21 Years Ago, Nintendo DS Released 'GoldenEye: Rogue Agent'

On June 13, 2005, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent arrived on handheld game consoles for the first time. The game, which had previously been available on GameCube and PlayStation 2, was released on the Nintendo DS and catapulted to a new level of popularity.

GoldenEye: Rogue Agent is inspired by Ian Fleming's James Bond franchise, though not directly connected to any of the movies or video games. It arrived less than a year after James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, which was a direct tie-in to Pierce Brosnan's movies.

Needless to say, expectations for Rogue Agent were high. Everything or Nothing had been a huge success, boasting a voice performance from Brosnan himself and a story that was inspired directly from the movies. Rogue Agent was a slightly harder sell, as it didn't seem as relevant to the franchise overall.

The story follows an ex-MI6 agent who is recruited by Auric Goldfinger to assassinate the iconic villain's rival, Dr. No. It's completely separate from the rest of the franchise, and doesn't actually feature James Bond at all-just an unnamed 007 agent in the first level of the game.

Because of this, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent received mixed reviews from critics and didn't impress those fans who were hoping for a more straightforward James Bond game, like the James Bond 007 franchise that had been so successful on home consoles just a few years earlier.

Rogue Agent received mixed reviews upon release, with many fans criticizing the decision to break James Bond lore so heavily by killing off characters and deviating from the storyline of the movies. The gameplay, however, was widely praised; shooting mechanics, multiplayer modes, and solo training all made it a very entertaining FPS experience.

The game was also a huge financial success, selling over 1,000,000 units throughout its lifespan. This was impressive given the largely mixed reviews and negative word-of-mouth from die-hard James Bond fans, proving that general audiences didn't need a perfect story to engage with the game's fun mechanics.

Today, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent remains a largely underrated entry in the James Bond video game canon, but one that still has a dedicated fan base. James Bond games typically didn't land so comfortably in the first-person shooter genre (with the exception of hits like GoldenEye 007 on the Nintendo 64), so it was a welcome evolution for the franchise.

This story was originally published by Men's Journal on Jun 13, 2026, where it first appeared in the News section. Add Men's Journal as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

2026 The Arena Group Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

This story was originally published June 13, 2026 at 8:51 AM.