Anniversary: Perfect Dark, Another N64 Rare Classic, Turns 25

One of the very best in the console and my favorite multiplayer game in my childhood. There's nothing more satisfying than teaming up with buddies against some savagely cruel bots.

We need the Gameboy Color game on NSO... just for preservation.

There's a recompilation of this being worked on, it's going to be awesome to see a native PC port.

The first game I bought with my own hard earned money.
So old.

When this game came out I played it all summer long. The way this game and goldeneye gave you extra objectives on the different difficulty levels was a really smart way to make the higher difficulties more rewarding and I wish more games did that. What a good game, and what a great summer!

They may show more gameplay of the new Perfect Dark in June.

Absolutely loved how the game, at first, seems like a normal sci-fi spy thriller game, but then all the sudden they introduce extraterrestrial life out of seemingly nowhere and then your teamed up with an alien and tasked with taking down the leader of an evil race of shapeshifting aliens. There’s something I love with some of Rare’s older games where the plot starts off normal, but then as it goes on it sometimes gets insane and kinda hilariously weird plot-wise.

I only played it for the first time last year in June, but I had such a blast playing this and its infamous prequel Zero over the course of a few weeks, albeit I had issues with how the missions and objectives in the OG PD were poorly explained, on top of the final boss battle being annoying, but it didn’t really change my enjoyment with the game! I even liked Zero too despite how many people say the game doesn’t feel or look like it’s related to PD, but I’ll it, a lot of my enjoyment from Zero came from the cheesy, stupid and overexaggerated acting and cutscenes and hilarious character designs that don’t fit the sci-fi theme of the game.

Hopefully the reboot is good, but too bad they aren’t going to continue the original storyline at this point.

I just wish they’d put some adjustments in the Nintendo online version. Namely turning off the grenade/punch blur. Or at least if you die and come back it’s gone.

This has been my favorite n64 game, and even one of my favorite fps games. Funnily enough, just earlier I played a few rounds of multiplayer with my sibs, those pinball gernades can be scary 🫣.

I getting this in time for my birthday. I was determined to master it since I didn't get to master GoldenEye.

@Jokerwolf A recompilation, you say? How long has it been in development?

@MeloMan Whoever got that for you has good taste in videogames.

@Kindly_Warlord A nice gaming session with your siblings. Sounds very cute.

Having friends over, creating custom bot matches and spending HOURS on this game when it first came out. Great memories !!

There was so much value in this cart, it’s a shame it came so late in the N64 lifespan.

I love, love, love Perfect Dark. It’s arguably my favourite N64 game, or tied for top 3.

It’s plays so well, it has more content than Goldeneye, it’s more refined, all the challenges, the co-op modes, and multiplayer modes with a large variety of bots types…. it’s just fantastic.

I was and remain so happy that they made Xbox 360 Arcade version at 1080p, 60fps, with modern controls and online multiplayer. In fact, Perfect Dark Zero is THE reason why I got a Xbox 360 at launch.

Thank you, Perfect Dark, for all the great memories!

The Xbox 360 port is clearly the definitive version to play Perfect Dark (just like the 2 first Banjo Kazooie games). It runs at native widescreen 4k, 60fps and reworked controls on Xbox Series X and it’s simply amazing. If you are a big Perfect Dark fan, you REALLY should try the Xbox version.

@gamma64 Those are the moments you must always keep close.

@Hwatt I never realized how many people love this game until now.

@Zufolobelisk

Goldeneye paved the way, so it’s not as discussed. However, back in the day, I recall all the hype on the school yard when Perfect Dark came out. Especially if you consider that The World Is Not Enough, the James Bond game after Goldeneye was just… OK.

I got an N64 fairly late but it was one of my first games. The scope of the game and benefits for the N64 expansion pack made it clear to us at the time it was a culmination of N64 games. I don’t think there is a game that matches it in scope and replay-ability.

It also has the laptop gun. A gun you can throw at the wall and turn into a sentry gun to grind up bots in multiplayer.

Still love this game. The multiplayer was groundbreaking, all of the different AI Sims you could put in were so much fun. With friends, but also keep going against bots when they had to go home. And it kept some of the classic GoldenEye levels too. I put way more hours into this than any other first person shooter.

Joanna Dark deserves better than the sequels she got.

And the soundtrack? "Alien Conflict" = chef's kiss.

Just an incredible multiplayer experience. Single player was great but the hours we sunk in to the multiplayer were crazy back in the day.

Poor Perfect Dark. One truly great game, then mistreated ever since. Hopefully they’ve gone back to at least redesign her character model, lose the man-jaw and go for a more feminine look like her original design.

Felicity, laptop guns, farsight, bots + friend = fun

There's so much brilliance in this game. Secondary functions for weapons, a shooting range, co-op campaign (which was uncommon at the time), counter-op campaign (still uncommon), combat simulator challenges, etc.