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The canceled Xbox 360 version of Goldeneye 007 has now been laid bare – and this view of Pierce Brosnan’s virtual bungee jumping from the first level fence section is a good indicator of its reach. Some of the basic geometry is the same, while some major aspects have been reworked, especially the character models and background geometry.
Graslu00
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The dam and the surrounding mountains have never been so detailed.
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But other aspects remained largely intact, such as the menu system.
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Dam, intro sequence. It’s much less grainy and aliased than on N64.
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The camera pans to James Bond.
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Is that what I think?
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Let’s go work for England, James.
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This island at the end of Dam is much clearer in the X360 version. You still can’t do it, 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 reworked and no longer bring the game to its knees.
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Another type of “tank check”.
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If you don’t want to take out your sniper rifle in a snowy environment, much higher sight distances are a good thing.
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Familiar briefing interface.
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Touch-ups of pre-mission intros.
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It’s certainly a more polished model, though clearly not as high-fidelity as you might expect from the Xbox 360’s average price tag.
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Natalya looks very different with her new model.
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Updated screen animations can be found on in-game computers. Also note the fully rendered Russian keyboard.
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Fight time.
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The textures and models have been updated, but the animations remain the same as the 1996 original, so they’re still wacky ’90s robots (which suits me).
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A sign that this is a legitimate leak: This is a digitized version of longtime Xbox producer Ken Lobb circa 2014, around the time that production on this remake was nearing completion. (He also helped produce the original N64 as part of the Nintendo of America staff in the 90s.)
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An adventure in a dark jungle.
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Xenia didn’t stand a chance.
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New brosnanized character, but the silly elevator music remains.
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Get out of here! I try to minimize the losses here!
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The end credits (with a problem in the way they render a surrounding jungle) remain largely the same, with two tweaks. The first is the addition of a language specific to Xbox.
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And second, this obvious appeal to Bond’s rights holders.
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If you’ve clicked this far, then here’s a fun Easter Egg for you: a teaser of the Xbox 360 achievements of the never-before-seen game, provided to Ars by Graslu00.
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The other achievements are as follows. 00 Agent: Successfully complete the game on Secret Agent difficulty. (25G) Bullet Proof: Complete a level after collecting all body armor. (5G) Sprinter: Complete the game from start to finish in under an hour. (30G) Slapper: Complete a level without shooting a shot and after killing 5 guards. (10G) Agent: Complete a level on any difficulty. (5G) Bullet Shy: Complete a level without getting hit. (20G) Secret Agent: Complete the game on Agent difficulty. (15G) License to Kill: Complete any level after killing more than 50 guards. (10G) Dual Wield: Double wield any weapon. (5G) Ammo Expert: Complete a level that has hit enemies with over 300 shots. (15G) 007: Complete the game on 00 Agent difficulty. (40G)
Goldeneye 007Rare, Microsoft and 4J Studios’ official remake project, co-directed by Rare, Microsoft and 4J Studios before being quietly canceled, is one of the video game industry’s craziest lost projects. We’ve had a lot of discussion about this canceled Xbox 360 game over the years, with updates mostly coming in the form of increasingly detailed leaks – and this week’s is by far the biggest yet. The barrage of N64’s alleged update, so to speak, broke, with a legitimate playable copy leaking.
A longtime Spanish game streamer called Graslu00 received the real GoldenEye key in the form of one of the game’s nearly complete ROMs, made by Rare in the 2010s for Xbox 360 consoles, and then set aside indefinitely. Graslu00 loaded the ROM into a PC emulator, confirmed that it was real, and pre-recorded a full “00 Agent” game session (i.e. hardest difficulty with most required objectives) before to organize a discussion while showing the images to viewers on Friday. Which made me wonder: how the heck did he get the ROM?
“I was sent the build anonymously and told to wait” until a certain date to reveal it, Graslu00 tells Ars Technica in an email interview. The files came with a special note: “Never say never, release is coming soon, James.”
From the gaze of the Graslu00 channel, his years of Golden eye-affiliate streams may have caught the eye of a leaky ROM, and its latest two-hour video shows a clear N64 Golden eye expert tackling each level redone effectively. Therefore, the video counts not only as the first independent sequence in this holy grail of lost video games, but also as its very first speedrun.
Not your father’s RCP90
If this is all new to you, check back to my last article on the X360 Goldeneye 007 remake, which breaks down its basics. As I previously reported, this is a note-for-note remake of the classic N64, as opposed to a revision, and it’s so light-hearted that it includes a “Change Graphics” button, similar to some remakes. Halo game. You can switch between the original game assets and a whole new lick of paint (and much more realistic actors, including a James Bond who finally looks like Pierce Brosnan) with the push of a single button.
Graslu00 chooses not to test this feature in his images, although in emails to Ars he confirms that the graphical toggle button works without snagging or interrupting the game. (He admits that he noticed a few bugs in the game. ‘awesome graphics inconsistency when going back and forth, but says they’re light.) For this two hour video, Graslu00 chose not to show the flip-flop because he wanted to maintain the “flow” and prove that the project canceled is indeed playable 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 claims the game works identically on 360 hardware and is ‘signed up as retail’, thus running more easily on emulators (and requiring a patch to run on Developer 360 hardware. ). This means that its small number of bugs related to sound volume imbalances, disappearing and reappearing assets, and dummy textures are inherent in the version provided to it anonymously, as opposed to an issue with emulators (although the exact construction remains unclear, since the menus do not include, for example, a version number).
In the meantime, the full scope of the project has never been clearer than what seen in this two-hour video. Each campaign level is not only beaten but thoroughly beaten, with occasional breaks to linger over the reshaped skyboxes, textures, props, and character faces – and the scale of this game’s improvements exceeds that of the Dark perfect Remake of X360, as evidenced by things like completely remodeled mountains in Dam, higher resolution posters in the archive and a complete overhaul of the bonus level Egyptian. Yet this video counts more as a speedrun than careful analysis. Graslu00 clearly knows his Golden eye, thanks to the mastery of high-speed manual aiming and the kind of rapid fire PP7 you’d swear from an RCP90.
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