James Bond in video games

History

The first James Bond video game, Shaken but Not Stirred, launched in 1982. Two years later, Parker Brothers put out James Bond 007 across several systems. Starting in 1983, many games drew from the films, Ian Fleming's novels, or entirely new stories cooked up by the developers. Mindscape, Domark, Interplay, and THQ each took a turn making Bond titles.

Through the 1980s and early 1990s, these games made modest money and came in styles like side-scrolling action and text adventures. The series really took off in 1997 with GoldenEye 007 from Rare on the Nintendo 64. That first-person shooter, which included a multiplayer mode, sold over eight million copies and got strong reviews. In 1998, Nintendo released a Game Boy version of James Bond 007, built by Saffire, that pulled in characters like Oddjob and Jaws from several films and added gambling minigames like Baccarat and Blackjack.

Electronic Arts picked up the license from MGM Interactive in 1998, while a game based on Tomorrow Never Dies was already in the works. Black Ops Entertainment finished that title, which hit PlayStation in 1999 to mixed reviews but solid sales. The World Is Not Enough followed on multiple platforms: Eurocom handled the Nintendo 64 version, Black Ops did the PlayStation one, and 2n Productions made the Game Boy Color version, which used a top-down view instead of first-person.

All three sold well. In 2001, EA released Agent Under Fire for PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox. It had an original story, no likeness of Pierce Brosnan, and mixed rail shooting and driving into its first-person shooter. It sold nearly five million copies, making it the second-best seller in the series, though reviews were mixed. The console versions were identical.

Cancelled games

A game titled Octopussy, based on the film, was announced by Parker Brothers for the Atari 2600, Mattel Intellivision, and compatible systems, set for summer 1983 release, but was cancelled shortly after announcement for unknown reasons. A racing version of GoldenEye 007 was announced for the Virtual Boy and cancelled in 1996. A remastered version of the Nintendo 64 GoldenEye 007 by Rare was scheduled for release on Xbox 360's Live Arcade on 27 February 2008, but Microsoft, which had acquired Rare and their intellectual properties in 2002, could not obtain publishing rights from Danjaq, LLC, leading to cancellation despite near completion.

Rumors that Nintendo or Activision may have been involved in the cancellation were unconfirmed. In January 2021, a near-final build of the game leaked online from an unknown source. The original VHS release of Tomorrow Never Dies included a trailer for a game that would start where the film ends, showing Bond skiing, scuba diving, and driving in third person and a first-person shooting mission. It was to be released on PlayStation and PC in fall 1998 by MGM Interactive, not EA.

MGM had to buy back some rights from Nintendo to make the game. A skiing level and a driving mission in Switzerland may have survived from the continuation story.

Other games

Since 2002, games featuring Bond and the 007 trademark have been published on mobile phones. The first two, Hover Chase and Ice Racer, were based on action sequences from Die Another Day and published by Vodafone. After the film franchise reboot in 2006, Sony Online Entertainment released a side-scroll action game based on Casino Royale, developed by Glu Mobile, following a storyline inspired by the film. An identical tie-in based on Quantum of Solace was released in 2008 by the same team.

That year, Sony Online Entertainment Los Angeles developed and published an arcade fighting game titled Top Agent. In 2014, Glu Mobile was reported working on another mobile James Bond game, later revealed as World of Espionage, a point-and-click game retelling several film storylines. It debuted early access in July 2015 and released fully in November 2015, but was universally panned and removed from online mobile stores in December 2016. Fan attempts to remake GoldenEye 007 have resulted in one successful project: GoldenEye: Source, a total conversion mod based on the multiplayer mode, which entered development in 2005 and released internationally in 2010.

A different team began work in 2013 to port the multiplayer mode from Nightfire (2002) to the Source engine as Nightfire: Source, which remains in development.