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?

Life moves pretty slow on a video game magazine when the last pages are being sent to the printer. As a writer on Edge, I'd have to be available in the office to write captions and headlines, but often we were there long into the night as the art team designed pages. So the writers and subs would have nothing to do but wait and play games. And for many months, the game we played was GoldenEye. Released two years after the film, into a market where tie-ins were never exactly epoch-making products, it's fair to say expectations were low for the N64 shooter.

It's been a giant week for video game news. Nintendo announced a release date of 5 May 2023 for the next Legend of Zelda game (now titled Tears of the Kingdom, certainly not an intentional reference to the death of the Queen); we've seen a new God of War: Ragnarok trailer in which The West Wing's Toby Ziegler shouts at Kratos; and we learned that the beloved N64 shooter GoldenEye 007 is finally, finally coming back. But it was all overshadowed on Sunday, when a hacker posted more than 50 minutes of in-development footage from Grand Theft Auto VI, stolen from Rockstar's internal Slack channel. The hacker claims to have possession of the game's source code, too. This is, along with the theft of Half-Life 2's source code from Valve in 2003, one of the biggest data breaches in video game history.

When a video game is successful, a string of sequels is usually inevitable. With fans clamoring for more, developers want to deliver. Sometimes these follow-ups run out of ideas, and many series overstay their welcome, but some are gone too soon. We've handpicked a few franchises that disappeared abruptly despite their success. All of them deserve a reboot, a remake, or a remaster.

It was the company's last cartridge-based home console before the switch to optical discs and it introduced players to the joys of awkwardly-placed joysticks. And of course there were the games: the jump to a 64-bit CPU meant you could now experience the worlds of Hyrule and the Mushroom Kingdom in glorious 3D. However, while Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and GoldenEye 007 might be the go-to titles when talking about the Nintendo 64, the tastes of the Engadget crew run a little more off the beaten path, as evidenced by the memories our staff shared below. If there's one Nintendo 64 title I wish would make a comeback on the Switch, it's Diddy Kong Racing. I spent hours of my childhood on this game and, to this day, it's the one title that gets me to dust off my Jungle Green N64 and sit too close to the TV.

If you need something to watch this weekend that isn't the latest episode of WandaVision, take a virtual vacation with these tour videos of Super Nintendo World. While the park isn't officially open yet, fans are already checking out the rides and cafes and have made videos of the experience for everyone who can't get inside. A port of Goldeneye 007 for Xbox 360 never saw the light of day due to licensing issues, but a leaked ROM means you can now play it on PC or just watch a video of someone else playing. According to a source with "direct knowledge" of the device, The Information reports Apple's mixed-reality headset will contain more than a dozen cameras for tracking movement and showing real-world video to the person wearing it. It apparently also includes two 8K displays, giving it an effective resolution that would far outstrip anything currently on the market.

AI and Games is a crowdfunded series about research and applications of artificial intelligence in video games. If you like my work please consider supporting the show over on Patreon for early-access and behind-the-scenes updates. A title that defined a generation of console gaming and paved the way forward for first-person shooters in the console market. In this article I'm winding the clock back over 20 years to learn the secrets of how one of the Nintendo 64's most beloved titles built friendly and enemy AI that is still held in high regard today. Upon its release in 1997, GoldenEye 007 not only defined a generation, but defied all expectations.