Nintendo 64’s Perfect Dark Comes to Xbox Live Arcade This Winter
Xbox Live’s Major Nelson reported yesterday on his Twitter that the original Perfect Dark (the plot-sequel to Perfect Dark Zero) on Nintendo 64 is coming to Xbox Live Arcade, for an unannounced price, this winter. Details are currently unknown but personally, I’m hoping for online multiplayer. All we know is that it has been digitally rescaled to full native 1080p (according to Major Nelson), a rarity for an Xbox 360 game. There are only a handful of games currently on the market for Xbox 360 that run at native 1080p:
- Wolf of the Battlefield Commando 3 (XBLA)
- Feeding Frenzy 2 (XBLA)
- Portal: Still Alive (XBLA)
- Boogie Bunnies (XBLA)
- EA SPORTS NBA Street Home Court
- Virtual Tennis 3
Just because it says 1080p on the back of the box, it doesn’t mean it’s running native – it’s likely only being upscaled, unless it is one of the above games, which now includes Perfect Dark XBLA. Read more after the break!
Besides the above, we also know that contrary to popular belief, the game is not being ported to XBLA by Rare, instead it is being ported by 4J Studios, who also ported Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie to XBLA.
Perfect Dark was originally released on Nintendo 64 in the summer of 2000, late in the console’s generation, just before the release of GameCube, PS2 and GameCube in and around 2001. It has a 97% rating on MetaCritic, currently making it the sixth best rated game of all time. It is heavily renowned for being heavily based on GoldenEye which enhanced its success greatly. 2.5 million copies of Perfect Dark have been sold worldwide as of 2007.
There’s a free Perfect Dark XBLA theme available now on Xbox Live Marketplace for a limited time, so grab it while you can!
