The Official PlayStation Magazine UK was renowned for putting the biggest and most anticipated PSone games on its front cover, usually alongside a demo disc with a playable teaser. A winning combo to help that month’s issue fly off shelves. Whatever was tipped to become the PSone’s next big hit almost certainly took the cover at one point – they didn’t miss a beat. Well, aside from the issue with The Simpsons Wrestling as the cover feature. We all make mistakes.

Skip forward to the late Christmas 2003 issue (#105) and none other than James Pond could be found grinning away on the front cover. It was likely that the magazine’s current demographic of teens and pre-teens was oblivious to who James Pond even was. OPM was long in the tooth by this point – Sony published their final major release (Jinx) long ago, and the PS2 was now the dominant format.
If you’re also unfamiliar, James Pond was a ‘90s platformer mascot usually associated with the Amiga and Mega Drive. The original James Pond from 1990 was merely above average, taking the form of an underwater action game based on finding items and freeing lobsters. It was 1991’s James Pond II: RoboCod that propelled the fishy fellow into the limelight, being a Christmas themed platformer with a unique gimmick – Pond could stretch his metallic body to unlimited heights, shimming along ceilings to drop down onto platforms (or enemies) below. Colourful visuals, jaunty music, and the pun-tastic subtitle made this a hit, becoming a big seller.
Versions were soon made available for every format going – from the SNES to the Commodore 64. The 8-bit iterations compared favourably to their 16-bit counterparts (the Master System version, in particular, was a real looker) ensuring RoboCod generated a buzz on these platforms too.
The third game in the series – James Pond 3: Operation Starfish – launched in 1993 but wasn’t able to achieve the same level of critical and commercial success. Too similar to other platform games of the era seems to be the general consensus. Let’s not forget how busy the market was in 1993, with big platforming hits including Sonic 3, Aladdin, Cool Spot, and Super Mario All-Stars. Poor old James Pond couldn’t compete, and so the franchise was put on ice.

By the early noughties it became commercially viable for publishers to release budget games on the PSone. Costing as little as £9.99, these were usually localised versions of Japanese games, or something straightforward such as a puzzler, pinball game, or a basic sports sim. Play It (System 3) had made a name for itself on the PSone during its later years, releasing games at low price points that were mostly pretty good. Better than the low-budget rubbish Phoenix Games and Midas were releasing on the platform, at least. Crisis Beat, Silent Bomber, Toshinden 4, and Guilty Gear all managed to gain budget re-releases through Play It, each available for around a tenner.
The UK publisher teamed up with Vectordean to re-release James Pond: RoboCod on then modern platforms, presumably choosing this over the two entries due to it resonating with fans the most. The PSone version was the first to release, and with the release schedule looking incredibly slim for the aging console come winter 2003, this golden oldie was able to worm its way onto OPM’s front cover. Incidentally, the biggest release for the console that winter was arguably FIFA 2004, which took the cover a few months prior – with the rest of the festive season’s line-up mostly being budget games.


In fact, issue #105 was billed as the Christmas Special yet just six new games were reviewed – some of which, such as the vastly belated PAL version of Robo Pit 2, were published by the notorious Phoenix Games. RoboCod wasn’t even reviewed in this issue, instead merely gaining the preview treatment. It wasn’t reviewed in full until the January issue (street date 26th December) where it garnered an 8/10.
Issue #106 saw another Play It game on the cover – the virtual pet life sim Creatures: Raised in Space, a rejigged version of Creatures 3. I’m adamant RoboCod and Creatures 3 launched on the same day – publishers often released a handful of budget games at once to save on distribution costs. Moreover, these two were also available in a bundle from Argos. Amazon however suggests February 2004 for RoboCod and January 2004 for Creatures. This means there was a three-month gap between RoboCod appearing on OPM’s front cover and the game being released. If you did fancy finding a copy under your Christmas tree, you were out of luck.
Was RoboCod worthy of an 8/10 in 2003? And on the PSone, the system that gave us Crash Bandicoot and Spyro? Probably not. That score seems a little high, seemingly to justify it being placed on the cover and featured heavily within two issues.
I’ve always assumed that the PSone version was a conversion of the Amiga CD32’s RoboCod – the only CD based version available at the time – but it so transpires that it’s a bespoke conversion that only uses the Amiga CD32’s soundtrack. It has the same level themes, but the layouts differ, while the penguin hostages have been replaced with Santa’s elves. Secret areas are fewer, and the rejigged levels narrower, lessening the potential to explore. It does however sport new lighting/shadow effects and an animated intro, albeit a rather crudely drawn one. Budget games will be budget games.
Play It went on to re-release RoboCod on the PlayStation 2 in 2006, and then later the GBA and Nintendo DS – with the DS version featuring a map on the second screen. The most recent re-release was on the Nintendo Switch, which actually managed to gain a code-in-a-box retail release.
OPM ceased publication a few issues after RoboCod graced the cover, allegedly not with dwindling sales to blame (it was reportedly a constantly strong seller for Future, helped by the demo disc and official branding) but rather because the number of new releases had slowed to 2-3 a month, and consequently no new demos were being produced.
I feel like the moons had aligned for the editors of OPM one last time with RoboCod. A Christmas-themed game launching just in time to take pride of place on the Christmas Special, which – and unlike many other budget games – they’d been given early access to, plus the fact that it was pretty good? An unlikely chain of events for the magazine in 2003, making for an even more unlikely cover star. Here’s to James Pond, who against all odds, was able to grace newsstands once more in 2003. And on the cover of a PlayStation magazine, of all things.
Magazine cover scans via Retro Mags.