Who Really Owns ‘GoldenEye 007’?

It’s not a secret that GOLDENEYE 007 for Nintendo 64 is the game everyone doing a James Bond video game wanted to do, at least those making a Bond first-person shooter.

Released in August 1997, some two years after the eponymous source film and Pierce Brosnan’s 007 debut came out in November 1995, this video game was a critical and commercial success, selling well over eight million units worldwide and selling more units in 1998 and 1999 than during its release year.

Although for different reasons the game hit the stores in 1997, the project began in November 1994. The film’s screenplay had been locked in by then, and Pierce Brosnan had been announced as Bond five months before. The production cleared an old Rolls-Royce factory at Leavesden and turned it into a film studio to shoot most of the interiors, it was in that place where an event was held on January 22, 1995, to announce the beginning of production. Brosnan introduced the main cast to the world press, and some people involved with the game were in attendance. Other developers then visited the set to photograph blueprints of the sets designed by Peter Lamont and the costumes designed by Lindy Hemming, so that their video game replicas would look as faithful as possible in the polygonal structures of the Nintendo 64.

Little is known about the deal between EON’s holding Danjaq (which protects the Bond IP) and Nintendo. Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of the Nipponese game company, had obtained the James Bond licence. He pitched the idea to do a video game of the upcoming Bond film to Rare, the Twycross-based company that also did KILLER INSTINCT for Super Nintendo, to develop a video game on the upcoming Bond film. Rare agreed, with Martin Hollis offering himself to direct the project.

Quoted in the book THE GOLDEN GAMES OF BOND, former MGM/UA Vice-president Jeff Kleeman claims to be unsure regarding whether it was EON or MGM who wanted the game to be done. “I do know that neither party thought of it as particularly significant at the moment, which is why neither side resisted making the deal,” he said. Back in the day, licensed video games were mostly seen as mere toys to promote the product and they were hardly successful, with most developers protesting at the limitations imposed by the copyright holders, which forced them to make stages and levels based on material written by someone else which they couldn’t control in their favour, design-wise.

Today, GOLDENEYE 007 stands out among other James Bond games for the freedom it offers to the player. Maps weren’t built around objectives: the player could do an extensive exploration of a level. There were no restrictions that forced the player to use stealth and the game would continue if there were casualties. There were also considerable levels of blood and violence, a reason for which the game was banned in Germany.

GOLDENEYE 007 went under the radar of EON and Danjaq for some time until they actually checked the game out of its popularity. They weren’t happy to see Ian Fleming’s spy being reduced to a hand with a gun shooting things (according to them) and decided to oversee how Bond was represented in future games, imposing a series of requirements that would begin with TOMORROW NEVER DIES – a 1999 title based on Brosnan’s second Bond film from 1997, developed by Black Ops and distributed by Electronic Arts for PlayStation. These new rules meant the exclusion of blood and the immediate interruption of a mission whenever a civilian was killed or hurt, and aimed to increase the espionage element in the Bond games to encourage the player to use non-lethal methods.

Long story short: game developers wanted to replicate the free-roaming style of GOLDENEYE as they were well aware of its popularity; Danjaq didn’t want to, feeling it undermined the representation of Bond.

This would be evident with the cancellation of the Xbox Live Arcade remaster of GOLDENEYE 007 in 2008. By late 2006, a small team led by Mark Edmonds and Chris Tilton began working at Rare (now controlled by Microsoft) on a high-definition version of the game for XBLA. According to Tilston, it was former Nintendo of America executive Ken Lobb –the man who suggested the original game to be a first-person shooter instead of the on-rails game it was meant to be– who had contact with Nintendo and they told him to “do whatever they want” with GOLDENEYE 007 on Xbox, since Nintendo was already working on a Wii version based on the story of the 1995 film.

Rare had saved the source code of the N64 game and started rebuilding those for XBLA. “It was intended for fans of the first game and to improve it in ways we could, while still staying faithful to that original game,” Edmonds told Video Games Chronicle. The team were sure they got the green light with everything, even though there wasn’t a contract signed and they weren’t aware of the legal side of the project. The official word on its cancellation is that “someone high up” at Nintendo turned down the idea because a Nintendo game should not come out on a Microsoft console, and that EON and Danjaq never interfered with this project.

However, those who know Bond's history have doubts regarding this version.

GOLDENEYE 007 is an adaptation of a James Bond film, produced by Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, owners of EON. The levels have been built based on the sets of the 1995 film, the characters came out of that film, and everything in the game belongs to a script by Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein, based on a story by Michael France. EON owns everything related to the film, which is why –for example– none of the writers could make a Xenia Onatopp or Boris Grishenko spin-off without getting the approval of EON first even if they had created those characters since EON has their rights.

There were two ill-fated unofficial attempts to recreate GOLDENEYE 007 for PC recently. GOLDENEYE 25 was meant to be released in 2022 and was a recreation of the 1997 game on the UNREAL 4 engine. A cease and desist letter was sent to the developers in 2020 and they turned their title into a different spy first-person shooter. In 2021, a user recreated all the levels from Dam to Cradle into FAR CRY 5. Shortly afterwards, the game was taken down by Ubisoft and it was reinstated once the user removed all references to the plot points and characters of the 1995 film (he renamed it “GoldenCry”). In both cases, the cease and desist letters have been sent by MGM – not by Nintendo or Rare. This makes a case for the ones not wanting a proper GOLDENEYE 007 remaster being on the side of those who control the copyright of the film and not the video game.

Here comes a brief history lesson spanning more than sixty years.

In 1961, Albert R Broccoli and Harry Saltzman founded EON to produce the James Bond films, with United Artists taking the distribution deal. Due to several discrepancies between the two and Saltzman struggling with debts, the Canadian co-producer stepped down, selling his share of Bond to United Artists in 1975. From that moment on, the Bond films would be produced by Broccoli and United Artists would own half of the character – although creative decisions (such as the casting of a new Bond actor) would be taken by EON. In 1981, United Artists was bought by MGM. This restricted EON from doing any James Bond film outside MGM, and that frequently led to several delays between films whenever Leo The Lion had a couple of financial hiccups (Giancarlo Paretti’s takeover of the company in 1990 was one of the things that delayed the release of the film that would become GOLDENEYE, for example).

Another fact to underline is that when it comes to fan projects like MARIO ROYALE, the C&D letter was sent by Nintendo because they own Super Mario. The Japanese company has also acted against several Mario and Zelda mods, but they never did anything against the many ROM-based modifications of GOLDENEYE 007. The warnings came from MGM and they observed the unauthorized use of elements belonging to their 1995 film and not to anything that is strictly related to the game per se.

The point is that any final say regarding the use of the James Bond IP in video games has always belonged to EON/Danjaq or MGM. Shortly after the cancelled XBLA version leaked in February 2021, an official remaster of GOLDENEYE 007 came out for Xbox Game Pass and Nintendo Switch in 2023. Interestingly, as Graslu00 pointed out, Nintendo is never listed on the legal disclaimers on the Xbox version, only MGM and Danjaq. The end credits of the game retain the credits for the NOA staff as well as the "Presented for Nintendo" and "Filmed in NINTENDOVISION", but they add the new copyright details – until more information comes out, it is still uncertain if Microsoft was allowed to make alterations on the credits (other than the new legal text) or not.

On the Nintendo Switch version, the Nintendo copyright only lists 1997 and not 1997-2003 like Danjaq's does.

Take also into account that the only person who according to various sources has expressed her disdain for GOLDENEYE 007 was Barbara Broccoli, and this is why the other games tied in some form to the 1995 film didn’t share the same “carefree” spirit regarding Bond’s interaction with his universe. GOLDENEYE: ROGUE AGENT, a spin-off starring a rogue MI6 agent joining Auric Goldfinger’s side, was made under the idea that if the protagonist was a villain he could be allowed to commit the excesses Broccoli didn’t want to see – and even that game feels extremely linear in comparison to the 1997 title. Similarly, Activision’s version of GOLDENEYE 007 for Wii and its “reloaded” HD version for PS3 and Xbox 360 was riddled with triggered events, and it accomplished all the guidelines imposed by Danjaq which severely restricted trigger-happy shooter fans.

Now that Amazon has full creative control of the James Bond IP, it’ll be interesting to see if this opens the door for an official release of the XBLA version or a different sort of remaster in the near future.