Resident Evil (バイオハザード, Baiohazādo, literally "Biohazard") is a horror fiction video game based media franchise created by Shinji Mikami and owned by the video game company Capcom. The franchise focuses around a series of survival horror video games, but has since branched out into comic books, novels and novelizations, sound dramas, a non-canonical series of live-action films and animated sequels to the games, and a variety of associated merchandise, such as action figures. The overarching plot of the series focuses on multiple characters and their roles in recurring outbreaks of zombies and other monsters, initially due to the release of the T-virus, a biological weapon created by the fictional Umbrella Corporation.
The eponymous first game in the series was released in 1996 as a survival horror video game, but the franchise has since grown to encompass other video game genres. The series is a mix of action and horror film-inspired plotlines, exploration and puzzle solving, but from Resident Evil 4 onwards, the main series took a more action-oriented approach with fewer puzzles and greater emphasis on gunplay and weapons upgrading. As of 2014, the video game series has sold 61 million units worldwide. It has become Capcom's biggest ever franchise in terms of sales and marked the start of the "survival horror" genre, which was already influenced by earlier efforts such as Sweet Home (also by Capcom) and the Alone in the Dark series.
