Dalton’s Last Stand

We’re reaching the end of an era here. Actually technically two. The first is Timothy Dalton’s run as Bond. The James BondThe world's most famous secret agent, James Bond has starred not only in dozens of books but also one of the most famous, and certainly the longest running, film franchises of all time. license was fought over at the time with the studio and EON battling over control, and it dragged out filming on the third Balton flick long enough that the actor’s contract expired and he was quietly removed from the project. When it eventually came about, six years later as GoldenEye, it starred Pierce Brosnan in the role. But before that film we had James Bond 007: The Duel, the last project in the franchise to bear his likeness.

That factoid aside, though, the real end of an era we’re talking about is for James Bond video games. Up until this point the games have all seemed fairly primitive. Largely published by Domark, the games have been arcade style experiences with a heavy emphasis on quick, light action and repetitive gameplay. James Bond 007: The Duel would be the last game released by Domark, and it was developed by The Kremlin (who also handled The Spy Who Loved Me). It would be five years before the next licensed James Bond game came along, and that would be the absolute seismic event that was GoldenEye 007 from Rare and Nintendo, and that game redefined James Bond video games going forward.

So how is this last Domark title for the franchise? Eh, it’s not bad, but about what you’d expect at this point from the company’s licensed media games. It’s a fairly traditional 1990s licensed, platform shooter. We already saw a couple of those, with THQ’s James Bond Jr. on NES and SNES, and while this game isn’t anywhere near as dire as those entries, you can see the same basic thought process at play here. You’re given large, maze-like levels that you take Bond around in, exploring, finding unlockables, and getting to the exit. It’s all very cut-and-dried here, with the one saving grace that this is at least a decently playable version of the formula.

The story for the game is pretty silly. Prior to Bond getting called in, an evil scientist takes over a remote satellite launch center. With the island under his control he sets to work building a fleet of satellites that he can launch as some kind of scheme to take over the world. Naturally Bond, being quite skilled at defeating megalomaniacs with delusions of grandeur who also have secret bases and way too much access to technology, is called in to handle the matter. He swoops in, lands on the maniac’s private yacht and, systematically, goes from location to location to take out all of the labs on the island.

Realizing, though, that Bond would likely come to the island (making this scientist at least twenty-five percent smarter than your average James Bond villain) the scientist created a device that allowed him to clone many of Bond’s greatest foes. The likes of Jaws, Oddjob, Bones, and May Day populate the labs, defending them alongside an endless supply of regular old goons. Bond goes through them all, blowing up each location, until he finally comes to and defeats the evil scientist and saves the day. Oh, and then in the Genesis version (unlike the Master System and Game Gear versions) he also fights Jaws a second time for… reasons.

There’s nothing particularly bad about James Bond 007: The Duel. It’s a competent enough video game, working well with what The Kremlin had, presumably both their own skill level and the time they were afforded to make this adventure. It controls decently well, with James doing all the basic things you’d expect: walk, jump, shoot, and climb. He never feels slippy, his jumps aren’t too floaty, and everything works about as well as you’d want. That’s not exactly high praise, with a game working as well as you’d expect at a minimum, but considering the dire state of licensed games in the early 1990s (need we go and revisit Wayne’s World or Back to the Future 2 on the SNES?), just working as intended is actually a benchmark.

Each level is constructed like a maze, with routes up, over, around, down, and through in complexes that really don’t make much sense when you think about it. I hate this kind of level design because there’s really no rhyme or reason to them. They’re designed as padding, to make you go everywhere to figure out where your objectives might be, and they lack any kind of flow. You’ll go one way for a bit, accomplish your task, and then have to double back and go a different route not because it makes logical sense but just because the game designers put crap everywhere on a stage, like confetti, and just expected you to figure it out.

Your main objective in each stage is to find all the kidnapped Bond girls. A certain amount (indicated in the upper corner of the screen) are spread around the stages and you must find them all before the exit from the stage unlocks. Save all the girls and you can then fight a boss and move on. In the Genesis version you also have to find a bomb after saving all the girls, activating it before heading to the boss, but structurally all versions are the same in their goal. Save girls, win day. Party all around.

Mostly that means you’re going to be walking, jumping, and riding platforms around the various levels, searching every nook and cranny. It’s not so bad in the first stage, which is at least short and cohesively laid out, but as the stages go on they get more complex and more annoying to navigate. You’ll often find yourself sitting in one spot, waiting for a platform of some kind to arrive so you can ride it over, find a Bond girl, and then stand there, waiting for the platform to return so you can ride it back because there’s nothing else to do at that dead end. There’s no flow, no cohesion, just a lot of waiting around.

But it’s not the platforming that really brings the game down; it’s fine enough and I found myself getting into the flow of it when I was allowed to just do my own thing. The big issue is the enemies as they’re incredibly brainless. The game features basic goons, who run towards you and then shoot. You’ll get used to how you have to handle them because you’re going to see them a lot. Every stage is peppered with these goons and while they get a different skin in each stage to suit the design of the level, they never get any smarter or do anything else. Same goons, every level, and no one else, other than the bosses show up.

The bosses are also brainless, though. For the most part they walk back and forth along their platform and wait for Bond to come into their eyeline. If you stand on a different platform, or are directly below them, they’ll never react to you. You can sit there, shooting them until they die, and that’s the whole encounter. Other times they’ll get stuck in a loop, doing their one basic attack while you duck and shoot, avoiding everything they do. The boss encounters take no thought, no planning, and are effectively over as soon as they start.

And, functionally, the whole game goes by quickly, ending before it even really picks up steam. If you have no clue where you’re going or what you’re doing in each stage it could take maybe an hour to clear the game. Once you have the whole game mapped out you could clear it in twenty minutes, easy. It only has four levels (plus a bonus end boss fight against Jaws in the Genesis version) and no variance or variety. It’s a painfully short, and kind of dull game, that just barely gets the job done before ending.

If we want to be pedantic, I’m also not sure why this game has “The Duel” in its title. There’s no dueling in the game at all. It’s a very generic platformer that just so happens to have the James Bond license slapped on it, but there’s really no one-on-one confrontations or anything that feels like a duel in the game. The title would make sense for a light gun game, or one where you have one-on-one arena brawls with various James Bond characters, but in this game the title makes no sense at all.

Despite that, though, this is still one of the better James Bond games we’ve seen. Of the official titles, only his adventure games really come across better than James Bond 007: The Duel. This is a competent enough, albeit not especially interesting, 1990s platform shooter. It just barely gets the job done, and then leaves without much fuss, and while that doesn’t make for an exceptional game, it does blow many of the other James Bond games out of the water. James Bond 000: The Duel is an aggressively average title, one only worth experiencing if you’re a die hard fan (or run a website where you have to review everything in a series). For anyone else, whatever luster this game might have had at one point has very clearly worn off.