Setting the standard for video game adaptations of movies, 1997’s GoldenEye – based on the 1995 Pierce Brosnan James Bond film – paved the way for popular first-person shooters like Halo and Call Of Duty.

Today, this mostly takes place online, with the business model moving towards digital purchases, so it’s no surprise the GoldenEye game – with its old-school polygonal graphics and split-screen multiplayer recently arriving for Xbox and the Nintendo Switch – now with the option of playing online, but this is causing issues among the gaming community.

Sure, the experience is communal, but even a member of the original design team at developer Rare says he finds this aspect isolating. “It’s not the same as playing beside someone,” says David Doak.

The original game featured innovative character behaviour along with creative map architecture, but Doak says it wouldn’t have been so popular without the joy of the four-person battle royale situations.

Sure, cooperative modes and multiplayer had been used before GoldenEye, but this game plonked players into the body of the spy. Doak speaks of the “intimacy” of being in the same room as friends for this, and being able to see a pal’s screen. Now, with the move to online play, that seems to be lacking.

“Everyone made this massive rush to put things online and one of the big things missing was local multiplayer,” adds Doak.

“There still are multiplayer games that be experienced together on one T V set, especially in the indie space, but they’re often smaller in scope.”

A lot of today’s high-end games, with their open worlds, are challenging to run on a console for a single player, let alone four at once. This is part of the reason partly why Halo Infinite got rid of the co-op campaign mode. It’s also why many realistic driving games – such as Forza Horizon 5 – don’t have a split-screen feature.