While British studio Rare was best known in the 1990s for releases like GoldenEye 007 and Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct, it also slipped out one of the Nintendo 64's finest first-person shooters in the form of 2000's Perfect Dark. I mean, it worked on several other great games for the console, too, like Jet Force Gemini and Blast Corps - but arriving relatively late in the N64's lifetime, Perfect Dark really was a bit special.
And according to one journalist, the Perfect Dark series could well be on the way back. Jeff Grubb, a games writer and critic at VentureBeat, has publicly stated that a new game set in the Perfect Dark "universe" is being made at the Microsoft-owned studio The Initiative. If he's correct, whatever this new game is would represent the first original title in the Perfect Dark series since 2005's Perfect Dark Zero on Xbox 360 - another banger that, TBH.
The ever-excellent VGC has run with the story, adding that the Santa Monica-based The Initiative was founded in 2018 as a first-party Xbox studio, by devs who'd previously worked on the Tomb Raider, Uncharted and God of War series. Since then it's added further talent from titles such as DOOM and Apex Legends. All of which suggests that a new Perfect Dark game would probably be safe in their hands - with or without input from Rare (who did oversee the production of another of their comeback franchises, Battletoads).
Xbox's number one guy-in-jacket Phil Spencer had previously said that The Initiative was working on a legacy project for Xbox - "new and old things". A new Perfect Dark sure would be those two things, right? And it'd be a cool new-old thing to shop your new console around with.
Grubb made his Perfect Dark comeback comments during yesterday's Kinda Funny Daily Podcast (August 25th), in the chat. He posted that The Initiative's new game is Perfect Dark (or at least in that same world, as he later clarified on Twitter), and that it is going to be third-person. So... will it? Feels right TBH. Overdue a comeback, isn't it. And it should be the case that whatever this game is gets revealed before 2020 is through (if this cursed year is ever through, that is).
Featured Image Credit: Rare, Microsoft Game StudiosTopics: Xbox One, Xbox, Xbox Series X