By 2023, one YouTuber named Paraspectre has become known for his Pokemon Trading Card Game challenges on Game Boy Color and his Pokemon video game retrospectives, But, his channel started with a 007 James Bond games retrospective series. While the video game retrospective series never gained much traction on YouTube, it’s a great, underrated look at James Bond 007 video games.
Paraspectre’s channel name is a mash-up of Parasect (one of his favorite Pokemon) and Spectre (a fictional organization in the original James Bond novel series by Ian Fleming). So, it makes sense that his channel started with James Bond games. Even if you’re not the biggest Bond fan, if you like video game history as much as I do, this whole series is worth bingeing.
Of course, he talks in depth about the Nintendo 64 classic Goldeneye 007. But, there’s so many more games in the Bond series I never even knew existed. As licensed games go, their quality is very mixed. Paraspectre gives an in-depth look at all James Bond video games (through 007 Legends) in a way no one else has. He goes as far back to the early days of gaming with Atari and text-based adventures!
Here’s the complete playlist with 24 videos:
Paraspectre also started a Metroid game retrospective. But those were indefinitely put on hold to focus on his Pokemon “Paraspectives” going into every Pokemon game ever released outside of Japan. Even being a Pokemon fan this long, I never knew much about a few of these. Great as the Pokemon retrospectives are, they wouldn’t have existed without the James Bond retrospective series. He “cut his teeth” on those videos, so to speak.
Currently, Paraspectre still has a full-time job, this channel being a side hustle. While some of his editing is a bit silly, his videos are charming and entertaining. His channel has been steadily growing, and I hope eventually one of his videos goes viral. I really enjoy his content, but his new videos are so infrequent. Of course, he’s doing this pretty much entirely as a passion project. Who doesn’t love a little passion project reviewing nostalgic properties?
What video games did you enjoy in your younger years? Would you ever create your own retrospective series for them?
