Octopussy: the James Bond videogame that never was

James Bond should have made his videogame debut with an Octopussy tie-in, but then it mysteriously disappeared…

The year 1983 saw James Bond seemingly at war with himself.

Octopussyshould, in fact, have marked James Bonds first foray into a new medium: videogames.

Then it simply vanished.

Parker was clearly prepared to give the game a big marketing push.

(One useron Atari Ages forums even claims to have playedOctopussyat the Electronic Fun Expo in 1983.)

The train-surfing action of theOctopussytie-in was nowhere to be seen.

One of the people who worked onJames Bond 007was Joe Gaucher.

And that, Gaucher says, is why Parker Bros came to my company [On Time Software].

Game designer Charlie Heath had, according tothis forum post,worked at Parker between June and October 1983.

During his brief tenure, hed worked on another Bond prototype based onMoonraker.

You see something that looks a bit like a spinning earth bobbing about at the bottom of the screen.

Unfortunately, Heaths prototype didnt pass muster with his employees at Parker.

ThatPitfall-key in action game sounds remarkably like the abortedOctopussyproject.

Ironically, what ultimately materialised as the first ever Bond game was, once again, a shooting game.

In the case of theLord Of The Ringsgame, some of these missing games have resurfaced years later.