Rare: GoldenEye 007 is in No Man’s Land

Although gamers want to play through the legendary Nintendo 64 shooter GoldenEye 007 again, licensing issues and other problems have kept Rare from bringing the game to either Xbox Live Arcade or the Wii Shop Channel.

“The ball’s not in anybody at Rare’s court really,” said Rare senior engineer Nick Burton. “It’s squarely in the license holders’ courts. It’s a shame. It’s kind of locked in this no man’s land. There’s nothing on [Xbox] Live Arcade, there’s nothing on Wii.”

A XBLA port was developed, however, it wasn’t released because Rare could not acquire the rights from Nintendo, which originally published the game.

“You’ve got the guys that own the license to the gaming rights now, the guys that have the licence to Bond as an IP, and there are umpteen licensees,” he continued. “You have to treat something that’s not seen the light of day as a prototype. I’ve had, what, four or five things that never happened. It’s funny that we don’t even talk about them a lot of the time, because you think, well, we might revisit it.”