The soft mechanical whir of the PS2 springing to life makes me feel eight years old again, but not as much as what I'm playing. As perhaps the first multiplayer game I ever touched, 007 Nightfire will always be important to me. Countless Sunday afternoons were spent huddled with my brother beneath the glare of a chunky Panasonic TV, armed with plenty of snacks for inhaling and kitchen towel for wrapping around our DualShocks to keep greasy fingers at bay. That last step is probably why my older brother's PS2 still works so well; it's a dusty yet stoic time capsule that's now letting me relive our childhood favorites some 20 years later.
My memories of James Bond 007: Nightfire are about as fond as could be, rose-tinted nostalgia in mind. I'm talking specifically about its local multiplayer mode – my brother always played as Bond, James Bond, and I always opted for Dominique. We would go head to head in countless Team Arena standoffs against Phoenix – MI6's sworn enemy in Nightfire – and fend off those bots with varying levels of ease. One thing I never did, though, was play through the game's main campaign – so what better way to kick off my PS2 rediscovery than with the best bond game of all-time?
