GoldenEye on Xbox could be a thing after all according to leaked achievements

GoldenEye 007 box — There was meant to be an Xbox GoldenEye remaster but it never officially released (pic: Nintendo/Rare)

A list of Xbox achievements for GoldenEye 007 have appeared online, fuelling speculation of a re-release or remaster.

After Microsoft bought out Rare, there were plans to have it remaster GoldenEye 007, Rare’s 1997 Nintendo 64 shooter based on the James Bond film of the same name, for Xbox Live Arcade.

The project was ultimately scrapped, although a near-enough complete build was leaked onto the Internet last year. Now, it’s suspected that Microsoft and Rare are making another attempt to get GoldenEye on Xbox.

TrueAchievements, a website which tracks achievement activity across the Xbox platforms by scanning users’ GamerTags, picked up and shared an achievement list for GoldenEye.

The list consists of 55 achievements and, so far, only two players have acquired any of them. Their usernames, BIGsheep and Waylander73, happen to match the Twitter handles for coder James Thomas and live operations manager Rich Cousins, both of whom work at Rare.

Assuming GoldenEye is coming to Xbox, it’s still unclear whether it will be a simple port, an enhanced remaster, or a complete remake. There’s currently no mention of it on the Xbox digital storefront and searching for it only brings up GoldenEye Reloaded, the 2011 remake which swapped Pierce Brosnan for Daniel Craig.

Despite its popularity, the original GoldenEye hasn’t seen any sort of re-release. Both Microsoft and the game’s original publisher, Nintendo, would need to reach an agreement and the likenesses of the actors, such as Brosnan, Sean Bean, and Robbie Coltrane, would also have to be renegotiated.

On top of that, neither Microsoft nor Nintendo hold the video game license for James Bond. It used to belong to Activision, but now it’s currently in the hands of IO Interactive, which is developing its own original Bond video game.

This achievement list isn’t the only evidence to suggest some sort of comeback for GoldenEye. Back in November, it was removed from a list of banned games in Germany at someone’s suggestion.

Some believe that it was Nintendo who requested it and that it and Microsoft are working together to bring GoldenEye to the Nintendo Switch Online service.

This happened only a couple of months after Nintendo announced that Nintendo 64 games would be added to the service, one of which will be Rare’s Banjo-Kazooie, further highlighting Nintendo and Microsoft’s strong working relationship.