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As you are all well aware, GoldenEye 007 made its way to the Switch Online Expansion Pack and Xbox Game Pass last week. These releases are extremely close to the original versions of the game, albeit with a much-improved resolution, widescreen and online play. This game’s arrival on modern platforms wouldn’t have been possible without the team at RARE creating the original N64 outing, but sadly, they weren’t contacted to help out with the re-release.

Over on Twitter, Former RARE employee and GoldenEye 007 composer Graeme Norgate shared some thoughts on the re-release, and also seemed disappointed to not be involved in any way.

Sad to think Goldeneye for Switch and Xbox was outsourced to 2 different devs. You could have got the old team back together for one more gig guys. We wouldn’t have let you down. Labour of loves are always better value than cash for mates

[Former RARE employee and GoldenEye 007 composer Graeme Norgate ]

Similar thoughts were shared by David Doak, another former RARE developer who helped bring GoldenEye 007 to life.

Obviously marvellous to see GE007 re-released and I hope people have a lot of fun with it! But yeh, bit shabby all round that we weren’t invited.

…I’ve had a number of messages asking me for more information about this. I know nothing. To be clear, to the best of my knowledge, none of the original dev team were involved, or consulted or benefit in any way from the reissue. So it goes.

[Former RARE dev, David Doak]

While the original developers are still all mentioned in the credits for GoldenEye 007, they had zero to do with this re-release. It certainly would have been nice to see at least some of the team get a chance to revisit their iconic title, but unfortunately, Microsoft and Nintendo didn’t believe that to be necessary.

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Comments (3)

kuribo

1y ago

I get their disappointment but it’s essentially a re-release of a ROM with some tweaking so there was likely no need to loop in original devs.

There was also likely a lot of legal back and forth to actually allow Goldeneye to re-release on both platforms and adding external contractors might have risked leaks or jeopardised the project.

Edited 1 time

the schaef

1y ago

@kuribo

They did add external contractors. The ports were sourced to developers. So there's no additional jeopardy in contracting certain specific persons.


There is a big difference between a single contract for one studio and a dozen plus contracts for people who are scattered everywhere around the industry or possibly not even in it. Just from a money standpoint, it makes no sense to do something like that.