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This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:chuappgame, author: NemoTheCaptain

After 25 years of ▲, the classic James Bond: the Golden Eye still exudes a powerful influence, providing a source of inspiration for countless future generations.

Some time ago, the landmark shooting game "007: Golden Eye" ushered in the 25th anniversary of its launch. For some time, there has been news that it may release a high-definition version, but when this node has passed, everything is calm. Players who like this game may need a little more patience.

However, if you want to relive the feeling of "007: Golden Eye", there are plenty of options.

After the miraculous development and release of Bond: Golden Eye, there are three branches: Rare's spiritual sequel "perfect Dark" (Perfect Dark), Free Radical Design's spiritual sequel "TimeSplitters" and EA's "007" series of games. None of these three branches are as groundbreaking as Bond: Golden Eye, but they are still excellent FPS. On the 25th anniversary of the release of "007: the Golden Eye" this year, the folk celebration works can also be regarded as a hundred flowers blossom. After 25 years, the classic James Bond: the Golden Eye still exudes a powerful influence, providing a source of inspiration for countless future generations.

The perfect dark time goes back to 1997, when Rare's game "007: Golden Eye" was released with a resounding victory, but the development team felt tired in the face of praise. Programmer Steve Ellis once said: "We won the prize and won the soft hand, but this is the peak, we will not have a more successful game in the future." Even if the team comes up with a higher-quality new FPS work, it is indeed no more groundbreaking than James Bond: the Golden Eye and cannot achieve a higher historical status. On the other hand, after the release of 007: Golden Eye, team members eventually went their separate ways over time, which also affected the quality of the new work.

After the success of the movie "007: the Golden Eye" at the box office, MGM, as a copyright owner, raised the game license fee for several future "007" films. Rare's team is tired of James Bond and wants to develop original new works for N64 consoles, so Nintendo has ceded future Bond game licenses to EA.

Director Martin Hollis has titled Rare's new film "perfect Darkness," featuring a female agent, Jonathan. Martin saw that most of the main characters in the game were men, which was boring, so he chose the female protagonist. The game plot obviously imitates the "Shell Mobile team" and "X Files", with cyberpunk and alien elements, these settings can not be included in the "007" series, this work has naturally become an original game.

▲ "perfect Dark" cassette cover

Rare had planned to release "perfect Darkness" at the end of 1998, but Martin wanted the new special effects and AI to be more nuanced. He asked his team to rewrite 70% of the engine code, but the improvement took a lot of time. After the new work could not be released on time, Martin left Rare in the fall of 1998, and since then four more employees have left, reducing the number of the development team by half.

Several former employees were dissatisfied with Rare's overtime and pay. Martin was tired of Rare, a rural British company, and decided to open his eyes. After that, Martin worked for some time at Nintendo headquarters in the United States, where he became a technical consultant for the new mainframe NGC. Four other former employees set up a new company, Free Radical Design, to develop FPS's new book, time and Space splitter, for PS2.

Rare had to draw people from other projects to fill the team gap in "perfect Dark", and the number of developers eventually reached three times that of "007: Golden Eye." Programmer Mark Edmunds, who used to be the number two on the team, was most familiar with game engines, so Rare promoted him to director. Martin led the team to develop the game for 14 months, but left a good engine and script outline. Mark only needed to fill in the content. Rare also changed his attitude and allowed the game to be postponed. Perfect Darkness was not released until May 2000, a year and a half later than originally planned.

Mark Edmunds, new director of ▲

As a spiritual sequel to 007: Golden Eye, perfect Darkness adds more modes, and the plot campaign offers two-person split-screen play, including cooperation and invasion. In the invasion mode, a player can become the protagonist of a sneak attack, which was quite novel in 2000. People who can't find split-screen players can also add computer players to the game mode to entertain themselves.

The picture of "perfect Dark" has improved, but the number of frames is lower than that of "007: Golden Eye", seriously affecting the game experience. The N64 needs to be plugged into an 4MB extended memory card to run most of the maps. Players without a memory card can only enter challenge mode and two-player mode. Sales of the N64 version of perfect Darkness were 3.2 million, less than half the figure of 007: Golden Eye, but it exceeded Rare's expectations. For Nintendo, "perfect Dark" helped N64 sell millions of memory cards, which was a success. However, Rare's relationship with Nintendo has taken a turn for the worse since then.

▲ "perfect Darkness" achieves the top quality of N64.

Nintendo bought 49 per cent of Rare in 1994, when the two sides signed a contract under which Nintendo needed to buy the remaining 51 per cent in 2000 and turn Rare into a wholly owned subsidiary, otherwise Rare had the right to buy back 49 per cent of Nintendo, which turned Rare back into an independent company. After the release of perfect Dark, another group of Rare employees resigned, and Nintendo doubted whether Rare could stay in shape. For the new NGC console, Rare hopes to develop a masterpiece that costs $20 million, while Nintendo wants them to be content with the status quo and spend $2 million on a game. The gap between the two companies is widening.

Instead of buying the remaining 51 per cent of Rare in 2000, Nintendo paid liquidated damages for its hesitation. In 2002, the brain drain of Rare became more and more serious, but little was known about it. Both Activision and Microsoft wanted to buy Rare, and eventually Nintendo sold Rare to Microsoft for $375 million.

The prequel to "perfect Dark", the perfect Dark Zero, was made public as early as 2000. The original platform was NGC, which later became Xbox, and finally arrived late on Xbox 360in 2005. "perfect Dark Zero" is still FPS, but the camera changes to the third person as it approaches the bunker. In addition to the local split screen, the game cooperation and game mode can also be carried out through the network, but Rare cancels the intrusion mode.

The bunker system of ▲ "perfect Dark Zero"

In terms of levels, compared with the previous works, "perfect Dark Zero" weakens the understanding of mysteries and exploration elements, becoming more like a mediocre FPS, which is devoid of many people. Sales of the game have exceeded one million, but the reputation is mediocre. For Xbox 360s, "perfect Dark Zero" has never been the protagonist, while call of Duty 2 released in the same period is better in terms of both sales and word-of-mouth, and later masterpieces such as "War Machine" and "Halo 3" let players directly ignore "perfect Dark Zero". Although this work is profitable, from Microsoft's strategic point of view, "perfect Dark Zero" is far from achieving the expected impact.

At the end of 2006, Reggie Firth-Amy, then president of Nintendo, said he wanted to see 007: Golden Eye resurrected on a Wii host in the form of a simulator. At this time, EA has transferred the adaptation rights of the "007" series of games to Activision, and a small number of veterans who have developed "007: Golden Eye" remain in Rare, and many parties have launched a negotiation on this. The preliminary outcome of the negotiations is that Rare can develop a high-definition version of 007: Golden Eye for Xbox 360's XBLA download channel, and in exchange, Rare will also need to help Nintendo launch the original 007: Golden Eye as an N64 simulator on the Wii host.

In March 2007, the development of the high-definition version of 007: Golden Eye was officially launched, with an eight-member team led by Mark Edmunds in charge of the work. The game was nearing completion at the end of 2007, leaving only a small amount of Bug to be fixed. Microsoft limited the capacity of the XBLA to 150MB in 2007, and the HD version has a limited improvement in image quality compared to the N64 version. in order to make players notice the difference between the two, the team added an one-click function to switch between the two qualities, a function that was borrowed by Halo: anniversary Edition many years later.

Comparison of two kinds of picture quality in ▲ HD version "007: Golden Eye"

The high-definition version of "007: Golden Eye" sets all the combat roles to the same height, ensuring the balance of network warfare. In order to reproduce the original battle experience, the HD version can also turn on the split screen function during the network war, allowing players to see the opponent's screen on the other side of the network. Several battle maps that were cancelled because of functional problems were revived in the high-definition version. As for the number of frames, Xbox 360 can naturally achieve a stable 60 frames, the game experience is significantly better than the original N64.

The development team removed the image of departed employees in the high-definition version of 007: Golden Eye and replaced it with new employees, and the team had no idea what to do with Pierce Brosnan's portrait rights. These licenses are handled by Microsoft executives, and there is nothing a small team of eight can do. In the end, the HD version ran aground because of licensing issues, and the team itself did not know the specific reason for the stranding, and there were different opinions about it.

Former Paradise producer Ken Loeb is now a Microsoft employee, but he still has connections at Nintendo, he became an informant between the two companies, and he was in charge of bridging the high-definition version of 007: Golden Eye. The development team speculated that all executives were not informed of the initial negotiations, and that a Nintendo executive heard about the project at a later stage of development, and then the executive rejected the cooperation between the two companies.

Graeme Nogate, the composer of the original 007: Golden Eye, said that the licensing relationship for the HD version is extremely complex. The copyright of the film belongs to MGM, the copyright of the original game belongs to Nintendo, and Activision holds the rights to adapt the game during this period. With so many companies, if either party disagrees, the project will run aground.

Graeme Norgate, senior composer of ▲

In 2008, the news that the high-definition version of 007: Golden Eye ran aground spread all over the Internet, when it was rumored that there was a license fee problem between Nintendo and Microsoft. The high-definition version requires Microsoft to pay a license fee to Nintendo, but is it an one-time license fee or a long-term share with sales? The two sides may have had a dispute over this, causing the project to run aground.

If it's just a matter of money, it's easy, as long as both sides realize that the sales of the high-definition version are sizeable, their income will be enough to resolve the dispute. To this end, a large number of players launched a "Save 007: Golden Eye" campaign on the Internet, and they even got the support of Xbox Live director Larry Herb. However, this vigorous activity finally sank into the sea, and the problem does not seem to be that simple.

▲ Larry Herb is a famous Internet celebrity of Microsoft.

Another theory is that MGM, which owns the rights to the James Bond films, vetoed the project. Later, the high-definition version appeared in the customs clearance screen with the subtitle of "resurrect MGM" 007: Golden Eye ", suggesting this possibility. Although Pierce Brosnan starred in the original James Bond: Golden Eye, MGM wanted Daniel Craig to be starred in the high-definition version, and later Activision's many James Bond games did experience a change of stars. it proves that this statement has a certain degree of credibility.

If MGM does ask for this, then EA's James Bond: love from Russia is an exception, which follows Sean Connery, the star of the original movie. However, the development period of this work coincides with the gap between the departure of Pierce Brosnan and the arrival of Daniel Craig, and perhaps MGM's attitude towards this is to do something special, and it will not happen again.

▲ Sean Connery made a comeback in the game version of James Bond: love from Russia

After the high-definition version of 007: Golden Eye ran aground, Rare launched the development of the high-definition version of perfect Darkness. The copyright of "perfect Dark" belongs to Rare, there is no licensing risk, and the development process of the HD version is very smooth. By this time Mark Edmunds had left Rare and outsourced the HD version to 4J Studios, a Scottish company. The company once migrated Rare's N64 masterpiece Banjo Bear to Xbox 360and won the trust of Microsoft. The improvements made by the high-definition version of "007: Golden Eye" have been inherited in "perfect Dark", and this work even includes additional weapons and battle maps of "007: Golden Eye" in multiplayer mode, which to some extent makes up for the regret in the hearts of players.

The ▲ HD version of "perfect Dark" also improves the picture.

Rare conceived the more realistic "perfect Dark" sequel, "perfect Dark: core," but the project was cancelled by Microsoft in the early days, and the series went into a long dormant state. In 2020, Microsoft announced the resumption of "perfect Dark" by The Initiative, a new company in Santa Monica, California, USA. However, a year later, The Initiative was caught in the plight of a large number of employees resigning. Microsoft asked Crystal Power Studio to assist in development. There is still no follow-up news of the game, and the prospect is not optimistic.

The Silver Age lets us look away from Microsoft and Rare for a while and focus on EA in 1999. When EA snatched the rights to adapt the game from Nintendo at a high price, the fear that EA would come up with a shoddy game became a reality. The game version of James Bond: empire of tomorrow was released on the PS console in late 1999, two years later than the movie. EA outsourced game development to a small company, Black Ops Entertainment, the type of game changed to TPS, and cancelled the multi-player game, the quality is quite rough. Sony even bought the exclusive rights to the book and trumpeted it in game magazines, which allowed the book to sell more than a million dollars, but could not change the players' bad reviews of the game.

▲ 's PS version of James Bond: the Empire of tomorrow

Since then, EA has adopted a multi-platform strategy, with two FPS games launched on different consoles at the end of 2000. Black Ops Entertainment's PS version of "007: the Black Sun crisis" still does not have a battle mode, the quality of single-player campaigns has not improved, and sales have declined significantly. During the same period, the N64 version of "007: the Black Day crisis" outsourced to Eurocom was a success.

Eurocom is a veteran developer of the James Bond series. They developed a game version of "Little Bond" for FC as early as 1992. N64 version of "007: black Sun crisis" has less freedom than "perfect Darkness" in the same year, and the special effects and AI are also slightly inferior, but its frame number is much more stable than "perfect Darkness". The 4MB memory card is only used to improve the resolution of this work, and players can run the game smoothly without a memory card. Although the sales and word-of-mouth of the N64 version of 007: the Black Sun crisis are a little lower than that of perfect Darkness, it can still be regarded as an excellent work in the later period of N64. Eurocom also provides a split-screen battle mode for this work, giving N64 players one more choice.

▲ N64 version of "007: black Day crisis" has become a masterpiece.

Since then, the Bond series of games released by EA have launched a comprehensive attack on PS2, NGC and Xbox. Most of the new plots use original stories to get rid of the shackles of the film, and the stronger mainframe performance also gives the game more room to play. Eurocom's "007: night Fire" has achieved a larger level and a better AI of miscellaneous soldiers, and its quality has been significantly improved compared with the previous work of N64.

The atmosphere of sneaking into the level in ▲ "007: night Fire"

At the same time, EA's internal Redwood Shores studio is also working on the James Bond series. The studio was not well-known at that time, and the project was dominated by authorized games, but the studio was enthusiastic about authorized brands, and the adapted games were not shoddy. Years later, Redwood Shores changed its name to Visceral Games, and with the Dead Space series, countless players remembered their new names.

Redwood Shores's first series of games is FPS Bond: hot Wire agents (007: Agent Under Fire), which is slightly inferior to Night Fire, but has made a good start for the studio. Later, "007: all or nothing" and "James Bond: love from Russia" changed the type to TPS, allowing players to watch Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery all the way. The two superstars provided portrait rights for the two games, and even dubbing was arranged, which made players miss it. The two works include a bunker system and a large number of cinematic levels, laying the foundation for a future "Dead Space" series.

▲ 's well-behaved FPS "007: hot Line agents"

▲ "007: all or nothing" is an advanced TPS

The worst game of the EA era is Golden Eye: renegade agents, which is set in a parallel world where James Bond has been defeated and villains rule the earth. Just looking at the title, players may think that the protagonist of this game is 006, the renegade agent in "007: Golden Eye". In fact, the protagonist of this game is an original John Doe. "Golden Eye" does not refer to the microwave weapons in the movie. but John Doe's electronic artificial eye, the perfunctory plot disappointed players. The level design of the game is monotonous, leaving only mechanized miscellaneous soldiers piled up. Considering that the EA studio in Los Angeles, which is in charge of this work, is developing several "Medal of Honor" games at the same time, the result of this failure is not difficult to understand.

▲ is equipped with the unknown protagonist of "Golden Eye"

Looking back on the "007" series of games from the EA era, EA Los Angeles and Black Ops Entertainment failed, while the games developed by Eurocom and Redwood Shores were mediocre. EA lacks the originality of Rare in the golden age, but it has handed over several decent answers, which was called the Silver Age of the James Bond series from 2000 to 2005, which is missed by today's players.

"Golden Eye: renegade Secret Service" was a fiasco. "James Bond: love from Russia" has a good reputation, but sales are still poor. EA stopped the early development of the game "007: casino Royale" in 2006 and transferred the rights to adapt the series of games to Activision. Since then, the quality of the series has plummeted.

During the EA period, the company regarded James Bond as the main series and gave an adequate budget for most games. But Activision already established the call of Duty series as the absolute core in 2006, which is not good for the James Bond game. The 2008 game version of Bond: quantum crisis was handed over to Treyarch, the developer of call of Duty 3, which naturally turned into a deteriorated version of call of Duty.

▲ 's perfunctory James Bond: quantum crisis

The 2010 new film Bond: blood Stone was developed by Bizarre Creations, whose "World Street Racing" series is famous all over the world, but they are not good at action shooting games. "Bond: blood Stone" eventually became an inferior version of "split Cell: conviction", and Bizarre Creations was disbanded after the game was released.

▲ 's mediocre TPS: Bloodstone

Activision's most highly rated James Bond game is a duplicate version of James Bond: Golden Eye, which was released in 2010 and exclusively owned by Wii for a year, but did not release PS3 and Xbox 360th version until 2011. The reviews and sales of the replica are good, but it still plays more like call of Duty than James Bond. The developer of this work, Eurocom, abandoned the classic style of the EA era, which was obviously interfered by Activision. This work is said to be a replica, but in fact, it has greatly modified the level and plot of the original, which is comparable to the new one. The lead actor has changed from Pierce Brosnan to Daniel Craig, and other characters and backstories have been changed as a result. The effect of dove Zhan magpie's nest is very funny.

The ▲ copy of "007: Golden Eye" is quite different from the original.

In 2012, Eurocom's new James Bond series "James Bond: legend" once again made the same mistake. The plot of the game was drawn from a number of old movies, and the five old actors were all replaced by Craig, ruining the final feelings. In addition, the fragmentation of the level design is a mess, so that the game suffered a fiasco. Eurocom, a Bond professional, was disbanded after the game was released, while Activision announced that it would give up the rights to adapt the game in 2013.

▲ James Bond: legend ends the era of Activision

The game fell into a seven-year silence until 2020, when IO Interactive Studios, which developed the Killer 47 series, became the new developer. IO Interactive's game will use an original plot to tell the origin of James Bond. As for the way to play, Killer 47 is obviously more suitable for the style of 007 than call of Duty. The game hasn't been released yet. Let's wait and see what the final product will be.

Do you remember the departure of the "perfect Dark" team in 1998? Programmer Steve Ellis called on three colleagues who got funding from publisher Eidos Interactive and founded a new company, Free Radical Design, in 1999. The time-space splitter, which they developed, inherited the game features of 007: Golden Eye and became the main game when PS2 launched in Europe and America at the end of 2000. The 2002 sequel, Space-time splitter 2, which spanned PS2, NGC and Xbox, was once again a success, but their luck ended there.

The similarities between ▲ 's Space-time splitter and Bond: Golden Eye are clear at a glance.

In retrospect, Steve Ellis said he was too young and frivolous to think that he could succeed with excellent development skills, but ignored the role of publishers. In the past, distribution was an issue that Rare and Nintendo had to worry about, and all they had to do was to immerse themselves in development. After starting from scratch, the issue of distribution was placed in front of Free Radical Design.

When it came time to develop the third book in the time-space splitter series, "the perfect Future," Eidos itself was in bad shape, gave up the investment, and the game's publisher became EA. However, EA knows that the quality of "Golden Eye: renegade agents" in the same period is poor, in order to ensure sales, "renegade agents" got most of the publicity resources, and "perfect Future" was left out in the cold. As a result, the sales of "renegade agents" failed, "perfect Future" although the evaluation is good, sales are only worse, EA this small abacus ushered in a lose-lose outcome.

Later, Free Radical Design developed Star Wars: frontline 3 for LucasArts, which reached 99% completion in 2008, but was aborted because LucasArts refused to pay for publicity. Free Radical Design laid off 80 per cent of its staff until it was acquired by Crytek in 2009 and changed its name to Crytek UK. The company worked for the Island crisis series for several years before being shut down by Crytek in 2014.

Star Wars: frontline 3 cancelled by ▲ by publisher

Steve Ellis summed up the lesson that the levels and systems of the "time splitter" series are fine, but the original characters and plots are not well-known, and sales will fall if the publicity fails to keep up. As a result, he missed the popularity of the James Bond series and tried to renew it. Free Radical Design responded positively when it looked for the outsourced side of the replica "007: Golden Eye". They created a fully refurbished level for PS3 and Xbox 360, only to learn that Activision had handed over the project to Eurocom. Hard work may not be rewarded, and bad luck can only be rewarded.

On the other hand, Microsoft has not completely given up on 007: Golden Eye. The 2015 Rare Replay collection included "perfect Dark Zero" and a high-definition version of "perfect Dark." Microsoft also tried to take "007: Golden Eye" into its pocket, but ran aground again. Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft games, admitted that games had complex and difficult licensing problems, which hit him many times.

Since then, the situation has become more subtle. The high-definition version of Xbox 360Bond: Golden Eye was leaked online in 2021. This version is not finished at the end of 2007, but it is very close. Rare's development team at that time believed that the leak was not an accident, but a tentative act. In 2022, the trademark of "007: Golden Eye" was renewed, and players even saw Rare employees unlock the game-related achievements on Xbox Live. It seemed that the high-definition version of "007: Golden Eye" was close at hand, but Microsoft remained silent. Jeff Grubb, a famous "uncle's party" in the circle, said that Microsoft had wanted to release a high-definition version of 007: Golden Eye this year, but postponed the plan because of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Although the second edition of Bond: Golden Eye has experienced setbacks, the folk experts in the Mod field have brought more good news. As early as 1998, the Mod authors transplanted the multiplayer map Stack from James Bond: Golden Eye into the half-life. In 1999, another multiplayer map, Facility, was included by the counter-Terrorism Elite. In 2005, Mod authors were no longer content with trifles. Using the Origin engine of half-Life 2, they began to fully replicate the multiplayer model of Bond: Golden Eye, a classic Mod that was updated until 2019.

▲ 's Golden Eye: the Origin allows PC players to relive their old dreams

This year, in order to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the release of the game "007: Golden Eye", private activities can be described as letting a hundred flowers bloom. Isolated Island 5 players recreate the complete Battle of 007: Golden Eye through a map editor. N64 players changed the Rom level to turn Roger Moore's movie "007: undersea City" into a game and put it into the engine of the original "007: Golden Eye". Steam's new book, Agent 64: spies do not die, has launched a trial version, featuring angular retro 3D images.

▲ 's "Agent 64: spies don't die" is a N64 legacy.

The most popular work among players is Golden Eye 25, a folk replica developed with "Unreal" engine 4 and originally scheduled to be released on the 25th anniversary of "007: Golden Eye". Later, MGM, which holds the copyright, suspended the project, the game became the original work "S.P.I.E.S", and the release date was postponed to 2023. The picture of this work is fine, but it still retains the simple beauty of the original N64 and its unique style.

The picture of ▲ "S.P.I.E.S" is simple but not simple.

After 25 years, the members of the development team of the original 007: Golden Eye have already gone their separate ways, but most of them are still struggling in the game world. Steve Ellis seems to have had a hard time, the new owner Embracer Group decided to take him as the core to rebuild Free Radical Design, and the "time splitter" series finally saw the hope of resurrection. Duncan Boltwood joined Ubisoft and became a level planner. Mark Edmunds plays in an unannounced 3A open world game at the Barcelona branch of Smilegate. Carl Hilton and Graeme Nogate started their own business to develop mobile VR games. Brett Jones, a behavioral film and television special effects worker, returned to the Leavisden studio in England in recent years and saw that the tiger helicopter model that made the James Bond: Golden Eye film was still in place, which made her deeply moved.

The 9-person development team of the original ▲ James Bond: Golden Eye

As for Martin Hollis, the game director who left after only two years of work at Nintendo in the United States, he now devotes most of his energy to lecturing and teaching his development experience to newcomers. When it comes to the topic of why Nintendo succeeded, Martin summed up the answer as a sonorous and forceful iron rule:

"play a good game, just play a good game."

Some references:

NintendoPower: behind the scenes of James Bond: Golden Eye

Why did the 1UP:XBLA version of "007: Golden Eye" run aground?

Eurogamer:Free Radical Design vs. Monster

Complex: review of the N64 version of James Bond: Golden Eye

Zoonami: the production process of Bond: Golden Eye

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