GoldenEye 007 is one of those titles that most gamers have fond recollections of. Released in 1997, it was the first console FPS that really got it - that is, up until that point, everyone looked at FPSs as something that only worked on PCs. But with a solid combination of single player and multiplayer mayhem, it captured the hearts of N64 owners to the tune of eight million copies sold. It seems only natural that a classic of this caliber would eventually makes its way onto the Virtual Console.

But there’s one problem – when developer Rare was sold to Microsoft, the rights to the title became, as Rare put it, “… caught up in a convoluted web of rights the likes of which would make the Weaver from Perdido Street Station jealous. That doesn’t mean it won’t happen, just that a lot of people with a lot of different perspectives are involved.”

Rare’s Scribes section (where readers send in questions to be answered by the developer) was home to another relevant question, this time in regards to other Rare titles landing on the Virtual Console.

This is where we finally edge into territory that could see Scribes neutron bombed from management level. The only Rare-developed title on Virtual Console right now is the original Donkey Kong Country, and unofficially there’s a strong likelihood that its sequels will follow. But the Donkey Kong series of games is a Nintendo-owned franchise starring an established Nintendo character, whereas something like Banjo isn’t (and even Diddy Kong Racing is less clear-cut), so it’s nowhere near as easy to call. Especially when you also consider the existence of Xbox Live Arcade. So right now, the best answer we can offer (for either download service) is ‘it’s possible’.

Personally, I would much rather see GoldenEye (or Perfect Dark, the game’s spiritual successor) land on the Arcade. With the tremendous job done with adding features to classic games (namely, online multiplayer), GoldenEye would undoubtedly be a tremendous success. But all I really want to do is play the game without having to dust off the old cart, so Microsoft, Rare, Nintendo: please get this worked out. Like now.