Nintendo Thwarted Nightdive’s GoldenEye 007 Remaster Plans, CEO Confirm
For Nintendo's Eyes Only: Why the GoldenEye Remaster Stalled.
The saga of GoldenEye 007 on modern platforms took another turn this week, with fresh details emerging about a potential remaster that never saw the light of day. Stephen Kick, CEO of specialist remastering house Nightdive Studios, revealed that his company had put considerable effort into pitching a full remaster of the beloved Nintendo 64 shooter, only to be blocked at the final hurdle by Nintendo itself.
Speaking in an interview with Video Games Chronicle, Kick described the failed project as "a real heartbreak". His team, assembled specifically for the task, spent a year securing the necessary rights from the James Bond licence holders, MGM/Eon. With that complex part seemingly resolved, Kick recalled the conversation shifting: "Ok, we’re ready to go." "Well, did you guys get the rights from Nintendo?" "Wait a minute, we thought you had that." According to Kick, Nintendo's response was unequivocal: "yeah, no third party’s ever going to touch any Nintendo stuff, ever”.
This stance aligns with comments Kick made back in 2022, where he mentioned Nintendo being "gun shy" about working with third-party developers on remasters of its catalogue, despite Nightdive having previously brought the first N64 titles (Turok) to the Nintendo Switch.Nightdive's director of business development, Larry Kuperman, offered a slightly more diplomatic perspective in the same VGC interview, suggesting Nintendo adheres strictly to a "very successful business philosophy" that makes exceptions difficult, even if the resulting official re-release was, in his carefully chosen words, "kind of minimal". Kick also confirmed ongoing interest in remastering the GameCube cult classic Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem, another Nintendo-published title that seems unlikely to receive Nightdive's touch under current circumstances.
Ultimately, the remaster project collapsed. Instead, a deal was struck between Nintendo, MGM/Eon, and Microsoft, leading to the original N64 version of GoldenEye 007 being released on Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack and Xbox Game Pass on 27 January 2023. While the availability of the original game is welcome after years of licensing limbo, fans are left pondering what might have been had Nightdive, now a subsidiary of Atari, been given the licence to apply their remastering expertise, as seen with titles like System Shock and Star Wars: Dark Forces.
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