GoldenEye 007 Remaster was canceled by Nintendo with just a few bugs to fix

More details came to light about the remastered GoldenEye 007 almost released after a leak from the online game files, including the fact that Nintendo canceled the project when it was almost ready. Early developers for remaster Ross Bury and Mark Edmonds spoke with Ars Technica about their development, saying it had started in late 2006 or early 2007, but initially did not have the approval of superiors.

The game was planned as an Xbox 360 launch and was intended to be a very straightforward remastering for the console, with few new content plus some dramatic visual updates – including updated character models to, in many cases, make the characters look much closer in the appearance of your real-life actors.

Edmonds explained that at some point in the process, the team was told that “everyone approved”. The team continued to work, believing that the rights had been released and there were no strings attached to the Nintendo 64 title remastering. However, when the game was about to go gold, it was canceled due to an unknown Nintendo executive. “high ranking”.

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“When it was delivered to Nintendo, everyone approved,” said Bury. “Except they didn’t check with the guy who mattered.”

“I believe they told me that their response was more or less: ‘There is no way a Nintendo game can be released on a Microsoft console,'” he added.

Both Edmonds and Bury estimate that at the time the game was canceled, it had only about 90 bugs in the quality control test – a relatively small number for launching a game and indicating that the GoldenEye 007 remastered was almost ready. to be released.

The two added that the version of GoldenEye 007 that leaked online earlier this month was not the most “current” version of the game, but it was relatively close. Some more updated art resources are missing and have more bugs and other problems than the latest version of the game. Bury said he does not expect the final version to be made available in any way.

You can watch a replay of the GoldenEye 007 remastered earlier this year on YouTube, or console yourself with the fact that, while we’ll probably never have a proper launch of the remastered, IO Interactive is at least providing us with an appropriate flashy spy game in Hitman 3, and a true licensed 007 title arriving sometime in the future.

Rebekah Valentine is an IGN reporter. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.