Nightdive Studios Wanted to Remaster Iconic Nintendo 64 Game

Nightdive Studios has recently confirmed its previous plans to remaster one of the Nintendo 64’s most iconic games. Unfortunately, after a confident pitch, the team’s plans were shot down in flames. As Nintendo’s fifth-generation console, a successor to the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, the Nintendo 64 housed a plethora of unforgettable games, including the launch title Super Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Based in Vancouver, Washington, and founded by Stephen and Alix Kick, Nightdive Studios is known for securing the rights to abandonware video games, remastering them, and re-releasing projects for modern consoles. One talking point from the studio recently concerned Nightdive Studios’ complicated development remastering System Shock 3, explaining that the game’s future is currently uncertain.

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In an interview with VGC, Nightdive head Kick revealed the team had devised a solid plan to remaster the acclaimed GoldenEye 007, but after pitching to Nintendo, the publisher said, “Yeah, no third party’s ever going to touch any Nintendo stuff, ever,” and the team failed to gain permission. GoldenEye 007 is one of the most influential FPS games worth playing for its importance to the genre, joining the original Doom, Half-Life, and Wolfenstein 3D, and Nightdive even had the James Bond rights owner, MGM/Eon, on board for the remaster’s development. Kick explained Nintendo’s reasoning was “kind of minimal,” which was a major blow for Nightdive considering the team put “a lot of effort” into the pitch.

Nightdive Studios Once Pitched a GoldenEye 007 Remaster to Nintendo

GoldenEye 007 joins the Nintendo Switch’s catalog of Nintendo 64 games, and during the publisher’s recent Direct showcase covering the successor console, it was confirmed that the Nintendo 64 games will be getting new features on the Switch 2 when it launches on June 5, 2025, including customized button mapping, a rewind option, and a retro filter. GoldenEye 007 was first released in 1997, developed by Rare and published by Nintendo, and the story was based on the 1995 James Bond film of the same name. Players complete a series of levels to take down enemies and complete objectives, and a multiplayer mode allows up to four players to enter into deathmatch scenarios.

The studio’s plate is never empty, that’s for certain, as Nightdive wants to remaster Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games in the future, and the team has been asking gamers for their input on which titles to revive. The studio has remade Turok 3, Star Wars: Dark Forces, The Thing, Quake 2, and much more to date, and some of the community’s requests for remasters include Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, The Darkness, and Yakuza: Dead Souls.

GoldenEye 007

Systems

7/10

Released

August 25, 1997

ESRB

T for Teen: Animated Blood, Animated Violence

Publisher(s)

Nintendo

Engine

EngineX

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