Why Resident Evil Doesn’t Make You Find Ink Ribbons Anymore

The Resident Evil series once required the player to use Ink Ribbon items on typewriters in order to save the game. These were phased out over time, though they are still referenced in later Resident Evil games.

The first Resident Evil was set entirely within the Spencer Mansion, which had several old typewriters scattered around the building. The only way the player could save the game was by using Ink Ribbon items on these typewriters, which meant only a finite number of saves. Each Ink Ribbon took up an entire inventory slot, but it was easy to dump them into Storage Boxes, as these were almost always placed in the same room as a typewriter. The series continued to use Ink Ribbons until Resident Evil 4, when they were dropped as usable items. The player still needed to visit typewriters to save, but they didn’t need to use Ink Ribbons and could save as often as they’d like.

The Ink Ribbons and typewriters made sense when used in the framework of an old mansion, but it felt like the series only kept them around as a throwback to the first game. Ink Ribbons were eventually phased out, except for a brief return in the remake of Resident Evil 2.

Why Resident Evil’s Ink Ribbon Saves Were Cut For Later Games

Ink Ribbons were a frustrating mechanic. The finite save amount was made redundant by the fact that the player was always given more Ink Ribbons than they’d ever need. Ink Ribbons taking up an entire inventory slot also added to the annoying backtracking that plagued the earlier entries in the series. Resident Evil 4 shifted to an action gameplay style, which meant inventory management stopped being an issue, so there was no reason to include Ink Ribbons.

The more important reason why Ink Ribbons were phased out was likely multiplayer. Resident Evil 5 and 6 were co-op games, so it wouldn’t have been feasible to include limited save points. Instead, these games used traditional checkpoint saves. Resident Evil 7 brought back save points, but it used tape recorders instead of typewriters, in order to fit the game’s theme of cassettes and VHS tape recordings.

The Ink Ribbons haven’t totally disappeared from the Resident Evil series. Typewriters were used as save points in the Resident Evil 2 remake’s Hardcore difficulty, complete with their usual, finite uses. They did not appear, however, in the Resident Evil 3 remake, leaving RE2 as the last homage to the earlier days of the Resident Evil series.

About The Author

Scott Baird
(2509 Articles Published)

Scott has been writing for Screen Rant since 2016 and regularly contributes to The Gamer. He has previously written articles and video scripts for websites like Cracked, Dorkly, Topless Robot, and TopTenz.
A graduate of Edge Hill University in the UK, Scott started out as a film student before moving into journalism. It turned out that wasting a childhood playing video games, reading comic books, and watching movies could be used for finding employment, regardless of what any career advisor might tell you. Scott specializes in gaming and has loved the medium since the early ‘90s when his first console was a ZX Spectrum that used to take 40 minutes to load a game from a tape cassette player to a black and white TV set. Scott now writes game reviews for Screen Rant and The Gamer, as well as news reports, opinion pieces, and game guides. He can be contacted on LinkedIn.

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