The Original

Perfect Dark came out for the Nintendo 64 in May of 2000. The $70 price tag was a bit steep for a high school student, but I’d heard good things: a friend insisted the violence was as realistic as anything in Saving Private Ryan. Violence of any kind was rare for a Nintendo game back then. That alone was worth the price of admission (for an immature seventeen year old).

It wasn’t until I got home from the store that I noticed the warning label on the front of the box:

This worried me a little, but how bad could a N64 game be without an Expansion Pak, which I hadn’t even heard of before then? DOOM 64 was awesome on the same console. If Perfect Dark without an Expansion Pak was half as good as DOOM 64, then that was $70 well spent, right? Unfortunately, without the Expansion Pak, the N64 could only run a stripped down version of the Combat Simulator (the multiplayer mode), minus bot AI and all levels but one. Worse, the game was rendered in a reduced viewport, surrounded by a rather annoying black border.

I was reluctant to buy the Expansion Pak as I was still reeling from the short-lived 32X add-on for the Sega Genesis. But without the $30 Expansion Pak, Perfect Dark was worthless. So, having spent my last dollar on the game, I borrowed money from my parents and bit the bullet. When all was said and done, I was a teenage plumber who had a hundred bucks invested in this nonsense, which, back then, felt more like five hundred dollars.

The Expansion Pak, of course, was worth the money. The other two games that required the add-on (Donkey Kong 64 and Majora’s Mask) were N64 essentials as well. In the years since, people have critiqued Perfect Dark for its frame rate issues, but that just wasn’t something teenagers cared about back then. Okay, so maybe the game wasn’t as realistic as Saving Private Ryan, but for 2000’s standards, everything in and about the game was like nothing we’d ever seen before (and yes, I did play my fair share of Goldeneye, too… those who prefer it to Perfect Dark almost certainly did not play enough Perfect Dark). The Combat Simulator offered any combination of local versus and/or co-op you wanted (something games are sadly neglecting these days) and I’ve never seen more customization options in my life… and still haven’t, short of modding a game yourself.

So in 2001, a friend and I were logging countless hours, neglecting our high school responsibilities, and becoming so undeniably nerdy that we videotaped our matches (on 8-hour VHS cassettes) so that we could review and improve our tactics. The game was inexhaustible. If you ever got bored, you simply dreamed up and implemented a new custom scenario. Or you could spend your time knocking out one of the thirty challenges, which were brutally difficult but necessary for unlocking everything in the Combat Simulator (I think we managed to beat twenty-eight, if memory serves me correctly). During one marathon gaming session that lasted all day and half the night, a blood vessel burst in my eyeball.

Perfect Dark was taking over my life. My health was suffering. So was my social life. I couldn’t wait for the sequel.

Perfect Dark 2

We kept hearing rumors. Nintendo came out with their next console, the Gamecube, and I bought one because I was certain Perfect Dark 2 would be announced for the console “any day now.” It never was. My friend and I were deeply disappointed to learn that Microsoft bought Rare, the company that made and published Perfect Dark, and it would likely be on the XBOX instead. (Concept art from the Gamecube days supposedly still exists, but I’ve had little luck finding it as it’s usually mislabeled XBOX art.)

I was heartbroken. Almost every shooter I tried on the Gamecube only reminded me that 99% of games would never reach the perfection of Perfect Dark. I broke down and bought an XBOX around the middle of its life cycle, praying that Halo and the many racing games would hold me over until Perfect Dark 2 released. Then I wanted to shoot myself when it was announced that the next installment would be a launch title on Microsoft’s next console, the XBOX 360.

Naturally, I went out and bought one of those, too.

Perfect Dark Zero

The next game, as it turned out, was not a sequel. It was a prequel and most of the developers were gone by then. What the new team came up with wasn’t a terrible game, but it was nowhere near Perfect… it wasn’t even as good as the N64’s Goldeneye. At the time, I thought it was a disappointing imitation having very little in common with the original. Sure, you assumed the same character, got to do a lot of the same things in a similar manner, but the multiplayer was geared for online play rather than local. Meanwhile, the plethora of customization options were reduced tremendously. Yet again, fans of the source material—many of whom preferred gaming on their couches—were screwed.

It was clear: Perfect Dark as I knew it was dead.

Perfect Dark Redeux

So how do you please fans of the source material? Re-release Perfect Dark in HD on a next-gen console with the original multiplayer intact. Last summer it was announced that Rare was going to do just that for the XBOX 360. The game is currently slated for a Q1 release this year and although I would like to say I’m not getting my hopes up, I’m an idiot. I’m looking forward to wasting my time on a great game again.