Can you name this 80s James Bond style video game that’s stumped fans?

The 1980s were the golden era for arcade games but can you name this one just from a screenshot and a basic description?

We live in an age where almost nothing seems out of bounds when it comes to video game remakes and remasters, as even puzzlingly obscure titles are resurrected in the hope they can become a hit again (just to prove our point, did you know there was a new Snow Bros. game coming out next month?).

However, some games are just too obscure to have any reasonable expectation of a comeback and so it is that a fan on Reddit was confused as to what the name of an arcade game was that he dimly remembered. The screenshot above is from the game but the question is do you know what it is?

The only clue he initially gave is that it’s ‘a James Bond type side-scrolling shooting, bike-riding, and a red Ferrari’. The answer is after the ad below but the only clue we’ll give is that it’s not an official James Bond game as, surprisingly, there’s never been an arcade game based on 007 – only console and PC titles.

If you want another clue, it’s a game by the now defunct Japanese coin-op developer Data East, makers of everything from Bombjack and Karate Champ (which popularised the concept of the one-on-one fighting game) to Midnight Resistance and RoboCop (which earned this game a cameo in RoboCop 2).

The game in question is… Sly Spy: Secret Agent, known simply as Secret Agent in Japan. To be fair, it is pretty obscure but that’s something of a surprise given it was released in 1989, when arcades were still very much a thing, and the 2D graphics were very impressive for the time.

It is a blatant James Bond knock-off, which you also would’ve thought would earn it some appeal, although the fact that it features multiple styles of gameplay seems to have put off more people than it attracted.

The main stages are 2D side-scrolling levels reminiscent of Rolling Thunder or Shinobi, but on top of that there are levels where you’re riding a motorcycle with a machinegun (just as the original Redditor remembered), one where you’re shooting bad guys while skydiving, and others where you’re swimming along in scuba gear.

For whatever reason, the game is little known nowadays and never received a sequel. It was available for a time on Nintendo Switch, but no longer, and it was also part of the Data East Arcade Classics retro compilation for the Wii… which was only released in the US.

It was ported to several home computer systems in the 80s though, which are likely to have been played by more people than the original arcade game, including the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Atari ST, and Amiga.

The only way it’s easily available now though is via the Data East Arcade 1 cartridge for the Evercade retro handheld console.

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