Jill Valentine was poised to be Capcom’s biggest character find of the 1990’s and beyond, so what happened?

Back in the halcyon days of the 1990’s, when the biggest problems we had to worry about were presidential infidelity, who killed Laura Palmer, and what new color of M&M to vote into the bag, Capcom introduced a new video game series that took the entire world by storm: Biohazard. Or as we ended up calling it in the States “Resident Evil” (which made a whole lot more sense in the first game since it took place in a mansion, but that’s neither here nor there.)

I’m sure you’ve read, or are reading, enough about that broader topic here on EZIYODA this month as we celebrate all things T-viral but I want to talk about the opposite side of this coin, which is perhaps Capcom’s biggest fumble of the decade in my opinion.

With the first Resident Evil release came the introduction of Jill Valentine — a rare female main character in video games at the time, who was slightly less wooden than the characters who surrounded her, had an incredible fashion sense, and was the perfect catalyst for the survival horror gameplay most of us were being introduced to for the first time. She moved like molasses, had a bad habit of believing whatever she was told, and huffed herbs like a college soccer team but she was the master of unlocking and apparently held the lockpick to all our hearts.

You could also play as Chris Redfield if you wanted.

Anyway, Jill was suddenly everywhere in the liminal space that was video game fandom at the time, from the pages of Electronic Gaming Monthly, to top ten lists online of the sexiest polygonal babes in your screen, to merchandising like shirts, hats, and backpacks that we could never hope to get in the States but could only drool over in tiny grainy pictures. There was something about this beret-wearing baddy that captured the hearts and minds of the video gamer of the era, and it wasn’t just limited to adolescent boys with crushes!

Resident Evil was considered one of those huge breakthrough games of the time that appealed to both boys and girls equally and that was thanks almost entirely to not playing some roided up maniac with a fully square head but instead a cool lady like Jill. I gotta imagine she’d never juiced, right? Right.

Perhaps the biggest marker of her success as a character and the proof her design had become iconic quickly, Jill became a playable character in Capcom’s flagship brawler series of the era: Marvel vs. Capcom. Now there are some people waggling their sticky finger at me on the other side of the computer monitor and I hear exactly what they’re saying: “Capcom added all kinds of ridiculous and obscure characters to Marvel vs. Capcom 2 alongside Jill! That doesn’t mean anything!”

And to that I say: You know there’s a difference between adding a big time rep for Capcom’s brand like a Resident Evil representative and adding someone like SonSon just cause it’s funny. C’maaahhhhn now. Don’t play me like that.

Resident Evil 2 dropped, and showcased that the RE series seemed to be more of an anthology of stories starring different people who were tangentially related in one way or another. A big departure from the way most games of the era worked! It felt kinda upscale and fancy at the time, like a movie series or something. We didn’t know any better, no one had cast Milla Jovovich into this thing yet.

It seemed like Jill’s place as the face of the franchise was still solidly locked into place however, as she was still getting billboarded all over the place by Capcom. It was easy coasting from here on out for her to become one of the most iconic faces of the company alongside Ryu from Streets and whoever they were pretending was more important than Mega Man to the company that week.

And then Resident Evil 3: Nemesis came out and along with it a brand new design for Jill. Now, contemporary opinions of this new costume, which consisted of a tube top, miniskirt, and tall boots, were quite positive. Mostly because you could see like 25% titty, but also because it was considered pretty fashionable at the time.

But I was a little bummed, even then. This character didn’t seem like Jill! She seemed a lot more like the protagonist of Parasite Eve got a dye job (a joke that exactly ten readers of this column might get, and you’re welcome.) I wasn’t exactly ALONE in my disapproval of the design switch-up, but it wasn’t considered much of a problem then. I think we just weren’t aware as a society how bad it was gonna get. Looking back? It’s not really too bad.

We even got Resident Evil: Remake, a game that still to this day might be the best remake ever made with an HD upgrade to the PS1 stylings of Ms. Valentine that blew minds back then and honestly still looks immaculate today. Something about those pre-rendered backgrounds really has a ton of staying power! If you’ve ever wondered about the pre-hand washing to heal days of RE this is probably the absolute best place to start, even if laying hands on a GameCube might be a dicey ordeal in a back alley in this day and age.

But after that it seemed like Jill Valentine really took a backseat to endless spin-off protagonists and series heartthrob, hunky special agent Leon S. Kennedy. RE had a certified magazine covergirl on their hands; an iconic character that could’ve stood the test of time alongside other prized characters of the era still trucking along to success today — like Dante from Devil May Cry, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and of course, Gex for some reason. Capcom had really dropped the ball even by this point, in my opinion, but like I may have opined earlier: it was gonna get a lot worse.

Resident Evil 5 revealed that the reason we hadn’t heard from our capable and horror-experience heroine for so long was because series jerkwad and sunglasses enthusiast Albert Wesker had in fact kidnapped her and brainwashed her into an assassin and personal assistant. Thanks to the big evil tube he kept her in to turn her evil with zombie waves she was now blonde and dressed in a catsuit. This is a fact about the storyline that people will get mad at you about if you don’t point out: Wesker didn’t make her blonde on purpose, he’s not some kind of weird sex pervert. It was an accident!

Now you may be looking at the above photo of our vacant-eyed fallen hero and noticing that she bares a startling resemblance to Zero Suit Samus from the Metroid series but probably most famously from Super Smash Bros. Now, I personally don’t think this is a coincidence and think it has a lot more to do with the popularity of ZSS across the internet — and especially in fanart and fan projects — during the production time of RE5 but I’m not here to put on my tinfoil hat and stock my bunker with beans, I’m here to whine about a character developing and changing over time in a way I personally don’t like.

Anyway, spoiler alert but she survives the events of RE5 and at least does some redemption stuff and fighting back against control at the end, but then she went on to not appear in another main RE game ever again. Except of course for the extremely dope Resident Evil 3 remake from 2020 that kicked off this entire article in my mind to begin with.

So we’re left wondering, what was the big idea over at Capcom headquarters? Well, if you’ve been a longtime fan of Capcom made games and franchises you know that the answer to that question isn’t ever going to be satisfactorily answered. A whole lot of mismanagement, bad ideas to appeal to audiences who weren’t having it, and questionable choices for entrants to future fighting game crossovers. (Bad Box Art Mega Man?! What are we trying to accomplish anymore?) We’re just left lamenting what could have been and missing an era when Resident Evil had one of the most popular protagonists in the entirety of video gaming.

At least you can still play as Chris Redfield if you want to?