Popular early 1990s video game James Pond looks set for a revival, should a soon-to-be-launched Kickstarter campaign gain sufficient backing. James Pond creator Chris Sorrell who, in his own words, was “responsible for the design, programming and graphics on James Pond 1, 2 and 3,” has announced his intention to create a new episode of piscine platforming using crowdfunding cash.
The James Pond games were popular platformers in the early 1990s. The first game, James Pond: Underwater Agent, was popular enough to spark two sequels; James Pond 2: Codename Robocod and James Pond 3: Operation Starfish. The second game is said to be the most popular and “was ported to nearly every console under the sun including the Game Gear, SNES, Mega Drive, GBA, PS2, and DS,” reports EuroGamer. A spin-off title The Aquatic Games, launched in 1992, also enjoyed some commercial success.
Talking about the reasons behind his decision to create a new James Pond game Sorrell says “even now, 20 years later, people still like to ask me about James Pond.” His goal for the new game will be to “take the best qualities of the old games but bring everything right up to date.” As things stand Sorrell has “no idea if there are enough people out there who care about James Pond after all these years” but teases us that “...the possibilities are pretty exciting.” We hope to find out more about the new game, its targeted platforms and see indications of its popularity in the coming weeks.
Amiga CD32 longplay
There has been a much more recent James Pond game than those 90’s sequels listed above. The iOS game James Pond in the Deathly Shallows was released by Sorrell’s associated company Gameware Europe, developed by HPN Associates, in October 2011. Unfortunately this modern touch-controlled F2P game is pretty poorly rated with many people experiencing crashing and saying it is a mere shadow of the classic 16-bit James Pond titles.
