After eight years of work a gorgeous Resident Evil 4 HD mod is now available for PC players, even outclassing Capcom’s 2014 HD release for PC.

The new Resident Evil 4 HD mod is now available over on the two developers website, a culmination of nearly a decade of work, nearly 13,000 hours and over $15,000 (which they recouped from fan donations).

In an interesting turn of events, the project was never issued a cease and desist from Capcom, and the company even promoted the HD mod project on the official Resident Evil 4 forum on its Steam page. Currently, the mod only works with the Steam release of the game but naturally things could change.

Here’s a look:

Here’s a rundown on the fan project:

Restoring the visuals using the original real-world sources: In preparation for the original game, Capcom gathered texture assets by photographing a variety of real-world locations, primarily throughout Spain and Wales. For this project, Albert has gone to these same locations to gather higher-resolution assets. The result is a visual experience that is as true to the original game as possible, presented in resolutions up to 16 times that of the original game.

Correcting texture mapping and 3D modeling issues: Texture mapping and 3D modeling errors that weren’t noticeable in the original game being played on a CRT television become more apparent when playing in HD resolutions. Examples include objects floating above the surface they should rest on, improperly placed shadow layers, seams appearing where textures are supposed to flow continuously. We are correcting these issues throughout the game.

Enhancing flat objects to true 3D models: Due to limitations of the original hardware, objects like lamps, candle-holders, doors, decorative emblems, etc. were originally created as flat objects. In many instances we are able to revise these objects to be true 3D models, observable from any angle.

Remaining committed to the original visuals: Our intent throughout the project is to remain true to the original visuals and artistic intent. The best kind of feedback we receive is when people say that the game looks like what they imagined it to look like when they first played it 10 years ago. While we are not perfect, we continually refer back to the original texture assets to ensure we do not deviate in a significant manner.

Improving lighting, visual effects, collision inaccuracies, and prerendered cutscenes: Thanks to Son of Persia and the tools he developed, we’ve been able to edit all this kind of stuff and raise this project to a new level of perfectionism. Also, Separate Ways’ prerendered videos and the very few videos in the main campaign have been remastered using all kinds of methods: from automated AI upscaling to complete re-creation.

Capcom has been rumored to be working on an actual remake of Resident Evil 4 with a purported release set for 2022, only to have its development rebooted because it felt too similar to the original. Development was also supposedly switched to another team – which also pushed its release to sometime in 2023.

Resident Evil 4 was originally released for the Nintendo GameCube back in 2005 and since then it has been ported to practically everything including Windows PC (via Steam, Oculus Quest for VR), PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and even smartphones.