When it comes to beloved video games, GoldenEye 007 often tops a lot of lists. The N64 game remains hugely popular to this day, thanks in part to its presence on Nintendo Switch and Xbox platforms. However, for a very long time, the game remained unavailable on modern systems. There were many efforts over the years to bring GoldenEye 007 back, and developer Nightdive Studios expressed an interest in creating a remaster. In a new interview with Video Games Chronicle, Nightdive CEO Stephen Kick offered some background about the project, and why it failed to materialize.
“That was a real heartbreak, just because we had put in a lot of effort into pitching that. We had a dream team all set up, and we got by the MGM/Eon side of things,” recalled Kick. “That took a year. And then it was: ‘Ok, we’re ready to go.’ ‘Well, did you guys get the rights from Nintendo?’ ‘Wait a minute, we thought you had that.’ And then Nintendo was like, ‘yeah, no third party’s ever going to touch any Nintendo stuff, ever.’”
Kick did not offer a lot of elaboration on this point, but this explanation lines up with what the Nightdive boss has said in the past. In a series of Tweets from 2022, Kick revealed that the developers had past discussions with Nintendo about “remastering a number of their games,” but noted that the company always gets “gun shy” when it comes to working directly with third-party developers. It’s likely now that GoldenEye 007 was one of the games Kick was referring to, but the CEO also stated that the company really wants to handle a remaster of Eternal Darkness. That game has never been released outside of the original GameCube version.
Unfortunately, Kick did not offer any elaboration about the discussions with Nintendo, leaving us to speculate about why things didn’t work out. Over the last decade, Nintendo has greatly expanded its partnerships with third-parties, and has allowed many of them to handle the company’s properties. In fact, Koei Tecmo announced a new Hyrule Warriors game earlier this month, which is set to be released later this year on Nintendo Switch 2. It’s possible Nightdive wanted to release these remasters on multiple platforms, which would have been a sticking point when it comes to Nintendo. However, unless either company decides to elaborate, there’s just no way of knowing why things didn’t pan out.
Whatever the case might be, the GoldenEye 007 remaster didn’t happen, and Nintendo, MGM/Eon, and Xbox were able to work things out so the original N64 version of the game could be re-released. Still, it’s interesting to think what might have been had Nightdive gotten the chance to give the game the same treatment that remasters like The Thing have received!
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Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/gold
