GoldenEye X

Review: GoldenEye X (Nintendo 64) - By Tetsuo

There exists somewhere on this website a long-abandoned (2013..!) draft for an article entitled "Future Retro", in which your intrepid reporter would have impressed with reasoned urgency for the videogame industry to return to authentic retro hardware and software. Less repackaging titles into yet more "greatest hits", nor the failed promise and often creatively moribund "indie" scene, but a legitimate return to commercial development for older systems.

Dare I suggest this was prophetic? Perhaps it was to some degree, given today's now highly-profitable cottage industries in retro-gaming which have established themselves in the years since. Though the "remaster" is now ubiquitous in the lexicon, genuine new software on old hardware does occur but with much less frequency: the burgeoning and increasingly ingenious modding community still shoulders most of this burden.

But back to the topic. Perfect Dark, for those wondering, was in essence a three-year wish-list of things players dreamt being possible in GoldenEye 007 – pushing our dear Nintendo 64 to its maximum with fanciful extra features whilst retaining the same structure, controls and gameplay loops.

In GoldenEye X, that 2000 engine is applied backwards to Rare's revolutionary 1997 FPS. It is perhaps one of the most extraordinary examples yet of retro videogames reborn, in that its concept is one that already existed in the minds of millions of games-players – almost as though intuited from some parallel Tomorrow Never Dies timeline, or playground/sixth-form discussions, circa 1998/99. In this respect at least, it has commonality with the equally remarkable Mario 64 Preservation-Project.

Rare themselves stated that PD's optimised engine had the muscle to run GoldenEye at a roughly 20% improved speed, and we now get to observe this as (somewhat) accurate. But neither is this mod just a case of switching some textures and music around. The Perfect Dark engine alters the GoldenEye gameplay experience in fundamental ways, not least of which is that it's now a far more taxing proposition. Enemies are smarter and faster, damage is more frequent, and reloading is slower. These factors alone mean the long-honed techniques of elder secret agents are likely not as effective as they once were.

Take the Aztec stage, for instance. Sniping or even standing in front of Jaws for a quick-ish kill is now out of the question. On the Bunker stage, the arrival of the Janus Special Forces is a terrifying prospect – in waves they are almost unstoppable on the '00 Agent' setting, whereas in GoldenEye they were manageable. For experienced players, this subversion of the difficulty elicits delight and intrigue all over again.

Perfect Dark's real-time lighting system also presents new opportunity to create darkened areas, which subsequently impairs the vision and shooting accuracy of patrolling guards. Emergent situations appear differently, too. In one amusing occasion (also on the Aztec stage) shooting the firearm out from the hand of a Moonraker Marine caused him to promptly surrender, hands aloft. Unfortunately, he'd done so in the middle of a space shuttle exhaust bay, readying for a test fire. Your reporter observed from the safety of a nearby ventilation channel – PP7 pointed at the stationary hostage, just in case he tried to be a hero – and watched chuckling as the Marine was burnt to a crisp by 3.8 million pounds of rocket fuel. Oh, and the lashings of exit splatter and head-snapping certainly adds a satisfying dimension to Bond's previously peaceable alternate reality.

Not all liberties are taken, however. There are no secondary functions to the weapons for example, and Bond's judo chop remains in favour of Joanna's punch/disarm – further lending authenticity to the original experience. Some additional rooms and unlocked doors have been added (actualising once more the imaginations of those playground tall-tales), but never straying into the worst excesses of modding territory – and is all the better for it. In fact, these bits and other little flourishes which have been added are without exception excellent (the Runway stage being a real highlight), and always tastefully considered.

That's the bread and butter, but as any Nintendo 64-head knows, Perfect Dark was an extravagant multiplayer experience too. Who knows just how many more years/degrees/jobs/spouses/friendships would have been lost to the generation's most devastatingly addictive multi-player mode had GoldenEye X's features been present. The ability to now fall from ledges is just one of several instances where new twists make this affair feel almost amnesia-new. Some of the 'Assignments' ('Challenges' in the original) err on the side of cruelly imbalanced, but then again they also did in Perfect Dark. Co-Operative and Counter-Cooperative modes are miraculously also present and correct.

True, it's technically still in a state of formation, with nine stages completed at present. This '6a' patch follows cold on the heels of version '5e' – some eight years later. On Nintendo 64 hardware at least (from which this review is based) there is the occasional rendering bug, and this reporter encountered a few (albeit extremely rare) freezes as well. But principle designer Wreck and the 17-strong development contributors deserve high praise for not allowing this dream project to remain forever frozen in the Severnaya winter.

Should it ever make it that far, the completed work would stand as a colossal achievement. But even if not, this glorious glimpse alone (into the past/future/'GoldenEye 2.0') has absolutely been worth the wait. It's here. For some, this has been nearly three decades in the making.

– Details and download at: n64vault.com

Nine out of Ten