Resident Evil

Shinji Mikami's 1996 PlayStation game named a genre — 'survival horror' — and built it out of a haunted mansion, fixed camera angles, tank controls and a scarcity of ammunition that turned every corridor into a decision. The original NTSC-U release shipped in a long-box, a fragile cardboard format with a short print window, and a sealed long-box copy is now one of the most valuable objects on the entire PlayStation platform.

The 1998 sequel doubled everything — two scenarios, two protagonists, Raccoon City overrun — and is, for most of the fanbase, the high point of the fixed-camera era. The PS1 first print is the connoisseur's anchor, a cornerstone of any survival-horror shelf before the Dual Shock and Dreamcast ports muddy the waters.

The 1999 PS1 entry introduced the Nemesis — a scripted hunter that chased you across Raccoon City and rewrote what a survival-horror antagonist could be. The PlayStation first print is the original; the GameCube and Dreamcast ports that followed are the common copies collectors mistake for it.

The 2005 GameCube game threw out the fixed camera and built the over-the-shoulder template that every third-person action game has used since. It is the most influential entry in the series and a landmark of its generation; a sealed GameCube first print — before the PS2, Wii and HD ports — is the version that matters.

The 2000 game was the first fully-3D Resident Evil — real-time environments instead of pre-rendered backdrops — and a Dreamcast showcase before the platform's collapse. A sealed Dreamcast first print is a tidy, contained grail and the only mainline entry that belongs to Sega's last console.