You know his name. Bond, James Bond. But who is the man behind one of the most infamous three-digit numbers in the world? That is the question IO Interactive needed to answer going into the development of 007 First Light, a game that tells the origin story of Agent 007. During our trip to IO Interactive's Copenhagen headquarters for the latest issue of Game Informer's cover story, we sat down with the team to learn how they went about crafting a young version of James Bond.

007 First Light development took place during an unusual time for the James Bond film franchise; it's been nearly 14 years since the last James Bond game, and there is currently no live-action James Bond actor, giving IO Interactive the opening to do what they wanted to do: craft their own original story starring their own original Bond. "It’s very important for us to have part of ourselves in the story and in the characters that we create, yet still being very respectful to the source material, to the IP," game director and IO Interactive CEO Hakan Abrak says. "I don’t think we would have necessarily had the same energy and the same vision and the same results if we were to do a gamification of a movie. That freedom of creativity was very important to us, and we are so, so grateful for our partners that we’ve been given that opportunity."

In adapting a new version of the iconic superspy, IO Interactive needed to walk a fine line between creating something new and distinct while honoring the legacy of one of the most iconic characters in pop culture. "Everyone knows Bond," narrative and cinematic director Martin Emborg says. "It's a generational thing by now: 63 years of movies, books from the '50s… it's huge. Everyone knows how he takes his drink, everyone knows what he drives, and what he wears. So, it’s really interesting to do an origin story. 'Who is the character? Who is the man behind all this stuff?'"

But rather than drawing inspiration from iconic depictions like those of Connery, Brosnan, or Craig, IO wanted to examine the consistent attributes across all media, not just the films. Emborg tells me that as soon as he learned IO was making a Bond game about six and a half years ago, he went out and bought the box sets of the movies, books, and even read the comics. 

"Bond is a character where there's been versions of him through the decades," Emborg says. "I think it's not particularly helpful to look at how other people have interpreted the character. It's better to look at the DNA and then say, 'How are we making a contemporary version of this character?' Obviously, yeah, you look at the movies [and books] – how could you not?"

Through this process, IO successfully drilled into what makes him James Bond, regardless of age. Then, the tricky part: How do you create an inexperienced version of a man whose experience defines him? IO Interactive tried to find what his most defining traits are and then envisioned how those would be expressed through youth. "I think his core traits that he's born with are he has a lot of wits, he's a very smart guy, he has guts, obviously," Emborg says. "All these qualities are changed by the virtue of him being a young man. Wits, in this case, he’s a hungry mind. He’s whip-smart, but he doesn’t have that kind of experience. Yet, in terms of guts, you can definitely say, as a young man, he skews more reckless, whereas with a more seasoned 007, it’s a calculated risk. Yes, he will jump out of an airplane, but this guy does it just because that seems like the next best thing to do to catch the bad guys."

Another quality IO Interactive identified in James Bond is a coldness that permeates many of his interactions. Though I get a glimpse of how IO's Bond remains cool and collected under pressure during my hands-off demo, he doesn't yet have a full grasp on how he comes across. "Our guy isn’t there yet, so I think, if anything, he has more heart in this version than he might have as a seasoned man," Emborg says. "Charm – the quintessential Bond quality – he has in spades, but it’s not weaponized yet. An older Bond will use that tactically, and I think a younger Bond, maybe isn’t even aware that he’s projecting all this charm."

To depict this version of Bond, IO Interactive cast Patrick Gibson, who most recently played a young version of Dexter Morgan in the Dexter prequel series, Original Sin. "He has a great youthful energy to him," Emborg says. "He has a kind of built-in impatience, which is perfect for the character. Like, 'Okay, what’s next? What are we doing now?' But he also has a great gravity that he can tap into. He can get really insanely focused at the drop of a hat, which is really, really impressive. And then he has great comedic timing, and he’s just a lot of fun to be around. I think he checks all the boxes."

We'll have to wait and see how well IO Interactive's version of James Bond pans out, but in our demo, he felt like a fitting transposition of the famous Bond attributes to a younger version of the character. Thankfully, we don't have terribly long to wait, as 007 First Light arrives on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, Switch 2, and PC on May 27. For more on 007 First Light and our other most anticipated games of 2026, be sure to check out our latest issue. If you're a Game Informer subscriber, you can read the full issue right here.

Scott Pilgrim EX, the new retro brawler by Tribute Games, the team behind TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge and Marvel Cosmic Invasion, has a new trailer revealing a March 3 release date. In addition, two new playable characters have been revealed.

Today’s trailer showcases two more former enemies of Scott who will help him clean up the streets of Toronto: Matthew Patel and Robot-01. Matthew Patel is one of Ramona’s formerly evil exes, and his combat style emphasizes crowd control and manipulation. This is due to his ability to summon demon hipsters to distract enemies and lay traps on the field. Patel can also manipulate fire and summon supernatural arms.

Robot-01 was created by the Katayanagi Twins to harm Scott, but it now uses abilities, like firing long-range blasts and rocketing across the screen, to aid him. Robot-01 can also rain explosive projectiles, acting as a screen-clearing attack. See how Robot-01 and Patel hold their own in the trailer below:

These two new faces join a playable roster consisting of Scott Pilgrim, Ramona Flowers, Lucas Lee, and Roxie Richter. Up to four players can play locally or online to bash their way through an original adventure, which features new music from Anamanaguchi, the band behind Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game’s soundtrack.

Scott Pilgrim EX is launching on March 3 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC. You can learn more about the game by checking out this deep-dive feature into the game’s creation and our hands-on impressions. Be sure to also check out our interview with Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley from last December, where he discusses his three favorite games of all time. 

Wildlight Entertainment is a new team with a strong pedigree of talent, including team members who worked on Apex Legends. That experience is clear from the earliest moments of Highguard. The new competitive shooter showcases agile, precise shooting mechanics and enjoyable, fast-moving map navigation, meeting expectations many players may have if you’ve played Apex Legends. And once you get into real matches, it’s clear that the game has a rewarding new match structure at its core. Even so, I’ve struggled in my early hours to find the fun amid some confusing systems, limited variation in the play experience, and little visibility into the seemingly richly imagined fiction and setting on offer.

Highguard is an unusual title at launch, arriving as a free-to-play shooter with big ambitions to grab an audience, but with little to no detail about the game shared ahead of launch. That’s certainly not an obligation for game makers, but it has left the audience, myself included, scrambling a little bit in these early days to understand what the project even is.

After several hours of play, the picture begins to take shape. Players control Wardens, fantasy-inspired warriors of magic and elemental powers, but who also wield high-powered weaponry alongside their mystical capabilities. For reasons that don’t seem to be explained clearly, small groups of Wardens are battling each other, laying siege to the enemy team’s stronghold in the name of – well, that’s not entirely clear.

I love the colorful art style and the melding of fantasy and modern aesthetics that Wildlight explores here. But, without a PvE component or any especially clear accompanying storytelling or setup, I’m stymied a bit in this first day of play, trying to understand what’s happening and why. It is a competitive shooter, of course, and those elements are likely best left as background material, regardless. Here’s hoping the days and weeks that follow help to illuminate the lore and clarify that part of the project.

No matter why these Wardens are fighting, the main 3v3 raid mode is certainly novel. Each match is neatly separated into distinct phases of play. Players select between a number of base layouts and proceed to fortify that base with additional protection before venturing out into a large open map to gather weapons and armor, gear up, and even mine resources to buy additional upgrades. After a designated time window elapses, a Shieldbreaker relic spawns somewhere in the open field, and open conflict with the enemy team begins in earnest, as each allied squad aims to pick it up. Once in hand, you can deploy that Shieldbreaker against the enemy base, open its energy shield, and attempt to raid the interior in an effort to detonate explosives and take out the stronghold. If that effort fails, things reset, there’s another chance to gear up (this time with better gear), and the process begins again.

Taken piece by piece, there’s nothing there that’s profoundly complicated. But I’ll admit that I felt completely lost for the first several matches I played – unsure where to put my attention, when to engage in combat, what to prioritize when defending, and how to even meaningfully contribute to my team. In the long term, it’s possible that the very confusion I felt might be the game’s saving grace – a slightly more complex and freeform match structure that rewards creative play and strategy.

However, there are some other factors that hold back my endorsement at this phase. The single 3v3 raid mode is currently the only way to play the game, and at present, something about it just feels a bit barebones. The maps are, to their credit, very large and cleverly designed. But it means that I spent a lot of time wandering the environment, punctuated by very brief moments of exciting shooting exchanges. If the fantasy is one of besieging an enemy fortress, my initial impression is that the small player count feels out-of-sync with the concept and the map size.

While I don’t understand who they are or where they came from, the small roster of available characters all look and play splendidly. I like the asymmetric powers that come into play in a given match, depending on who I’m up against. And the mix of unique fantasy powers – like magical invisibility or a character who transforms into a massive beast – makes me eager to try everyone out and zero in on a favorite. I also really enjoy the speed and fun that comes from different mounts you can summon to gallop across the battlefield. These work great, add a sense of speed and momentum, and lend something new to the shooter equation.

Highguard is a thoughtfully designed game with strong movement and shooting fundamentals, and it’s trying something new within the genre. For that reason alone, I’m interested and excited to play more and better understand the flow of a given match. But it’s not an easy game to understand at first glance, and it lacks a breadth of play options I’d expect from a title that has ambitions to break into the scene.

We’ll have a full review after several more days of matches, so check back in for a more comprehensive rundown. In the meantime, Highguard’s free price of entry means you could give it a shot for yourself and see whether this new raid shooter concept might gel with your desires.

Highguard is available now on PS5, Xbox, and PC. 

James Bond is poised to make his grand return to video games for the first time in over a decade through IO Interactive's 007 First Light, and we're excited to feature the world famous superspy's latest adventure on our next cover. We traveled to Copenhagen, Denmark, to get the behind-the-scenes story of how the studio best known for the Hitman series developed another kind of globetrotting agent adventure.

Game Informer Magazine – Issue 375 (February 2026)

007 First Light is an origin story for Bond, telling how he became the agent he is in most media in which we see him depicted. As such, our cover art depicts this younger version of the character from a sequence called "The Iceland Incident" where MI6 first notice Bond's potential. However, according to art director Rasmus Poulsen, the art is not a direct adaptation of those events. "It's partially inspired by the story of the game, and it's partially inspired by the overall tone of the game," he says. "The thing that was important for us was that you get a sense of what the product feels like as a whole, rather than a singular scene."

But that's not all that's housed within the pages of this issue of Game Informer. The biggest feature in this issue is a massive look at the most exciting games in 2026 and beyond. Whether you're excited for Grand Theft Auto VI and Control: Resonant, or Judas and Stranger Than Heaven, or Forza Horizon 6 and Gears of War: E-Day, we've got you covered! 

But that's not all that's housed in the pages of this issue, which launches digitally on January 27! In addition to the in-depth 007 First Light cover story and our huge Most Anticipated Games of 2026 and Beyond section, we have a retrospective on the first 30 years of Bandai Namco's Tales franchise from contributor Michael Murphy, while freelancer Andrew King has a great investigation into the evolving definition of adventure games. Nicole Carpenter also contributes a fascinating look at the enormous success of a seemingly niche type of game in Love and Deepspace. All of that is on top of our standard suite of departments, including Gear, Replies, Reviews, Top Five, and smaller interviews 

The digital issue is available now, and you can read it right here if you're a subscriber! Print issues will start rolling out to subscribers in the next couple of weeks. If you don't already subscribe and would like to get a copy of this issue, you'll be able to find them at select newsstands and bookstores, or you can subscribe to receive the next 10 issues delivered straight to your mailbox.

I love video game music, but it can be really difficult to listen to some soundtracks, especially older ones, through legitimate means. Covers, while not the same thing, have always been an easy way around that, and the internet is full of them. I'm especially fond of jazz covers (I've been a fan of insaneintherain's music for years), and I distinctly remember how excited I was when I discovered The 8-Bit Big Band, a large ensemble dedicated to elaborate jazzy covers of video game music, around 2019. When it won a Grammy in 2022 for its version of Meta Knight's Revenge, I was thrilled, not just on behalf of the band, but on behalf of video game music as a whole, which has never received the recognition it deserved.

I was shocked, to say the least, when I found out that the band's leader, Charlie Rosen, doesn't even consider this his main job.

"This still is, I guess, a side project," Rosen says to me over Zoom. "Which seems reductive now to say at this point, because it is very much part of my life in a big way. But it started out as a side project tangential to my main career, which is working on Broadway musicals and orchestrating them, arranging them, conducting them."

I unknowingly saw Rosen perform at his "main job" in the summer of 2019. In addition to jazz, I'm also fond of Broadway musicals, and Rosen played guitar in the pit orchestra for Be More Chill, a show with music he orchestrated and arranged. The soundtrack has clear video game influence (there's an entire number called "Two-Player Game"), but Rosen's video game hobby didn't fully bleed into his professional life until a fateful trip to Japan.

Charlie Rosen stands front and center at an 8-Bit Big Band concert.

The Great Video Game Songbook

In Tokyo, Rosen was taking a shamisen and koto lesson when he noticed his instructor had a copy of a Ganbare Goemon game (known as Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon in the West) for the Nintendo 64. It's not a game you see every day, especially stateside, but Rosen was a fan and pointed it out. He ended up bonding with his teacher, Kazushi Okimasa, over their collective love of video game music, and Okimasa gave Rosen a copy of his band's album. That band, as it turns out, was Famikoto, a group that covers video game music with traditional Japanese instruments, and Rosen was hooked.

"I was listening to the album on the plane [home]," Rosen says. "I'm like, 'This is so cool. I want to record an album of video game music.'" The idea stuck, and in 2018, The 8-Bit Big Band released its first album, Press Start. Rosen reiterates that the project was just for fun, and while he was likely hoping for a positive response, he was surprised by just how popular the group was, even from the earliest performances.

"We did our first live show in 2018 in like, a 200-seat jazz club, maybe 150," he says, referencing a now closed venue SubCulture in New York. "We did two shows that night, and I remember being like, 'I don't know anybody here,' you know? I thought it would just be my friends and family, and it's like, I literally know nobody. There's a whole scene for this that I was unaware of."

As our conversation continues, I'm shocked by how unaware Rosen actually was of this corner of video game culture. "I did not know there was, like, a big scene for covering video game music or jazz covers or arrangements. I just did it totally for fun," he says. Despite that, he blindly walked into a niche in the community, finding great success with his Broadway-caliber arrangements, large ensemble, professionally produced recordings, and unique take on the classic songs. Thanks to his current commitment to YouTube, he's capitalized on that successful formula, raking in over 80 million views to date, but none of it would be possible without his specific musical approach.

"This is what jazz musicians do," Rosen says. "Jazz musicians reimagine standards, [...] whether it be film scores, [The Great] American Songbook, jazz standards, [or] Broadway musicals. [...] And now that we're 40 years into video game music, we also have a collective body of the great video game songbook [...] that we all grew up with. And so jazz musicians can, like, take it and reimagine it, reinterpret it, and people will know the songs."

I appreciate the way The 8-Bit Big Band plays around with a song. Jazz is an umbrella of genres that are very conducive to musical references, and noticing one mid-song is like being a part of a fun inside joke. One of my favorite songs I played in high school jazz band is called "Spain," originally by Chick Corea. Listen to this iconic part of the song, and then listen to this part from The 8-Bit Big Band's rendition of the Chrono Trigger theme. In the context of the jazz cover, it keeps the audience on their toes with yet another stylistic variation, but if you know both original songs, it's a surprising collision of two worlds. If you've ever seen someone lose their mind at a jazz solo or arrangement, this sort of crossover is one of the reasons why.

Charlie Rosen conducts the 8-Bit Big Band

Rosen emphasizes that this playfulness is why he likes the jazz approach so much, especially when we compare it to a more traditional orchestral cover, like the London Philharmonic Orchestra's video game albums.

"The makers of these games, or the orchestras, want to be like, 'Take this music seriously.' And what music is taken more seriously than classical music, right?" Rosen says. "We're wearing tuxes, and we're playing Zelda, and that's amazing. That's fantastic. [...] But I think that there's just a lot more fun to be had with the music [when] maintaining a high professional level of musicianship, but letting people in and being a lot more playful with the arranging of the music in these more contemporary and pop styles, to just showcase how flexible the music can be and have a good time doing it."

Some tracks are more straightforward takes on a tune, like the band's rendition of "Bob-Omb Battlefield," while others convert familiar themes into very specific jazz styles. Rosen says, "I'll have a flash of an idea for, like, a theme from a game and think, 'Oh, wouldn't it be cool if I arranged it in this way?' Like, for example, wouldn't it be cool [...] if Frank Sinatra had played Portal?" Other recent examples include the theme from Luigi's Mansion in the style of "Sing, Sing, Sing" and themes from the Super Mario series in the style of a gospel praise break. Sometimes Rosen hops straight from inspiration to arranging, but other times he takes the idea and pockets it for a rainy day.

Still, you don't need to understand the references to appreciate how the covers transform the source material, and that's by design. Referencing our earlier conversation about orchestral covers, Rosen says, "I also think jazz can suffer from what we're talking about sometimes, where it gets so heavy and so contemporary and so collegiate that it's not accessible anymore. Part of The 8-Bit Big Band is showing that these arrangements can be accessible even if you don't know the games."

Turn-Based Transcription

One might expect Rosen to write all the arrangements, schedule the musicians, and then record the whole album in one fell swoop, but it all comes together much more slowly than that, even though Rosen admits, "I mean, certainly I'd probably save a little bit of money if I did it all at once." Instead, songs are arranged and recorded in chunks of three or four at a time, typically a few times a year, whenever Rosen has time in his schedule. It's also better for the musicians – even a few hours of recording just a handful of songs is "exhausting," according to Rosen, because sessions can be particularly intense or physically demanding depending on the piece.

The logistics of such a large group are also a lot to handle. While solo musicians or smaller musical groups might have the money to write or experiment in the studio, Rosen pays for "about 35" people at once to record, and when you add in the cost of renting studio space, time is of the essence. Despite the necessities of structure, they're still playing jazz music, so some parts are afforded a little wiggle room.

Four saxophonists play the music from Dolphin Shoals, a track in Mario Kart 8. Click the image to see the full song

"I write out the full orchestration, the chart, the arrangement, ahead of time," Rosen explains. "And then when we get into the studio, especially for the rhythm section – so, guitar, piano, bass, and drums – they can be a little bit more free and interpretational with what I write, because it's jazz, you know? I sort of give them more of a rough guideline. I don't write out every single note of the bass line. I don't write out every single drum fill. You just write the shape of the chart and what's important to play."

The other consequence of the piecemeal recording style is that each session has different musicians. Rosen estimates that any given recording probably only shares 65 percent of its musicians with the prior session, and that even though they only have around 35 people per track, albums can involve well over a hundred musicians.

Achievement Hunting

Five albums and almost eight years later, The 8-Bit Big Band has seen plenty of success, with none more exciting than its initial Grammy win in 2022. Rosen, who is a member of the Recording Academy (thanks to his "day" job), submitted the group's "Meta Knight's Revenge" cover for consideration. He says he recalls thinking, "This is the biggest long shot in the history of music, you know? But sure, I'll submit my fun little video game music arrangements to the Grammy Awards." Turns out, it wasn't a long shot at all, and Rosen ultimately received the award for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella.

The group was nominated again in 2025 with its rendition of "Last Surprise" from Persona 5, this time for Best Arrangement, Instruments and Vocals, but lost to vocal quartet säje. This year, the band is actually nominated twice; once for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella again (for "Super Mario Praise Break") and once for Best Large Jazz Ensemble Album (for Orchestra Emulator).

The cover of Orchestra Emulator, the band's latest album.

"[T]hat is like, a traditional jazz category," Rosen says, referring to Orchestra Emulator's nomination. "That's like– the other nominees are heavy-hitting jazz legends, so it's pretty insane to be listed alongside them, to be honest."

Of course, he's also enthusiastic about "Super Mario Praise Break." Just like with his first award, he's the one who decides which tracks to submit for consideration, meaning this is an arrangement he's particularly proud of.

"I submitted ["Super Mario Praise Break"] because it is just such a skillful example of what an arrangement is, which is just wildly recontextualizing a theme in a new way to showcase the quality of that theme in a completely different musical context," Rosen says.

Matthew Whitaker plays the organ in The 8-Bit Big Band’s take on "Waluigi Pinball"

He also makes a point to credit his collaborators, Matthew Whitaker and Bryan Carter. Both grew up in the church, making them specifically qualified to write a praise break. Both also perform with the group, playing different instruments. Whitaker is an accomplished pianist, and you might recognize him from his organ performance on 8-Bit Big Band's take on "Waluigi Pinball" (which has a bass line that sounds suspiciously like Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon"). Meanwhile, Carter plays the drums and also worked with Rosen to orchestrate 2022's Broadway show Some Like It Hot, for which the duo also won a Grammy.

While Rosen mentions this other Grammy in passing (he says he's "gotten a couple" nominations for his "Broadway stuff"), our conversation never turns towards these other awards. They're simply irrelevant, which is a funny thing to say about a Grammy in the context of someone's musical career. It's a nice reminder, though, that despite teasers of songs that might appear in the next album, it might still be a ways off. After all, despite the praise, the views, and the awards, this is only Rosen's side gig.