While we were all caught up with the Nindies Showcase, a blast from the past quietly slipped its way onto the eshop yesterday.

For those who might not know, James Pond was a series of 2D platformers that came out during 90s for numerous systems, Nintendo included. The series starred James Pond, a aquatic spoof of everyone’s favorite British secret agent, as he fought against the machinations of the evil Dr.Maybe. Despite its goofy premise, the series holds a number of nostalgic memories for gamers who played the games back when they first came out.

The subject of this article, James Pond Codename:Robocod, is a port of the second game in the series to the Switch in all its 16-bit glory. In this outing, James Pond travels to the North Pole, where Dr.Maybe has taken over Santa’s workshop as part of his latest scheme for world domination. The game also introduces a new power-up for Pond, a robotic suit that allows him to stretch his body upwards to reach high areas. As expected, the plot of this game is extremely silly, but perhaps to be expected from a series called “James Pond”.

As a final oddity to this strange release, James Pond Codename:Robocod was among the games the UK retailer Argos was trying to sell “physical versions” of. To give a brief recap, these “physical versions” consisted of a Switch download code in an empty physical box, with no actual game card included.

One wonders if the nostalgia factor was one of the reasons Argos chose James Pond of all things for their “physical version”. Although its somewhat doubtful that the power of nostalgia alone is enough to entice gamers to drop extra money for such an obviously fishy product.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.