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James Bond 007 (1984)

Bond finally arrived in an official video game capacity in 1984, courtesy of Parker Brothers. The game grouped several 007 adventures (Diamonds Are Forever, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker and For Your Eyes Only) together. Yet despite including elements from each movie, it was essentially the same game throughout: an unsatisfying and tricky mashup of the arcade games Moon Patrol and Scramble, with the player controlling Bond’s amphibious Lotus from The Spy Who Loved Me. Obscure pub trivia fact: due to the dispute between Bond producers Eon and screenwriter Kevin McClory, the Diamonds Are Forever segment replaced Blofeld with a villain named Seraffino.

A View to a Kill: The Computer Game (1985)

The 14th James Bond movie, and Roger Moore’s last in the role, became the source for British publisher Domark’s ambitious first collaboration with the spy series. A View To a Kill features three diverse levels – a Paris car chase, a city hall fire and a Silicon Valley mine – that reflect important scenes from the film. Despite replicating the famous opening sequence and music – dum di-di dum dum! – the game was hampered by technical issues and almost bankrupted its publisher.

Live and Let Die (1988)

Originally known as Aquablast, this game’s similarity to the speedboat sections of Roger Moore’s Bond debut led Domark to purchase it from rival publisher Elite Systems. Consequently it bears virtually zero resemblance to the movie beyond its river-based scenario, but it was good enough to be praised as the best Bond game to date (yes – low bar, we know). Licence to Kill from 1989 improved things further, presenting multiple scenarios from the film, including Bond’s death-defying capture of the drug lord’s plane.

Q’s Armoury (1989)

With the Sinclair Spectrum entering its twilight years, owners Amstrad released the James Bond 007 Action Pack, bundling the computer with a cheap lightgun, the Magnum Light Phaser. Two Bond lightgun games were hastily compiled, with little connection to the movies, while Domark’s The Living Daylights was repackaged as Mission Zero.

The Spy Who Loved Me (1990)

With no new movie, the next year saw another archive Bond movie adaptation appear. After some generic overhead vehicle levels (drawing on the Sega arcade game Spy Hunter, itself heavily influenced by James Bond), the game culminated in a shootout inside villain Stromberg’s base. With 16-bit computers now established, developers could include realistic cutscenes, ensuring greater relevance to the source material. For example, complete The Spy Who Loved Me on the Commodore Amiga or Atari ST, and you’re “rewarded” with, er, an image of Bond in bed with Russian spy Anya Amasova.

007 James Bond: The Stealth Affair (1990)

Delphine’s point-and-click homage to Bond was given an official licence in the US, leading to the agent’s puzzling shift from MI6 to the CIA, among other inconsistencies. A year later, THQ published NES and SNES platform games based on the James Bond Jr cartoons, in which you play Bond’s nephew. Just what would Ian Fleming have made of it all?

James Bond 007: The Duel (1993)

With the film series languishing in development hell, Domark released this platform game for the Sega consoles. Boasting an original storyline, it was the final Domark Bond game, and the final appearance of Timothy Dalton as the spy, four years post Licence to Kill. The Duel keeps a foot in the movies with characters reminiscent of henchmen Jaws and Oddjob.

GoldenEye 007 (1997)

With due respect to all that came before it, Rare’s GoldenEye set the standard for James Bond video games. No one cared that it was two years after the triumphant debut of Pierce Brosnan as the ruthless MI6 agent; this was the Bond game we’d all been waiting for. Accurate to the plot of the film – in fact, it greatly helped if you’d seen it – plus highly detailed and immersive in terms of graphics and audio, GoldenEye became a killer selling point for the Nintendo 64. Its multiplayer mode helped usher in a newfound appreciation for the first-person shooter genre on consoles.

Tomorrow Never Dies (1999)

With Electronic Arts inking a deal with MGM, work on a game based on Brosnan’s second Bond movie had already begun when GoldenEye appeared, prompting its developers to craft a different, third-person experience, albeit one that still closely follows the movie’s plot. It’s a competent action game that, unfortunately, trailed a brilliant one. The World Is Not Enough followed in 2000 from the same team, shifting the action to first person.

007 Racing (2000)

The chance to drive classic cars such as the Aston Martin DB5 and Lotus Esprit had plenty of potential, but sadly, like the film series itself, Bond games were beginning to border on the mediocre. As with 2004’s GoldenEye Rogue Agent, 007 Racing is classified as a non-canon spinoff.

James Bond 007: Agent Under Fire (2001) and James Bond 007: Nightfire (2002)

When Electronic Arts cancelled the PlayStation 2 and PC versions of The World Is Not Enough – reportedly due to time constraints – it forged ahead with a new series unrelated to the movies past or present. While elements from the films remained, most notably Bond’s BMW Z8, Agent Under Fire focused on a strained cloning plot, mixed with common Bond tropes such as gadgets and secret lairs. Having skipped Agent Under Fire, Brosnan’s likeness appeared in its followup, Nightfire, albeit voiced by Maxwell Caulfield.

From Russia With Love (2005)

As the movie series took another break, Bond games went back to the 1960s. Key to the game’s development was securing Sean Connery himself for the role of Bond. However, names were again changed to avoid any legal difficulties arising from the ongoing Eon/McClory dispute, such as the criminal organisation Spectre becoming Octopus. Necessary gaming tropes forced Bond to wield all manner of weaponry in addition to his Walther PPK, and while From Russia With Love diverges from the movie’s plot – particularly the conclusion and Red Grant’s death – it definitely retains the spirit of the original.

Quantum of Solace (2008)

With the licence (to kill) now with Activision, it produced a game based on the latest movie, with flashback scenes set in the previous film, Casino Royale. Think Bond, with a Gears of War-style cover system and Halo health regeneration, only not as good as either of those games, and you’re pretty much there.

GoldenEye 007 (2010)

Released alongside third-person shooter Blood Stone, Activision attempted to evoke the spirit of the Rare classic with this muddled update of the 1995 movie. Daniel Craig replaced Brosnan, and the date was shifted to between Quantum of Solace and Skyfall, long after the end of the cold war. Despite the idiosyncrasies, it stands today as the best-rated Bond of the Activision era.

007 Legends (2012)

It was a good idea in theory, akin to Star Wars’s Battlefront series: present a collection of famous scenarios from each Bond actor’s most popular movie, thrusting the player straight into the action. But the result felt like a bland Call of Duty reskin set over a series of unconnected levels, and developer Eurocom closed its doors a few months later, with Activision announcing it was stepping away from the franchise soon after. It would be 14 years before we’d finally get another Bond game …

007 First Light (2026)

... but it was worth the wait! Presenting a new spin on the familiar character, IO Interactive’s First Light has reinvigorated the franchise, blending tense stealth with heart-pounding set pieces, erasing the memory of its often-rather-dodgy predecessors, and giving Bond fans hope for the future.