James Bond co-owner didn’t want guns in GoldenEye 007 Wii remake

The remake / reimagining of GoldenEye 007 for Wii was a big deal back in 2010, but it turns out there was originally opposition to including guns and making it violent.

Founder Bobby Kotick recalled the early days of the project in the latest episode of the Grit podcast. Barbara Broccoli, who co-owns the rights to the James Bond IP, was opposed to including guns. However, Activision stood its ground knowing what fans would expect given how closely the game resembles the N64 original.

Kotick shared the following story about Broccoli being opposed to including Guns in the GoldenEye 007 Wii remake:

“We made a sequel (remake), and it was a challenging thing to make because Barbara Broccoli did not really want anything that was violence. And she didn’t really want guns in the game.

She and her brother, they are great custodians for the IP and I understood where she was coming from. She’s like, ‘If kids are going to play, I don’t want guns. Can you use something other than guns?’ And I was like ‘no’ because the expectation is going to be the original GoldenEye – that’s what we have to do. We struggled with being able to actually get something done that would be great, but I thought that making a GoldenEye sequel was a great idea.”

Another big moment for the GoldenEye 007 series happened when the N64 original came to Nintendo Switch Online (via the Expansion Pack tier) at the start of 2023. For a long time many fans assumed that the game would never be re-released, but it’s now on modern platforms. You can even play GoldenEye 007 online through the built-in functionality of Nintendo Switch Online.

Did you ever play GoldenEye 007 on Wii back in the day? Let us know in the comments.

Thanks to the Grit podcast for the quote above.