Its not the devs

Its the publishers who decide this bs

Don’t ever pre-order a digital download.

It’s not like they’re going to run out of copies. You can just buy it (or not) when it comes out.

Same(cause I don’t like they used Wwise and maybe azure playfab)
It’s also kinda expensive

The best version of Goldeneye is actually the unreleased Xbox 360 remaster, which leaked a few years ago, emulated using Xenia or running on native hardware. It’s basically the same as the Perfect Dark Remaster: Gently updated visuals (with the customary toggle for original graphics), modern twin-stick controls and 1080p/60 on Xbox 360, which means it has really low hardware requirements in an emulator. Unlike the Perfect Dark remaster, it runs flawlessly (from what I can tell) in said emulator.

The original version of this game feels very dated, but it’s remarkable how well it holds up with just these relatively minor improvements.

In case you’re wondering why it was never officially released: The licensing situation was a mess. Rare developed it, Nintendo published it, but the IP belonged to the Broccoli family (before Amazon gobbled it up). Rare was bought by Microsoft, but they kept working with Nintendo for years afterwards. They managed to come to an agreement with Perfect Dark (and most other Rare titles), but with the James Bond license, it was never figured out, in part, because it was licensed to other game publishers - namely EA and then Activision - over the years. There must have been some progress in the negotiations, because why else would you develop a remaster to near 100% completion, but then it had to be shelved. It was only recently that a port of the original N64 game, not the remaster, was released for current and last-gen Xbox and Switch, with online multiplayer.

There’s one other interpretation of this game: Eurocom developed a rather excellent remake for the Wii (Goldeneye 007), which is one of the best shooters for the platform (my second favorite after Red Steel 2 and just ahead of Dead Space Extraction). It’s more linear and imitates contemporary Call of Duty’s gameplay, scripting and pace to a T (unsurprising, given that it was under Activision), but I still enjoyed it a lot as a supplement to the original, not a replacement.

The stealth gameplay in particular is excellent and the way it uses the WiiMote for gadgets is extremely clever - but you could also use normal twin-stick controls. Daniel Craig works surprisingly well in this role and setting. It was later remastered for Xbox 360 and PS3 with shinier visuals (Goldeneye 007 Reloaded). Reviews on those platforms were a bit worse (low to mid 70s instead of low to mid 80s), likely because it faced far more significant competition in the genre. Still decent though - and on PS3, you can even play it with Sony’s copy of the Wii remote. While I have emulated the Wii original (way back when, when Wii emulation was nowhere near as good as it is now), I haven’t tried it with the Xbox 360 and PS3 port, which I’ve only played on original hardware. It’s obviously not just prettier on these more powerful systems, but also runs at a more stable - if not perfect - frame rate.

N64 emulation is fine, but you might still want to use a CRT monitor or a filter to give it that effect.

But honestly, I’ve never had an issue with emulating n64 since like 2010. I’m emulating switch games and they run better on my pc than they would natively, and modding is easier too.

It does make the Steam Deck offline experience better, since Denuvo ones are the games I’ve occasionally encountered it needing to be reactivated to play.

Without this bullshit malware, it’s probably running far more efficiently and hitting better, more consistent framerates. So … yes.

Game is very good as is.

I liked it. It was no Hitman, but it scratched the itch and the extra constraints for being an honorable agent were cool.