hecklerspray would have loved to have been in the room when the idea for James Pond was conceived. We’d imagine the train of thought went something like this:

"James Bond. He’s quite good. Fish are quite good, too. What if James Bond was a fish? James Bond as a fish? Oh, I’m such a hilarious man! James Bond as a fish indeed".

Or maybe they just realised that ‘Bond’ sounded a bit like ‘Pond’. One or the other.

James Pond was Amiga’s answer to Mario and Sonic – the company
figurehead and the star of a platform game. James Pond was a fish in a
tuxedo that was a hit with the ladies. And by ‘ladies’ we mean ‘fish
with tits and lipstick’. The first game was so-so; slower than Sonic
and less playable than Mario. And nobody made a cartoon out of it.

And then the second game blew everyone away. Mainly because it
managed to squeeze a second terrible pun into the title. James Pond II:
Codename Robocod took the seed of potential from the first game and
improved it by a thousand percent.

In the place of the sharp-suited spyfish was an armoured soldier,
more machine than fish. He had to kill a bunch of teddy bears that
wanted to stop Christmas, or something. But the plot wasn’t important;
suddenly James Pond looked much better than the other platform heroes -
and faster, too. Being a robot, he could shrink and stretch and breath
on land. And fly planes. There’s a good chance that Robocod was the
best 2D platform game of all time.

After Robocod, James Pond branched away for a spin-off called
Aquatic Games – a sort of fish Olympics game that was uniformly rubbish
- before coming back with Operation Starfish, set on the moon
(Starfish, see?). It was enormous – there were 111 levels – the puzzles
were harder and James Pond could run up walls with his special gravity
boots.

After Operation Starfish was released, Amiga disappeared and James Pond was forgotten. He flirted with other platforms, but it was never the same. There are whispers of a mobile-based comeback, though. So cross your fins.

eBay has got loads of James Pond gubbins. Take a peek.

[story by Stuart Heritage]