Returning to MI6 headquarters, you get your next mission from M and gadgets from Q, where you can mess around with a few thing (much to Q’s dismay). From here, you investigate the temples village looking for clues of an international smuggling ring, where you have to fight Zhong Mae, the dojo sensei and the Bond Girl of this adventure, then fight your way though villages before escaping on a boat. The game starts out in a Chinese village, the way is blocked by a broken bridge and you have to find a the repairman’s hammer to fix it – this serves as a simple but effective introduction to finding and using items. From the select screen, you can assign these items (as well as Bond’s punch and block abilities) to the A and B buttons. You collect items and weapons, using them to progress he game and fight. However, my disappointment wavered when I realised that this wasn’t just a lazy side scrolling shooter/platformer: It’s a Bond adventure that takes some cues from Zelda (particularly Link’s Awakening).

Unfortunately, while some Game Boy games were suited to palettes and would automatically load them to have colour on a Super Game Boy or Game Boy Color, James Bond on Game Boy remains entirely black and white – possibly none of the combinations of colours worked for the game, so you have to make do with an entirely monochrome experience. I must admit that I didn’t expect that much from this game – with the generic title and releasing quite late in the original Game Boy’s life, I had my own biased expectations: this was probably just a basic side scrolling shooter. Released in 1998 (the same year the Game Boy Color came out), this quietly drifted by and is mostly forgotten now. The other James Bond game published by Nintendo.

I personally think that dual analogue suits the game a lot - it was the first game to have them (you just needed to use two controllers).

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