In 1997, in terms of first-person shooters on console games, it was impossible to beat the James Bond game GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64. But in the year 2000, five years after GoldenEye, N64 dropped a game that essentially tried to outdo Bond without actually being a Bond game outright. And, it basically succeeded. The game was Perfect Dark, and in many ways, it perfected the concept of a first-person shooter. Here’s why the game was incredible for its time, how it basically topped GoldenEye, and why it still holds up today.
Released just three years after GoldenEye 007, and created by the same developer, Rare, N64 players were well aware that Perfect Dark was supposed to be a big deal. Oddly enough, Rare wanted to do a follow-up shooter based on the 1998 Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies, but Electronic Arts got the contract and created a forgettable third-person Bond game instead. Would Perfect Dark have seen the light of day had that not happened? It’s unclear. Some reports indicate that the developers weren’t too upset and were eager to move on from the Bond universe.
Instead of trying to copy Bond outright, Rare smartly created a new character and an entirely new continuity. Perfect Dark focuses on Joanna Dark, an agent in the near future (2023) who works for the Carrington Institute. In this world, humans are battling aliens known as the Maians and Skedar. Different corporations are involved in helping the alien factions, and many of the missions involve trying to obtain certain secret technology. Overall, the aesthetic of the game leaned into a 1990s idea of cyberpunk, a kind of offshoot of The Matrix mixed with Æon Flux. Even the music for the game, composed by Grant Kirkhope, was evocative of Blade Runner and The X-Files.
But, because this was Rare, the engine and gameplay were basically a souped-up version of GoldenEye, but with an immersive sci-fi twist. Arguably, this made playing the single-player campaigns a bit more fun than GoldenEye because you weren’t just recreating moments from a 1995 movie. Perfect Dark’ sci-fi story wasn’t the most brilliant thing ever, but it was ideally suited for its time, and suggested a complexity that many other first-person shooters never offer.
And, of course, like GoldenEye, the multiplayer aspect of Perfect Dark was top-notch. Of all the game’s features, this aspect has definitely held up the best. When it comes to a four-player battle, Perfect Dark was smoother and slicker than GoldenEye, even if it invented all-new characters to make the action happen.
In 2025, it’s hard to fully recreate the multiplayer aspect of the Perfect Dark and GoldenEye era, if only because back then all four players had to be in the same room, a feature which is perceived as limiting today. But, for the N64 loyalists who remember this first release of the various games, Perfect Dark represented a moment in which the style of GoldenEye was sublimated into something more original, and technically, a better game. Perfect Dark may not have been as memorable as GoldenEye, but considering it created its own world, its greatness and impact are super impressive.
Today, gamers are waiting for the moment a new Perfect Dark arrives. After the original game was remastered in 2010 for Xbox 360, there has been hope for an entirely new version of Perfect Dark. In 2020, developers the Initiative and Crystal Dynamics confirmed new Perfect Dark was coming. In 2024, it was reported that the reboot was in “a very rough state.” However, at the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2024, gameplay for the rebooted Perfect Dark was revealed.
Could Perfect Dark be reborn soon? It was a game that redefined a genre twenty-five years ago, and totally deserves a renaissance.
