There are numerous remasters and re-releases of old Resident Evil games, including the full reimagining of Resident Evil 2 that was released earlier this year. However, among all of these remakes, remasters, and re-releases, an official Capcom-developed Resident Evil 3: Nemesis is currently absent from that list. As such, fans have taken it upon themselves to make a Resident Evil 3 HD remaster of the GameCube version.
Titled Resident Evil 3 Seamless HD Project, modders have created a completely retextured version of the 20-year-old game. Seen in the video below, the muddy textures you’re accustomed to are replaced with cleaner and sharper models and environments. It’s not as impressive as the aforementioned RE2 remake, but it’s certainly better than any version of RE3 out there.
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According to the FAQ page for the mod, the pack includes, upscaled backgrounds with vectorized masks, restored integrated texts, upscaled 3D model textures, manually edited in-game screens, improved visual effects, and upscaled menu elements and HR portraits. If you’re not quite sure what all of that means, the screenshots scattered throughout the page show clearly what has been improved upon. In fact, right at the top of the page, there are side-by-side comparisons giving you a good idea of what you can expect from the remaster.
How did these modders create such a compelling product? According to the FAQ page, it says, “The RESHDP texture pack solves the seam issue that always comes up when any kind of filtering or upscaling is applied to the game’s mask textures.” Their “solution” was to create a tool that essentially creates new textures from the upscaled background textures. Again, to get a clearer understanding of what’s happening here, screenshots are provided. As shown, it really does make a difference.
Although this fan-modded Resident Evil 3 HD remaster is quite impressive, it has its own set of caveats. One of the smaller issues is that the inventory is not upscaled. The reason being is it’s impossible. As stated in the FAQ, “We solved most problems but for the items displayed in the inventory and the item box, it’s just impossible.”
The more problematic issue is that the pack does not include the required game ISO. That means ripping a GameCube copy is the only legitimate way to play this mod.
If you are interested and have the means to, you can download the pack right now for free. While it doesn’t come with the game ISO, it does come with a custom version of the GameCube emulator, Dolphin, and the HD texture packs. It may not be the most readily available version of the game, but it does show how great a Resident Evil 3 HD remaster would look.
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