GoldenEye 007 originally released on the Nintendo 64 in 1997, and since then, there have been serious attempts to remake, or at least remaster it. However, the same obstacle gets in the way: Nintendo, who happens to be the publisher of the game.
Recently, Nightdive Studios, who has many quality remasters of ‘90s-era FPS games under their belt, had aspirations to remaster GoldenEye and make it playable on modern consoles, or at least Nintendo consoles. Here’s what happened according to the guys at Nightdive in an interview with VGC:
Before we kick off, as a fan, I have to ask: What happened with your proposed GoldenEye 007 remaster?
Stephen Kick: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was a real heartbreak, just because we had put in a lot of effort into pitching that. We had a dream team all set up, and we got by the MGM/Eon side of things. That took a year. And then it was: “Ok, we’re ready to go.” “Well, did you guys get the rights from Nintendo?” “Wait a minute, we thought you had that.” And then Nintendo was like, “yeah, no third party’s ever going to touch any Nintendo stuff, ever”.
It’s unfortunate, but not surprising, that Nintendo exercises such a stranglehold on one of the most beloved first-person shooters ever made – but they did, after all, publish GoldenEye back when Rare, the developer, was a Nintendo second-party studio and making all their games for Nintendo systems. Microsoft had a full modernized remake of GoldenEye finished during the Xbox 360 era, but Nintendo found out about it and shut it down as well.
Given their track record, Nightdive Studios undoubtedly would’ve treated GoldenEye with the care and attention to detail it deserves, but Nintendo will not allow any developer who is not under their direct control touch any of their content. That’s just how Nintendo rolls.
The Gamer's Standard 
*Me seeing this on Good Friday and avoiding not swearing like a truck driver*
I swear, that challenge is harder than Doom (2016) on Nightmare Mode with inverted mouse controls. GoldenEye 007 (1997) is the one FPS from that era that desperately needs a remaster will likely never get one. Playing that game on PC natively with mouse and keyboard controls would make the game significantly better. Besides Metroid Prime, I cannot play FPS games with a controller.
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Well, Switch 2 does have mouse control options in its Joy-Con, and Goldeneye is on Nintendo Switch Online, so there’s a possibility Nintendo could add Joy-Con mouse controls to it someday.
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That’s true. I was saying that because Nightdive Studios likely wanted to release the remaster on PC (although Nintendo won’t like that since they published the game initially). It’s too bad Nintendo has a reluctantance to releasing older games on PC. If they had a storefront on PC similar to GOG where they released legacy titles (I’ll say games that are at least 20 years old, even including their Arcade games and the Game & Watch Games), that would be amazing. I would install that service as fast as I installed the original Doom (1993) to my computer. Lol
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