Eps 13: James Bond Just Rereleased Roleplaying In Her Majesty's Secret Service
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Terrance Rodriquez
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As a Bond fan, he wrote prolifically for American and British James Bond fan clubs, and wrote in 1984 what is still considered to be the definitive examination of the James Bond character, both book and movie, The James Bond Bedside Companion. Frustrated with the total lack of information available about behind-the-scenes developments of the films and books, GRAHAM RYE and Bob Forlini co-founded the American James Bond 007 Fan Club, and began publishing the magazine Bondage. At the 1984 Club Strategist Awards, "James Bond 007" won the award for "Outstanding Role-Playing Game" for 1983.
In the Arcane Readers Poll 1996, which determined the top 50 RPGs of all time, James Bond 007 was placed 46th. Nick Davison reviewed James Bond 007 for Imagine magazine, calling it a great game for people who are mostly interested in RPGs, not fighting. Degrees of success are fairly prevalent nowadays, but James Bond 007 is still notable because of its success rate, which is at four, instead of the more usual hit/critical hit status that most games have nowadays.
In an retrospective review for Arcane magazine from 1996, James Swallow remembered that The James Bond 007 RPG had the exact same kind of immediately playable backdrop as, say, Star Wars. The RPG was designed to let players feel as though they were in the Bond movies, and capable of pulling the same stunts as him.
In keeping with the James Bond setting, the game focused on several main characters rather than a larger party, and played well with only one gamemaster and a single player. Unlike many RPGs, in which player characters begin as being of little importance in the universe and are weaker in power than the characters of the non-players, the James Bond setting puts a greater emphasis on the players characters. Characters from the James Bond universe, including Bond himself, his allies and enemies, Anya Amasova, Jaws, and Goldfinger, all have significant roles. James Bond 007 features a story that includes characters from several of James Bonds films, such as Oddjob and Jaws.
In 1983, Parker Brothers released James Bond 007, the first officially licensed James Bond video game, on several platforms. Shortly after Goldfinger was released by Parker Brothers in 1983, another video game was announced, called Octopussy, based on the movie of the same name. Since 2002, games featuring Bond characters and the 007 brand have been published and distributed on cell phones. Several games are based on the James Bond films, developed and published by various companies, with intellectual property owned by Danjaq.
The games are licensed from both Danjaq/Eon Productions, who owns the movie rights, and Glidrose Publications , who owns the literary rights, and attempt to be as faithful as possible to both the books and films and to James Bond. The game and its supplements were published from 1983 to 1987, at which point the licence expired. The game was considered successful, selling nearly 100,000 copies, and soon assumed its position as the best-selling spy RPG since Top Secret. A series of sourcebooks were published for the RPG, based on Bond films from that era, featuring new scenes and changes from the original stories, in order to keep players guessing.
The majority of the sixteen supplements are adventures based on various Bond films which were released, either directly or as loosely connected sequels. The Bond role-playing game was also an early adopter of the implementation of a meta-currency. IO Interactive described Project 007 as a completely original Bond story, in which players would step into the shoes of the worlds favourite secret agent in order to gain his 00 status in the first ever Bond origin story.
To celebrate Activisions 25th anniversary with its third Bond title, a different GoldenEye-based Project 007 entered development in 2017, using the Unreal Engine 4, aiming for an August 2022 release, which is based around a single-player campaign with that name. A new James Bond game was reported to have been in development at Raven Software, but was delayed for six months before being leaked, by which time it was believed that the game had returned to development. DVD company Trivia Games wanted to make a Bond release, and John Cork was the person they asked for the job.
The club and magazine served Bond fans for 15 years, with facts and photos found nowhere else in its pages. Today, the back issues ofare a hot collectors item. The Bond depicted in the books art was made to appear different from those of Sean Connery, Roger Moore, or George Lazenby. A lucky few get to be Bond, and also get to see him transform how game designers view RPG creation. HANK REINEKEs childhood obsession with the Bond movies led him to seek out copies of the Ian Fleming Signature Paperback Series, and it was reading 007 books, as well as Robert Markhams THE SUN COONEL, that fueled his interest in writing himself.
Bond was a single operative, so it made sense his games would play that way, or with smaller groups of less powerful agents working together. It is an odd way of threading the needle between fans who have seen Bonds various movies dozens of times and know those storylines inside-out, and a license-holder loath to make new content that could cause confusion for fans of the movie franchise in the future.