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The canceled Xbox 360 version of Goldeneye 007 now it has been revealed – and this view of Pierce Brosnan’s virtual bungee jumping from the final section of the first level is a good indicator of its scope. Part of the basic geometry is identical, while some main aspects have been touched up, particularly the character models and the background geometry.
Graslu00
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The dam and the surrounding mountains have never looked so detailed.
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But other aspects were left largely unchanged, such as the menu system.
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Dam, introduction sequence. It is much less grainy and has aliases than on the N64.
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The camera rotates towards James Bond.
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Is who I think it is?
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We’re going to work for England, James.
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This island at the end of the Dam is much clearer in the X360 version. You still can’t get there, but it’s a nice touch.
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I have a bad feeling about this guy.
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Explosion sprites have been retouched and no longer bring the game to its knees.
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A different type of “tank control”.
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Much longer viewing distances are great if you don’t want to pull out your sniper rifle in snowy environments.
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Familiar briefing interface.
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Retouched pre-mission introductions.
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This is definitely a more refined model, although still obviously not as high-fidelity as you might expect from an ordinary Xbox 360.
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Natalya looks very different with her new model.
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The updated screen animations can be found on the game’s computers. Also, look at the fully rendered Russian keyboard.
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Combat time.
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Textures and models have been updated, but the animations remain identical to the 1996 original, so they are still crazy 90s robots (which is fine with me).
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A sign that this is a legitimate leak: this is a scanned version of former Xbox producer Ken Lobb around 2014, at the time the production of this remake was almost complete. (He also helped produce the original version of the N64 as part of the Nintendo of America team in the 1990s.)
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A game for a dark jungle.
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Xenia didn’t stand a chance.
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Brosnan’s new character, but the stupid elevator music remains.
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Get out of the way! I’m trying to minimize casualties here!
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The final credits (with a flaw in how they render a surrounding jungle) remain almost the same, with two touches. The first is the addition of an Xbox-specific language.
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And the second is this obvious appeal to Bond rights holders.
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If you’ve clicked so far, here’s a fun Easter egg for you: a teaser of the unpublished Xbox 360 achievements, provided to Ars by Graslu00.
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The remaining achievements are as follows. 00 Agent: Complete the game on Secret Agent difficulty. (25G) Bullet Proof: Complete a level having collected all the armor. (5G) Sprinter: Complete the game from start to finish in less than an hour. (30G) Slapper: Complete a level without firing a shot and killing 5 guards. (10G) Agent: Complete a level on any difficulty. (5G) Bullet Shy: Complete a level without being hit. (20G) Secret Agent: Complete the game on Agent difficulty. (15G) License To Kill: Complete any level having killed more than 50 guards. (10G) Dual Wield: Dual wields any weapon. (5G) Ammunition Specialist: Complete a level by hitting enemies with more than 300 shots. (15G) 007: Complete the game on Agent 00 difficulty. (40G)
Goldeneye 007The official remake project from Rare, Microsoft and 4J Studios before being discreetly canceled, is one of the most crazy lost projects in the gaming industry. We have discussed this canceled Xbox 360 game at length over the years, with updates coming mainly in the form of increasingly detailed leaks – and this week’s is easily the biggest so far. The alleged barrier of the N64 update, so to speak, has burst, with a legitimate playable copy leaking.
A former Spanish game streamer, known as Graslu00, received the true GoldenEye key in the form of one of the game’s almost complete ROMs, made by Rare during the years 2010 for Xbox 360 consoles and then archived indefinitely. Graslu00 loaded the ROM into a PC emulator, confirmed it was real and pre-recorded a complete “00 Agent” game session (ie, the most difficult difficulty with the most demanding goals) before hosting a chat while showing filming to viewers on Friday. What got me thinking: how the hell did he get the ROM?
“I received the construction anonymously and was told to wait” until a certain date to reveal it, Graslu00 told Ars Technica in an email interview. The files came with a peculiar note: “Never say never, release soon, James.”
By the appearance of the Graslu00 channel, his years of Goldeneyeaffiliate streams may have caught the eye of a ROM leak, and your last two-hour video shows a clear N64 Goldeneye specialist in dealing with all your redone levels efficiently. Therefore, the video counts not only as the first independent shoot of this holy grail of the lost video games, but also as its first speedrun.
It’s not your father’s RCP90
If all of this is new to you, go back to my last part about the X360 Goldeneye 007 remake, which breaks your fundamentals. As I reported earlier, this is a note-by-note remake of the N64 classic, as opposed to a review, and it is so reliable that it includes a “switch graphics” button, similar to some remakes of Halo games. You can switch between the game’s original features and a completely new coat of paint (and much more realistic-looking actors, including a James Bond that finally looks like Pierce Brosnan) with the press of a single button.
Graslu00 chose not to test this feature in his filming, although in emails to Ars, he confirms that the graphic switch button works without engaging or pausing the game. (He admits that he noticed some graphical incompatibility bugs when switching, but says they are moderated.) For this two-hour video, Graslu00 chose not to show the switch because he wanted to keep the “flow” and prove that the canceled project is playable fact from start to finish … at least on the Xenia emulator (not to be confused with Goldeneye 007 character Xenia Onnatop). In emails with Ars, he states that the game runs identically on 360 hardware and is “signed as a retailer”, working more easily on emulators (and requiring a patch to work on 360 developer hardware). This means that its small number of bugs related to volume imbalances, assets that disappear and reappear and fictional textures are inherent in the build that it was provided anonymously, as opposed to a problem with emulators (although exactly which build remains obscure, since the menus do not include, say, a version number).
In the meantime, the full scope of the project has never been clearer than seen in this two-hour video. Each campaign level is not just beaten, but beaten deeply, with occasional pauses to linger over revised cabins, textures, props, and redesigned character faces – and the scale of this game’s improvements exceeds that of the Perfect Dark The remake of the X360 has been proven by elements like mountains completely remodeled in Dam, high resolution posters in the Archives and a total revision of the Egyptian of bonus level. Still, this video counts more as a speedrun than a careful review. Graslu00 clearly knows his Goldeneye, thanks to the high-speed machine gun, the mastery of manual aiming and the type of PP7 rapid fire shots that you would swear came from an RCP90.