Spotted today on the website TrueAcheivements.com, the 55 achievements seem to be for the N64 cult classic goldeneye 007 by Rare. The game was originally released in 1997 by Rare for the Nintendo 64 to stellar acclaim scoring an aggregate score of 9.7. The game was spearheaded by a group of 9 developers in Rare and grossed over $250 million in sales.
Rumors of a remake by Rare date back to the Xbox 360 generation, as an Xbox live arcade initiative, it seems that there was always a roadblock, however, whether it was Nintendo the original publisher or Danjaq the holding company responsible for the stewardship of James Bond as a property in video media was always unclear, but, perhaps there has been a thawing on the rights issue to see a beloved cult classic come back with a triumphant second life.
In February of 2021, VGC reported that builds of the 360 remake had leaked online and become fully playable through software emulation on the PC. Given that the product is out in the wild now even through ill-gotten means, it would give further incentive for Danjaq, Nintendo, and Xbox to capitalize and monetize this work for legitimate console players. Another boon for a release would be the ability to have the online multiplayer portion activated, authenticated, and run through the azure servers.
Indeed, our own Nick Baker had heard rumbling on the game and discussed these on the XboxEra Podcast.
The leaked ROM had a lot of quality-of-life features added to it including an MCC style switcher between the HD graphics and original N64 ones, support for 1080p graphics (and through Xbox backward compatibility potential upscaling to 4K with 60fps) with a list of other reported plans like speed run leader boards and other community integration features.
It’s hard to say whether this will come to any other platforms like the Nintendo Switch but given their recent moves with the Nintendo 64 online expansion pass and Xbox’s friendly nature of sharing some IP with the big red N like Banjo Kazooie and Ori 1+2 we could see this have a multiplatform release over PC, Xbox, and Switch (this is unabashed speculation and hopeful dreams on my part).
For more news as it happens keep checking back with XboxEra.com
