Rumors of N64 shooter Perfect Dark coming to XBLA ramped back up this week after a possibly legitimate, potentially fraudulent screen capture of a PD icon in a 360 menu surfaced.
Before the online age, Rare was the king of competitive murder simulation on console. But that was back when gamers were satisfied with four-player split-screen multiplayer (with Perfect Dark you could even add four bots to the mix with the help of an expansion pack.) But the days of offline FPS multiplayer died with the release of Halo 2.
It’s now assumed that any game boasting multiplayer means online multiplayer. And though I would never claim to prefer offline to online, I could do without the racists, homophobes, and misogynists emboldened by online anonymity. Perfect Dark was an experience free of these irritants. That being said, I would happily welcome them all into my living room through the magic of the internet in exchange for online multiplayer-enabled Perfect Dark. I’d be so overjoyed, even the king of the raving derelicts couldn’t bring me down.
“What’s that little Charles Manson Jr.? You want to play as an alien because you have no regard for fair play? Go ahead, you mischievous ragamuffin!”
But would a Perfect Dark port even feature online multiplayer? Adding it in would require more work than you might think, especially if development of a two-analog control scheme and/or a remotely useful matchmaking system is involved. I’m guessing a port with online multiplayer would sell really well, so maybe such an effort is justified. But it would be a pretty big deal, and definitely isn’t something they’d announce through a simple press release. No, they’d do it at an event along the lines of…I dunno, E3? But it’s not like that’s rapidly approaching…(fingers crossed.)