Parasite Eve is one of those games that isn't so widely known I feel. The first game was a sort of action RPG affair and the second game played a bit more like a survival horror title with RPG elements. They were both pretty good and while the 3rd game on PSP was a little bit shit its absolutely a series worth checking out.
However what some fans might not know is that Parasite Eve is a bigger series than they might think. This is especially true if you lived in the UK because we never got a PS1 release of the first game which is really weird. Allow me to fill you in on a bit of extra series background that you may have not known about.
The first game was released in 1998 in both Japan and America for the PS1 and that's where you think the series started but you would be quite wrong. Allow me to introduce you to a dude called Hideaki Sena
This guy isn't a game developer of any kind but a pharmacologist. In fact, right now Dr Sena currently gives lectures on microbiology in Sendai, Japan but the other thing he likes to do is write books and the most famous book he wrote was titled Parasite Eve.
I can't give you a plot synopsis because I've not read it but if you head to the wikipedia page for the book there is one there. This book kicked off the series back in 1995 and after the books success Square teamed up with the books publisher and created the first game which is actually a direct sequel to the book. From there we got all the entries that we already know about which are the two PS1 games and the 3rd Birthday for PSP. However, there are two more pieces of Parasite Eve media that you possibly didn't know about
There's a collection of Parasite Eve manga books, the first of which (pictured above) is based on the novel while the ones that followed were based on the games. These were published in 1998 and as far as I know, have never seen an English release. At this point I'm sure you might want to go online to see if there's a fan translation but at time of writing I've not been able to find one. Even the google image search shows a total of 0 images with replaced English text so if you want to read it, it'll have to be in Japanese.
The other thing is a movie, of course based on the book, which I have also not seen but it has a 5.9/10 on IMDB so it can't be THAT bad. It's actually not that hard to get hold of so give it a watch if you get the chance.
The last time we saw some Parasite Eve content was in 2010 with the painfully average 3rd Birthday and since then it's been a little bit forgotten. It would be nice to see some new content for the series but maybe better to let it rest while the majority of the stuff produced for it is still good.
