GoldenEye returns

 I found his weakness

Gaming history holds a great many nexus points wherein pervasive ideas have sprung. Little nodes in the web of gaming that set the standard of what some new system or idea could be, thus dictating how every game since will be made. It's a consequence of the nature of creative industries, in that ideas are generally shared built upon throughout the years. (Something that Warner Bros. Interactive seems intent on quenching with their latest copyright, but I've already delved into that whole situation previously) As such we have a number of 'progenitor' games that we can point to as instant classics because they, alongside other advances, pioneered a style of gameplay that's now commonplace. Shenmue, for example, bought us the tradition of day and night cycles and NPC schedules, Wolfenstein 3D bought us our first 3D shooter environment, Alien: Resurrection defined the now universal control scheme of first person shooters. (However that last game is admittedly no where near as popular as the other examples.) And more to the point of this blog, GoldenEye 007 popularised competitive PVP and is just an all-round beloved game.

Bought to us in 1997 to remind us all that no matter how far back we look, they'll always be some rare examples of good movie tie-in games, (Although as the movie was 2 years earlier, I suppose you could say that the 'tie in' title is debatable.) Goldeneye has been long considered one of Rare's greatest games. It presented a comprehensive and fun campaign, characterised one of the most popular movie heroes of all time and, as I mentioned earlier, pretty much wrote the model for multiplayer games in the years to come. But let me not drag credit away from where it's due, much of this game really did change the way other titles would be made outside of mere multiplayer. Specifically I find that to be true in the level design which, through a process that one design themselves called 'clumsy', focused on being interesting first and functional second. I'd say this not only helped inspire some other beloved FPS' like the widely overlooked Timesplitters franchise, but perhaps even contributed to modern level design standards. So why is that we're only hearing about a potential remaster for the game now?

Of course it must be noted, there was an actual remake eventually made for GoldenEye, but that game came with the incredibly odd caveat that Peirce Brosnan's face was replaced with Daniel Craig's. That alongside several story changes, reworked levels and- okay it was more of a retread of the idea of making a GoldenEye game rather than a remaster of the classic N64 title. A proper remaster was however, in the works for a time, which just makes sense considering the fact that the game had actually already inspired a sequel from within Rare. Only, that sequel couldn't legally feature James Bond or his stories because Rare didn't own them, and so was born Joanna Dark and the Perfect Dark games. (Good luck on that AAA sequel, Microsoft, hope it doesn't turn into too much of a predictable disaster) Coming back to remaster the old classic for the Xbox Live arcade seemed like the perfect move in the late 2000's now that Rare was owned by Microsoft, with the only outlying factor being that the original was sort of a Nintendo property.

As such, development on the Remaster apparently went through before Nintendo has been told of the deal, and if you're foreseeing disaster then you've a sharper eye for such things than the Microsoft heads who neglected to let the developers know this. To be fair, it was assumed that Nintendo wouldn't have a problem with this for whatever reason, which in hindsight sounds a little naïve knowing how straight draconian Nintendo can be with their old games. Development was halted right at the finish line when negotiations started to get this done, but from what I heard some leaks of the project caused Nintendo to go nuts and pull the plug on the whole thing. Honestly, I can't imagine why this would be the case, given that the game was so obviously close to being done that this leak couldn't have been too consequential, (Leading me to believe there may have been other factors involved and Nintendo merely scapegoated the leak as a handy Casus Belli) but I guess those are the sorts of fine details that are doomed never to be known outside of Nintendo HQ.

But then, how do we know all this? And more specifically, how do I know that the game is in such a polished state to be nearly sellable? Well, that would be because as recently as this year someone posted footage of the game in action to prove it's existence. And then, to put a cherry on top of the cake, another soul leaked the ROM file of the game onto the Internet for anyone who travels in those sorts of circles. (Don't mind me whilst I fire up Retroarch... I'm kidding, anyone who might be reading this with legal power behind them. I would never condone a legally grey action like that.) From the accounts of those that have played it, however, we know it to be a mostly complete touch up remaster of the classic that retains the charm of the classic that so many grew up with. (Not me though. That was way before my time.)

Visually the remaster does a great job of retaining the exact visual style of the original with significant resolution improvements and detailing. Specifically, one might note how 007 actually appears to have facial features in the remaster, and if you squint your eyes and do a handstand it almost looks like Brosnan's mug too. Experts and nostalgics have praised the game as being 'the best remaster you will never play', and I even heard some talk that small servers have been sourced to actually play the multiplayer once more. (Not sure if anything has come of that. Multiplayer games are so oversaturated nowdays anyway) Unfortunately I've heard no confirmation about whether or not this remaster would feature the rumoured 'All Bonds mode' which the original allegedly scrapped for licencing reasons. So I can only assume it's missing yet again. (Shame, I'd love to see who'd win in a brawl against Connery and Moore. As, I assume, would Alan Partridge) Although I hear Lazenby was never considered for the mode so I guess it would have disappointed anyway. (Bet they would have forgot David Niven too.)

It seems such a unexpected, yet curiously timely, development for these games to come out now, as we do live in the age of the remake/remaster. Pretty much every year we hear about another popular game franchise getting a touch up to some varying degree that it can honestly be pretty hard to spot when a new game in your favourite series has just been announced at first glance. Nier Replicant is getting a remaster, Mass Effect 1-3 are getting remasters, the old God of Wars are getting remasters, it only makes since that some of the old classics get the good treatment too. It's only a shame that the nature of the game makes for a proper remaster that goes the whole hog from ever likely hitting our consoles. Especially since the Bond licence has since moved on. This ROM file of dubious legality is likely the best we're ever going to get.

Although if there's one thing this does get me thinking about, it's how many other games have been cancelled at such an advanced state that someone, somewhere has a practically complete version of it sitting on a hardrive. I mean by all accounts this remaster is something of an outlier, even the developers themselves remarked on how easy the project was to fix up, but there's got to be some at least 50% done game out there which suffered the same premature fate. As a lover of gaming curio's, I'd love to see a few more of them float into the public space in the same manner that this and 'StarCraft: Ghost' did, because even if we can't play them I find their history to be just fascinating.