Perfect Dark (Nintendo Game Boy Color, 2000)

A young agent, fresh and hungry for the field, has just started the final part of her black ops training for the secretive Carrington Institute, and believes that she is ready to take on the troubles of the world on her green shoulders. Unfortunately, with the rise of a nefarious new megalomaniac and her all-powerful corporation, the world just became a far more dangerous place. Before the end of her first mission, this leather-clad recruit will have to snipe, drive, and lock in battle with all manner of soldiers and cyborgs in a mission that could very well secure the freedom of an entire planet.

Perfect Dark for the Game Boy Color continues the exploits of agent Joanna Dark. This mission, a precursor to the events that take place in the N64 game, takes place from a top-down perspective, much like the Game Boy Color version of Metal Gear Solid. The majority of boss battles are fought from a static, first-person perspective, however. Players travel through ten levels, five of which highlight the final days of young Joanna Dark's Institute training. The remaining levels are a recount of her first real mission, as well as her first tangle with the wicked entity known as dataDyne.

The meat of the game is played by moving the perky protagonist around the levels, accomplishing mission objectives that she receives from her Carrington contacts over her handy two-way wristwatch communicator. Often it will be advantageous for her to use all of her stealth powers, as sneaking past a guard is usually preferable to taking him on in a firefight. All weapon and item procurements are on-site; Joanna starts with what barely amounts to a pea-shooter and must acquire a wide assortment of instruments of destruction.

To break up the main gameplay, developer Rare has seen fit to include a number of mini-games that pop up sporadically, including sniping and machine gun missions, as well as a level in which you must drive a jeep while the baddies try to turn you into a scorching fireball. Most of these are variations of arcade games such as Spy Hunter or Cabal. Once these different mini-games have been beaten during the actual course of the game, they are selectable for play at any time in Perfect Dark's menu.

In addition to the main game, Perfect Dark has some extras of note. These include Game Boy Printer support for printing out character profiles that one discovers in the game's various levels, and Transfer Pak support for transferring secrets between the Game Boy and N64 versions of the game. Also, a rather extensive multiplayer feature is available for two players, with a number of different games that can be played and levels that can be unlocked.