster meets the Terminator” design, made it instantly iconic in the franchise.

Nemesis The Icon

The impact of the Nemesis on the Resident Evil franchise is hard to understate. Despite lacking a formal name outside of “Nemesis,” the creature has remained a popular and influential addition to the lore. Despite its destruction, the Nemesis appeared in several subsequent games in the franchise, such as Resident Evil Survivor 2 – Code: Veronica and Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles.

It returned for the Resident Evil 3 modern remake, where it received minor visual redesigns. Nemesis was even featured as a playable character in Resident Evil: Resistance and Resident Evil Re:Verse. It has appeared in several non-Resident Evil games like Under the Skin, Dead by Daylight, and Marvel vs. Capcom, where it became a playable fighter. The Nemesis even made the leap to the cinematic Resident Evil film series, where the character was reimagined as one of the heroes of the first film, who was captured and experimented upon until he was transformed into the Nemesis.

Critics and audiences have routinely cited the creature as one of the best villains in the entire Resident Evil series, a foreboding and gruesome monster with just enough unique elements to stand out from the rest of the franchise’s monsters. Perhaps most tellingly, Nemesis has gone on to help inspire an entire generation of horror games. While he wasn’t the first monster to constantly stalk the player character in a horror game, Nemesis remains one of the most prolific. Entire generations of horror games focused on evading an unstoppable monster seem to take cues from the Nemesis.

Even Lady Dimitrescu, the instantly iconic villain from Resident Evil VII: Village, takes cues directly from the Nemesis stalking mechanic and is deployed to great effect. The Resident Evil 3: Nemesis helped create one of the most iconic horror mechanics in gaming history with the titular monster, and it remains one of the best examples of how scary story ideas can translate into unforgettable game mechanics.