Technical Details
All backgrounds are stored in a native PlayStation format that is typically denoted with an extension of *.BS. For these games, all backgrounds for any given room are bundled together and denoted the extension *.BSS. This is not a format of it’s own as it’s just all data pushed together into one continuous chunk of data. Each background image appears to be 64KB in size. Image data does not use all the space so the file is padded to 64KB. The maximum amount of backgrounds per room is suggested to be 16 as the largest *.BSS file seen on the disks are 1,024KB in size. The final and beta version of the games have 125 rooms. The trial has 115 Rooms. The only leaked version of the prototype commonly referred to as Resident Evil 1.5, which may not be covered in this article, has 61 rooms.
Data was ripped directly from the disk and then sorted by stage and room. To avoid extra work, all files were hashed to determine what rooms were different and which are the same. Some rooms are equal between all versions. Some are only different between two. Then others are all different. Some rooms are completely missing between versions.
Any tools I make related to this will be found here. Any tools that I use that I did not make, may be found here.
Only backgrounds that are different will be posted. Each stage will be it’s own page unless it becomes too image heavy. In that case, I may have more than one page for that stage or stages. Yes. I am weird to be doing this but I like taking games apart and find pre-release/prototypes of games interesting to see progress, changes, or cut-content.
*WIP, Images are uploaded in initial converted format (*BMP). Due to how small the resolution is, will be kept as it for now to avoid image compression artifacting. They will be upscaled and clickable later on for better viewing later on. Still looking at either AI or maybe just use preserve detail in photoshop.
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