Cancelled GoldenEye 007 Remake Appears Online
Why no Mr. Bond, I expect to remake the best shooter of all time. It's been a whopping 23 years since we first dived off the dam for that iconic opening scene, but that hasn't stopped Rare's GoldenEye 007 being remembered as a legend in its own right.
As well as having a spiritual successor in the form of Perfect Dark, we had Eurocom's 2010 remake for the Nintendo Wii. Of course, the story of GoldenEye doesn't end there, and with Microsoft now owning Rare, many have questioned why we've never seen a proper Xbox remaster of the original. Well, we nearly did.
While GoldenEye 007 was originally born on the Nintendo 64, there were once plans to bring it to the Xbox as part of the Xbox Live Arcade in 2008. Much later, players were rightly disappointed that the title wasn't part of Xbox's Rare Replay that celebrated the developer's 30-year anniversary in 2015.
Alongside Donkey Kong Country, licensing issues meant GoldenEye 007 didn't make the cut. That being said, the game was reportedly part of the roster right up until the last minute. Now, you can see the cancelled GoldenEye remake in all its glory.
What is the cancelled GoldenEye 007 remake?
Posted to YouTube by content creator Graslu0, the cancelled GoldenEye 007 remake is shown online in its entirety. The two-hour video shows off what we've been missing out on all these years. As well being played on the criminally hard OO Agent difficulty, the game is there in 4K resolution at 60 frames-per-second, and even has an epic 30 minutes of multiplayer tagged on the end. Obviously, some of this technology wasn't available in the late-'00s, meaning this Xbox Live Arcade version has been played through an emulator to achieve a higher resolution.
We've seen the cancelled GoldenEye 007 remake before, but up until now, it was only ever half an hour that'd made its way online. Tracking the fan-favourite from Dam all the way through to the hidden Egyptian level at the end, we get to see James try and save the day. Impressively, we get to enjoy a remastered version of the beloved multiplayer that lets you play as OddJob, Natalia, Baron Samedi, May Day, and all the rest.
In a follow-up tweet, Graslu00 said this isn't the latest video isn't due to a recent leak. Instead, they've had the game for years via PartnerNet - a sandbox Xbox Live Arcade made available to devs. Excitingly, Graslu00, said a full build of the cancelled GoldenEye 007 remake could be released in 2021.
What happened to the cancelled GoldenEye 007 remake?
Annoyingly, the remake was much closer than you might've thought. In 2008, the game was only about two months away from being complete. Microsoft couldn't reach an agreement with Nintendo, with both sides arguing over whether Nintendo would get a one-off fee or carry on getting a cut of game sales. The Xbox Live Arcade version was going to let you flip between original and remastered graphics, while there were ambitious plans for an online multiplayer. If that wasn't enough, there were three new stages pulled directly from the singleplayer story.
Instead, Eurocom's GoldenEye 007 came out in 2010 and was given a HD port for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2011 as GoldenEye 007: Reloaded. Elsewhere, there's GoldenEye: Source, which is an online version of the game's multiplayer, has been in the works since 2005, and is still in active development as of 2019. Sadly, a fan remake that was planned for the game's 25th anniversary in 2022 (called GoldenEye 25) was shut down by MGM only last year. It now joins the canned XBLA version in GoldenEye games we'll never get to see.
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Images via Rare | YouTube Graslu00
