Goldeneye 007’s lost Xbox 360 remaster has leaked—as a full-game speedrun

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  The canceled Xbox 360 version of Goldeneye 007 has now been laid bare—and this view of virtual Pierce Brosnan bungee-jumping from the first level’s closing section is a good indicator of its scope. Some of the basic geometry is identical, while some major aspects have been touched up, particularly the character models and background geometry. [credit: Graslu00 ]

Goldeneye 007‘s official remake project, as co-helmed by Rare, Microsoft, and 4J Studios before being quietly canceled, is one of the gaming industry’s wildest lost projects. We’ve discussed this canceled Xbox 360 game at length over the years, with updates coming mostly in the form of increasingly detailed leaks—and this week’s is easily the biggest yet. The rumored N64 update’s dam, as it were, has burst open, with a legitimate playable copy having leaked.

A longtime Spanish game streamer, who goes by Graslu00, was handed the veritable GoldenEye key in the form of one of the game’s near-complete ROMs, as made by Rare during the 2010s for Xbox 360 consoles and then indefinitely shelved. Graslu00 loaded the ROM in a PC emulator, confirmed it was real, and pre-recorded a full “00 Agent” gameplay session (meaning, the hardest difficulty with the most required objectives) before hosting a chat while showing the footage to viewers on Friday. Which made me wonder: how the heck did he get the ROM?

“I was sent the build anonymously and told to wait” until a certain date to reveal it, Graslu00 tells Ars Technica in an email interview. The files came with a peculiar note: “Never say never, release coming soon, James.”