Resident Evil (1996) featured the dual main-characters Jill Valentine and Chris Redfield and began on the night of July 24, 1998 in the Spencer Mansion when the outbreak was just beginning. Since then there have been 14 canon games released and 13 non-canon games released, with plently of different protagonists.
[1] - North America date; came out eight days earlier in Japan.
[2] - Thats my website's name!:)
Information taken & paraphrased from the Wikipedia page, Capcom's Resident Evil portal and Fandom Wiki page.