Perfect Dark GBC Rare Retrospective

What could be a better accompaniment to Joanna Dark’s N64 debut than an exclusive Game Boy Color title delving into her previous exploits? That’s the setup as Rare’s hyper-productive Game Boy department delivers a completely original adventure detailing Agent Dark’s final stages of training at the Carrington Institute, and her first real chance to prove herself in a combat situation.

Needless to say, it transpires that Joanna’s clash with the sinister dataDyne corporation as chronicled during her N64 adventure isn’t totally unexpected after all. Flown out to a South American jungle with a set of objectives based around the destruction of an illegal cyborg manufacturing facility, Agent Dark finds herself becoming part of a much bigger picture from the very beginning… and over the course of seven brand new missions, Joanna gets to deploy a variety of realistically-sampled weapons and take on a range of puzzles and subgames in her personal crusade to stop dataDyne in its tracks.

Just about every piece of new Game Boy Color technology is utilised in this, Rare’s third release for the format, including Rumble Pak and GB Printer compatibility, infra-red transmission of data between machines (not to mention between GBC and N64 via the GB64 Pak), sampled speech and an FMV intro as the icing on the cake. We haven’t cut corners when it comes to two-player link cable deathmatching, either, with over 30 multiplayer-specific maps (unlocked by progressing through the single-player game – trade them with friends through the IR link) which form the backdrop for eight different game modes (and some hidden ones) such as the following:

Deathmatch, allowing you to set either the time limit or the maximum number of kills.
Counter Force, where one player guards hostages against a second player’s rescue attempt.
Defence, where players must capture a special area of the map and hold it for as long as possible.
Flag Runner, with a single flag that players must pick up and keep moving in order to stay alive and score points.
Death Ball, where players race to pick up the ball and carry it to their opponent’s goal – just like football, but with guns!

So if you want to take part in Joanna Dark’s action-packed initiation, sneak out and pick up a copy of this little beauty right now – we wouldn’t want to let it fall into the wrong hands…