[kurtori]

Hey, first post in the Lost Levels forums after being a longtime reader.

At a 1989 CES. Absolute Entertainment, one of the very few third-parties "committed" to releasing games for the Sega Master System in North America, announced a James Bond game for the system, titled James Bond 007: Countdown to Meltdown. It was to have a completely original plot, and presumably the likeness of then-Bond actor Timothy Dalton.

The game was briefly mentioned in one of the very first issues of the "Gaming Gossip" column in Electronic Gaming Monthly (issue 2 or 3?). I've never seen a screenshot or heard anything since then. I have no idea if there was a demo shown at the show, or if any screenshots appeared in catalogs. I eventually contacted Absolute in the mid-90s to inquire about it, and they told me that they didn't have any information on such a game ever being in the works.

There was eventually a James Bond game released for the SMS in Europe, as well as the Genesis/Mega Drive, called James Bond: The Duel. This game, however, was produced by Domark and seems to be unrelated.

Does anyone happen to anything about whatever happened to this title?

[TheRedEye]

I can't find a damned thing about this game. There's a game called Countdown to Meltdown for the C=64, but it has nothing to do with James Bond. Why don't you try the forums over at smspower.org?

[TheRedEye]

I just found a description of this game in a CES preview of Absolute's Master System games from Video Games & Computer Entertainment, July 1989:

Their other game, James Bond 007 - Countdown to Meltdown, takes the world-famous secret agent around the globe in an attempt to prevent a nuclear accident from contaminating the Earth's water supply. Scaramanga, one of Bond's fiercest adversaries, has created a puzzle for Bond to solve; if 007 isn't successful, the reactor will overheat and cause a meltdown.