Resident Evil, known as Biohazard (バイオハザード) in Japan, is a successful franchise of survival-horror video games developed by Capcom and created by Shinji Mikami. Having sold over 30 million copies as of Feb-2006, , the series is credited with popularizing the survival horror game genre. This franchise is heavily influenced by George A. Romero's Dead movies, as well as the Alone in the Dark series of PC horror games which are credited with inventing the genre.
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The success of this franchise has spawned several video games, a comic book series, novelizations, two (soon to be three) Hollywood action films, and action figures. While the games mostly adhere to a consistent storyline, there are enough deviations from the game plot within the films and novels to be considered alternate story lines.
The original Resident Evil centers around a series of cannibalistic homicides that occur in the Arklay Mountains region, situated north of the fictional Raccoon City in 1998. The local police's Special Tactics and Rescue Squad are commissioned to investigate the sources of these murders. When Bravo Team, the initial team deployed to the area, fails to report back, Alpha Team goes on a rescue mission to find them. They are led to a seemingly abandoned mansion, where the team encounters zombies and other creatures, leading them to discover the remains of most of their comrades in the house. In the end, it is revealed that the house is actually a front for a top-secret laboratory owned by the international Umbrella Corporation, and that the creatures are the result of experiments with a genetically modified virus called the T-Virus. Resident Evil 0 explores the cause of the viral outbreak and Bravo Team's ordeal prior to the events of the Mansion incident.