I never played this series, so in order to correct this I was thinking of picking up the original game first. Since I own a Wii and not a Playstation, I was wondering if the Gamecube port of the game was up to par.

I'd be picking up a gamecube controller / memory card for the Wii pretty soon just for this game and the others in the series. It seems that it's hard to get an original Gamecube controller, so I might have to go with one of the clones, feel free to suggest one if you know about those :)

All I can say to you is that it's really easy to get used gamecube controllers.

As for the games themselves... Never played them.

I would just play RE4 and be done with it. The older games had a much harder control system. The developers did this on purpose too.

Get RE0, Resident Evil, and Resident Evil 4. They're all well worth it.

Then, if you like those, look into 2, Nemesis, and Code Veronica. These other three are still awesome, but contain considerably less polish.

Playing REmake (or 0/2/3/CV) will give you a bit of a hint on whether you'll like the other games or not because they share the same control scheme. RE4 is in a league of its own in that respect.

Buy the game, and enjoy it. It's very different from RE4, but it's easily one of the best horror games ever. You will feel fear when you face those monsters, and accomplishment when you solve those puzzles. It's a great game with some of last gen's best graphics.

Definitely get the REmake. Imo, it is the best looking GC game, and it is one of the best RE games.

I wish they'd make a new RE game with the controls of RE4, but the style and atmosphere of 0-3.

RE2 being a straight port means it's bad right? I'd love to play it again with better graphics, is it any good?

The Remake is the superior version as other's have stated.

I'll be the contrarian here and say that if you never played an RE game before RE4, don't ever play the early games.

Much to my chagrin, Capcom stuck with a shit control system long after games like Silent Hill had updated the genre to make it where the player was pissed at the game instead of the faulty mechanics.

Don't get me wrong, I loved RE back in the day but RE4 was waaaaaaayyyy overdue when it released. I tried to play Zero on the GC and returned it three days later because I don't tolerate developer laziness through a shit aiming and control system. In this age, that's not fun, that's just crap. Unfortunately, the RE series took too long to get to that point but at least they redeemed themselves with one of the greatest games of last generation, RE4 (quite possibly my favorite game of the sixth generation).