Can new James Bond game 007 First Light become even more popular than GoldenEye?

Now pay attention, 00-person reading this. Today is the launch of the new James Bond videogame, 007 First Light. It may not be the next Bond movie actor reveal, but it’s exciting for us nerds nonetheless, and see, here, if you click the top of my ballpoint pen three times it turns into a weapon that launches James Bond record trivia right into your face!

First Light is by IO Interactive, famous for the extremely good and extremely popular Hitman games, where each level is like a beautiful Fabergé egg of assassination - so expectations for First Light are high. And honestly, it’ll probably meet a bunch of them. Reviews are in, and they’re looking good.

First Light was announced in 2020, and, excluding the smartphone app 007 Cypher that IOI put out that same year, it’s the first full-sized Bond game since 007 Legends (Eurocom, 2007). The Legends’ developer went out of business after it released, but IOI aren’t in danger of that. Still, First Light has the biggest budget of any James Bond videogame. IOI’s CEO Hakan Abrak let slip that it has a heftier price tag than the most recent Hitman trilogy, which means it’s more than $180 million (£133.7 million).

Of course, the Bond games did have some fairly humble beginnings. The first James Bond videogame was a 1982 text adventure called Shaken But Not Stirred, written by Richard Shepherd for the ZX Spectrum PC. The plot involved recovering a stolen warhead. Classic low-stakes Bond adventure.

I’m willing to accept, however, that some of you also like the James Bond movies, perhaps even a little bit more than the games, so I looked up some of those records too.

First Light is an origin story for a young Bond, starting before he’s officially an agent. He’s played by Irish actor Patrick Gibson who, at 31, is still not the youngest actor to play James Bond. That’s held by George Lazenby, the Australian model-turned-actor who took up the 00 mantle for 1969’s On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (the most sad Bond movie). He was 29 at the time it was filmed.

Read about more gaming records in our dedicated section.

The James Bond films also rack up some fun stunt-themed records. Spectre (2015) has the record for most valuable vehicles used in a car chase. Bond was heening around Rome in a prototype Aston Martin DB10 valued at $4.6 million (£3.17 million), while the villainous Mr. Hinx (played by Dave Bautista) was in hot, expensive pursuit in a Jaguar C-X75, estimated to be worth a cool million dollars (£689,000). Total market value of the car chase: $5.6 million (£3.86 million).

One I think is really cool is that, despite the continuing existence of Tom Cruise, the 1995 GoldenEye movie still has the record for the highest movie bungee jump. Wayne Michaels, a stuntman from the UK, performed Bond’s bungee jump off a dam. It was over 220 m (759 ft). The sequence was planned by Michaels, Simon Crane and the Oxford Stunt factory, and took two weeks of prep.

The highest-grossing Bond movie so far is 2012’s Skyfall, the 23rd Bond film and the third to star Daniel Craig as the eponymous spy. It earned $1,110,526,981 (£743.8 million) on release (adjusted for inflation that’s about $1.58 billion (£1.07 billion) today).

And, to circle this back to games (as is my wont), the best-selling Bond videogame is, of course, Rare’s 1997 classic 007 GoldenEye, an FPS for Nintendo’s N64 console. It was a smash hit and is still beloved today, in part because of its splitscreen multiplayer mode, in which my childhood friend Geoff would play Oddjob, and cheat. Depending on how First Light does, it could snatch GoldenEye’s crown…