Goldeneye 007 revolutionized first-person shooter games on home consoles and many gamers have fond memories of it. So why not bring it back one more time?
According to CNN, Activision is going to be digging up video game history by releasing another version of the James Bond shooter. They plan on debuting a new 007 shooter based on the 16-year-old Pierce Brosnan movie, “GoldenEye,” at a press event later this month.
The official announcement will take place at an appropriate gathering of the geek masses; it will be on July 20 in San Diego at the annual Comic-Con expo. Activision is also planning on showing off new games in the “Spider-Man” and “X-Men” series.
Can you say nerdgasm?
Last month Activision Publishing registered Web domains that suggest the title of the new Bond game might be “GoldenEye 007: Reloaded.”
The next Bond adventure is codenamed Bond 23, and it is on track to be released in theatres on November 9, 2012.
For those unfamiliar with the Bond series, “GoldenEye” was not the highest grossing Bond movie. It’s not the most memorable Bond film either. Despite all of that, the video game version of GoldenEye remains popular with many gamers, even in today’s world of motion activated games.
In the late 90’s the popularity of the game became engrained in national culture. The four player shooter was popular with the college crowd and it was the reason for many after-school meet-ups.
Rare created the cult classic, and Nintendo released it solely for the Nintendo 64 console. Rare also made the super popular “Donkey Kong Country” series and was eventually bought by Microsoft.
Rare and Nintendo’s separation, combined with Activision becoming the exclusive rights holder to develop Bond games, has led to the original “GoldenEye 007” being stuck in limbo. Nintendo and Microsoft have not been able to come to agreement on how the game should be redistributed.
Rare’s “Perfect Dark,” another spy game, was viewed at the unofficial successor to “GoldenEye.” Many “GoldenEye” designers left Rare to form a company called Free Radical Design, which makes the “TimeSplitters” games.
However, the “GoldenEye” name, story and characters have a special place in many gamers’ hearts. To them there is nothing like shooting the innocent scientists in the facility level and watching them wriggle in pain.
To capitalize on this, Activision remade the game and released “007: GoldenEye” for Nintendo’s Wii in November. The developer, Eurocom, removed Brosnan’s likeness for that of Daniel Craig, the current Bond actor.
The Wii is not known for its first-person shooter games, and the “GoldenEye” reboot didn’t do anything to change that. Eurocom has said it was still satisfied with the sales.
Gaming insiders believe that the new “GoldenEye” will be released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, which are the two systems where shooting games have thrived.
