Capcom had Resident Evil 5 running on the 3DS

Capcom managed to get Resident Evil 5 to run on the Nintendo 3DS while it was developing Resident Evil: The Mercenaries 3D, according to its developers in an Iwata Asks Q&A.

In the interview with Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, the game's developers said that before they built a Resident Evil game for the handheld device they needed to see if the 3DS could handle running a game the size and scope of a Resident Evil title.

"We needed to actually run a game on a Nintendo 3DS system, so we took Resident Evil 5 and ran it on a Nintendo 3DS," said Koshi Nakanishi, the director of Resident Evil: Revelations. "The impact it made was more than we had imagined."

The producer of Resident Evil: Revelations, Masachika Kawata added: "Then we thought, 'We can make this into a product.'"

The developers say that because Resident Evil 5 worked on the 3DS, it paved the way for the studio to make The Mercenaries 3D, which then led to the well-received Revelations.

Resident Evil: Revelations was released on the Nintendo 3DS earlier this year.