Resident Evil - Code: Veronica was officially the fourth game in the Resident Evil survival horror series, but was the first to be unnumbered in its title, leading to another release being titled Resident Evil 4. It was the first of the series to be developed primarily for the Dreamcast console, instead of a Sony one. The gamer plays the character Claire Redfield, searching for her brother Chris, in a facility owned by the evil Umbrella Corporation, while trying to escape an outbreak of the T-virus that turns people into zombies. This episode was categorised as a 15 by the British Board of Film Classification. Resident Evil has spawned numerous video games, books, films and toys and has sold over 45 million units.

As with all Dreamcast game releases, it was produced on a GD-ROM disc, the only home system to use this format, which doubled the capacity of a normal CD-ROM by packing the pits on the disc more closely together. At the time of the Dreamcast's release (1998), implementing DVD-ROM technology was considered too costly. This may have resulted in the Dreamcast's downfall, compared to the DVD capabilities of Sony's Playstation 2, released merely a year later.