Pushing Buttons: Should GoldenEye 007 have stayed in the 90s?

Two beloved games from the past have been rereleased in the last week: 2008's nauseating sci-fi horror Dead Space has been resurrected with modern technology, and 1997's first-person-shooter gamechanger GoldenEye 007 (pictured above) has arrived on Nintendo Switch and Xbox, looking somewhat less fresh. Dead Space (pictured below) was not my thing – I'm too sensitive for horror (I sometimes cry at adverts). But GoldenEye 007 brings back a host of great memories for me, as it does for anyone who was playing games during the Nintendo 64 era. Try to find a millennial who doesn't have fond recollections of gathering at that one friend's house after school for split-screen death matches, or a Gen Xer who didn't nearly miss a university essay deadline because of it. My first thought, whenever a game such as this arrives anew, is always: what if it's terrible now?