The video game Perfect Dark was set in the 2020’s, but now that the future is actually here where has the popular franchise gone? The original Perfect Dark game was developed by the studio Rare and released for the Nintendo 64 in 2000 to both player and critical acclaim. The game did well enough to achieve Nintendo’s ‘Player Choice’ award and is typically cited as one of the greatest video games ever released. There was even a sequel on the Xbox 360 in 2005 which did relatively well, despite critics feeling as though it did not live up to the expectations set by its predecessor.
The original Perfect Dark was a first person shooter which (along with its spiritual prequel GoldenEye 007 on the N64) completely changed the world of video games. Players guided protagonist Joanna Dark through a series of missions and spent the majority of the game shooting bad guys, deploying gadgets, and completing various objectives in order to prevent an alien invasion of Earth. Perfect Dark’s shooting mechanics and complex enemy AI made it revolutionary for the Nintendo 64 and the time period in which it released. The game even had several multiplayer options, allowing players to play cooperatively or competitively during either the story campaign or throughout Perfect Dark’s plethora of multiplayer modes, and it even received an HD remake for the Xbox 360.
A fan of the series posted on Twitter recently, “Thus begins 2020, the year Perfect Dark was set.” Although the user was likely referring to the prequel Perfect Dark Zero, both games do take place during the 2020’s. The game series is set in a very futuristic world which is quite different than current version of 2020, with technology and weapons having accelerated far past what humans are capable of creating at this moment. This was one of the features which made playing as Joanna Dark much more interesting for players at the time, since she has access to a plethora of advanced technologies.
The company behind Perfect Dark, Rare, is well known for having created games that were integral to a lot of gamers’ childhoods. Rare also worked on titles like Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong Country, and Viva Piñata, along with many others. After many years of working with Nintendo, the company was finally acquired by Microsoft in 2002. Despite receiving favorable reviews for most of the games produced for their new owner, Rare’s games, excluding the sequel title Perfect Dark Zero, tended to sell very poorly, and Microsoft finally restructured the company around 2010. From there Rare seemed to move away from their usual quirky and innovative franchises and tended to work on Kinect games and multiplayer titles like Sea of Thieves.
Perfect Dark was innovative and groundbreaking when it came out over 20 years ago, and it’s strange Microsoft would buy a company just to later discard their more popular franchises. A large portion of gamers can remember late nights with their friends playing the deathmatch mode and marveling at the amazing visuals and game mechanics. To this day there are still those who try and beat speedruns or break other records centered around the game. Maybe one day Rare will return to its roots and grace fans with another Perfect Dark entry, but for now it seems like they are content to work within Microsoft’s umbrella on other unrelated titles. Until such a return does occur, gamers will have to suffice with dusting off their old Nintendo 64 or Xbox 360 systems.
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Source: Twitter
