Getting impatient waiting for the eternally rumoured GoldenEye remaster? Well, maybe you need to refocus your attention to Agent64: Spies Never Die, a legally distinct homage to the N64 classic that basically looks like what I remember GoldenEye being like.
Agent64 is the ultimate homage to GoldenEye, Perfect Dark and Timesplitters. Developer D6 has absolutely captured the look and feel of the chunk N64 graphics, but has then gone to the length of applying a fuzzy CRT filter to the screen. There’s also some levels and set pieces that look like they’ve been lifted straight from GoldenEye, though surely not actually copying the game itself, because… lawsuits.
The game will come out in early access later in 2022, releasing with three story missions to start with and with more being added over time in the run up to the full launch. There’s also the promise of a level builder.
There’s also a demo that was released in 2021 still available on the game’s Steam page.
But… what about GoldenEye? Some people were rather excited that the long rumoured (and completely leaked) remaster of the N64 classic would be confirmed and maybe even released during the Xbox & Bethesda Showcase today. It wasn’t. This was largely because achievements for GoldenEye have appeared on Xbox Live tracking sites.
There’s also fresh interest in adapting the James Bond franchise for video games. After the success of the N64 exclusive GoldenEye 007 in 1997, the license passed over to EA until the mid-2000s and the end of the Pierce Brosnan era, whereupon Activision grabbed the license and made a few games in the early Daniel Craig era – their first effort, 007: Quantum of Solace, was perhaps their best. The license went on hiatus after 2012, but it was announced in November 2020 that Hitman developer IO Interactive is working on a wholly original James Bond video game where “players will step into the shoes of the world’s favourite Secret Agent to earn their 00 status in the very first Bond origin story.”
