Resident Evil

Capcom's Resident Evil practically invented survival horror as a mainstream genre when the original landed in 1996, and the series has never stopped mutating. The fixed-camera dread of the early games (Code: Veronica, Nemesis, the Outbreak experiments) gave way to the action-heavy reinvention of Resident Evil 4, then circled back to first-person claustrophobia with Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Village.

What makes this one a genuine cross-media beast is how completely it colonized other formats. The Paul W.S. Anderson live-action films built their own continuity, Capcom's own CG features (Degeneration, Damnation, Vendetta, Death Island) kept the game canon alive on screen, and Netflix added both animated and live-action series. The ground-up remakes of 2, 3 and 4 prove the source material still has teeth, and Requiem keeps the cycle going. Few franchises this old still feel this restless.

The Resident Evil franchise spans 2 series, 40 games, 11 films, 1 music in the CrossBinge catalog.