In 2023, a deal was finally worked for for re-releasing GoldenEye on the Nintendo Switch and Xbox One/Series. While the occasion of releasing GoldenEye again should have been met with some effort and enthusiasm, what was got was….just acceptable.
On the Swich, it was released via their Nintendo Switch Online Plus subscription service, with the original ROM with some very minor differences – the unused textures for Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Timothy Dalton have been removed (incidentally, the orginal game ROM also contained unused Mickey Mouse graffiti textures that weren’t removed). Controls are a bit of a pain to set up, due to needing to use a mixture of both the in-game control settings and the Switch’s remapping. It does support online (with split-screen) via the service’s multiplayer emulation.
On the Xbox Series, the game is still running in an emulator, but with various enhancements. It supports up to 4K resolution textures, but the biggest change is with the controls. The game has full support for the Xbox controllers, with dual analogue as default. Reload and crouching now have dedicated buttons and you can have buttons for moving up and down through your weapon selection. It is lacking a handy way to rotate through gadgets like the unreleased XBLA version, though. I found the controls to work really well.
One minor change that did grab my attention was on Tran, where you have to use the watch laser. Usually when I play, Bond keeps crouching and standing up in an annoying way, but that section was improved here.
Unfortunately, that’s just it for improvements. The HUD and text hasn’t been given higher resolution textures, so the blurriness sticks out immensely when the game is running in a higher resolution. I also noticed a number of graphical glitches, such as cracks in the level on Surface and the “tree walls” having strange transparency. The menus (including the watch pause menu) don’t support widescreen, either.
For buying GoldenEye on Xbox Series, it’s a bit strange. If you go to the Xbox website, it will brag on about how this is included in Xbox Game Pass, you can’t buy the game on it’s own. However, if you have a digital copy of Rare Replay (which is a wonderful package and often on sale for £5), you can also download GoldenEye.
If you want a quick blast on GoldenEye and want an easy way to play it on Xbox, then this version is adequate. It’s just a shame as the game deserves so much more – and even more frustrating because a lot of the work for improving the game was already done by Rare for the cancelled XBLA version. Over 25 years of licensing issues finally solved and all we get is a low effort port.
On the Swich, it was released via their Nintendo Switch Online Plus subscription service, with the original ROM with some very minor differences – the unused textures for Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Timothy Dalton have been removed (incidentally, the orginal game ROM also contained unused Mickey Mouse graffiti textures that weren’t removed). Controls are a bit of a pain to set up, due to needing to use a mixture of both the in-game control settings and the Switch’s remapping. It does support online (with split-screen) via the service’s multiplayer emulation.
On the Xbox Series, the game is still running in an emulator, but with various enhancements. It supports up to 4K resolution textures, but the biggest change is with the controls. The game has full support for the Xbox controllers, with dual analogue as default. Reload and crouching now have dedicated buttons and you can have buttons for moving up and down through your weapon selection. It is lacking a handy way to rotate through gadgets like the unreleased XBLA version, though. I found the controls to work really well.
One minor change that did grab my attention was on Tran, where you have to use the watch laser. Usually when I play, Bond keeps crouching and standing up in an annoying way, but that section was improved here.
Unfortunately, that’s just it for improvements. The HUD and text hasn’t been given higher resolution textures, so the blurriness sticks out immensely when the game is running in a higher resolution. I also noticed a number of graphical glitches, such as cracks in the level on Surface and the “tree walls” having strange transparency. The menus (including the watch pause menu) don’t support widescreen, either.
For buying GoldenEye on Xbox Series, it’s a bit strange. If you go to the Xbox website, it will brag on about how this is included in Xbox Game Pass, you can’t buy the game on it’s own. However, if you have a digital copy of Rare Replay (which is a wonderful package and often on sale for £5), you can also download GoldenEye.
If you want a quick blast on GoldenEye and want an easy way to play it on Xbox, then this version is adequate. It’s just a shame as the game deserves so much more – and even more frustrating because a lot of the work for improving the game was already done by Rare for the cancelled XBLA version. Over 25 years of licensing issues finally solved and all we get is a low effort port.