007: Licence to Kill
007: Licence to Kill is a vertically scrolling shooter based on the James Bond film of the same name, developed by Quixel and published by Domark in 1989. It was released for Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, BBC Micro, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, MSX, and ZX Spectrum.
The closely follow the plot of the film, consisting of six scenes in which Bond chases drug czar Sanchez who has murdered his best friend Felix Leiter's bride. The scenes within the game vary in setting and include helicopter chases, underwater diving, water-skis and behind the wheel of an 18-wheel tanker truck.
Gameplay
007: Licence to Kill is a top down vertically scrolling shooter. Theobjective is to pursue the drug lord Sanchez through six levels in using different methods of locomotion. The right hand side of the screen contains a HUD which displays information about the current level, such as the height of the helicopter in the first level or the amount of ammunition remaining in the second level. Hostile enemies populate each level which can be killed or avoided and there are side objectives along the way such as picking up ammunition or drug caches. The player must dodge shots and environment dangers such as boats or falling rocks.Ports
007: Licence to Kill targeted multiple platforms initially and post-release with Mi6-HQ.com calling it "one of the widest released 007 titles ever."Alongside the original versions was another version for BBC, coded by Lore Games who were subcontracted to Consul Technology who were in turn subcontracted to Domark. It was based largely on the graphics from the Spectrum version, but with a freshly written sprite engine, character 'AI', sound effects and status display. It featured a double buffer screen refresh mechanism to eliminate flicker, and was available in cassette tape and floppy disc versions.
Another version was being written for NES by Simon Nicol from Tengen. Christ West from Quixel inspected this version after the others had been completed and considered it finished despite missing the final level, but it went unreleased as by that point the Domark publishers felt that too much time had passed since the film's release and so the NES version would not be worth releasing.