Resident Evil Requiem director says he was "raised by Nintendo," which is why Zelda 2's most annoying enemy inspired an infuriating zombie design 14 years ago

Jill fights off a Scarmiglione in Resident Evil Revelations — (Image credit: Capcom/Resident Evil Wiki)

Resident Evil Requiem is, somehow, coming to Switch 2, and director Koshi Nakanishi is taking the opportunity to show off his Nintendo cred. Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link has a mixed reputation among series fans, but Nakanishi loves it so much that he snuck in a massive reference to it in one of his first major directorial projects on Resident Evil.

"Of course, I played the original Legend of Zelda game, but I really loved the Zelda II: The Adventure of Link game," Nakanishi explained in a Creator's Voice video on the Nintendo YouTube channel. "It's more challenging, but I loved it. Actually, when I was making Resident Evil Revelations, there was an enemy called a Scarmiglione who carried a shield, and if you aimed at them, they would move the shield up and down. The truth is, this enemy was inspired by the armored soldier from Zelda II: The Adventure of Link."

Evolving Survival Horror for a New Era – Resident Evil Requiem – Creator's Voice | Nintendo Switch 2 - YouTube

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Zelda 2 has always been seen as something of a black sheep for the series, since it traded the original's top-down adventuring for side-scrolling dungeons and battle sequences. In hindsight, it's a neat game and a fun experiment with the Zelda format, but it is brutally difficult even by the standards of the NES. The armored soldier enemies Nakanishi referenced stick in my mind as the most annoying bit of the whole thing – they respond very directly to your sword strikes, and it was always a tedious process trying to break through their defences.

Still, it's easy to see how a brutal NES classic might inspire the eventual director of some of the best survival horror games out there. "This is the first time I've said that," Nakanishi added. "I played so much that it's safe to say I was raised by Nintendo." It seems appropriate, then, that Revelations – the 2012 game in which the Zelda 2-inspired Scarmiglione enemies appeared – started life as a 3DS exclusive.

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Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He's been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.

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