This is very odd game, for the oddest of reasons.
Visually, James Bond: The Duel it looks fantastic. While many 8 bit games had very rudimentary graphics with sometimes humorously bad animations, here, when Bond turns you can actually see him swap the gun in his hands, when he climbs a ladder you can see his hand gestures, when he moves around and fires it has a sense of gravity to it. The environments are large, detailed and varied with the only difference between the Game Gear and Master System being the plane. Whether you prefer more screen shown or not is subjective, the tighter Game Gear zoom doesn't really have a negative effect on gameplay.
All in all, it's extremely impressive for an 8 bit title, I'm not sure it tops Castle Of Illusion as the best looking title on the Master System but it's certainly one of the best looking.
The audio is an entirely different matter. Where the visuals tantalize with 007 style, the audio is abysmal - with the opening screen having the option for FX or music, not both.
Playing with FX gives the game a lifeless barren desolation. Bond is renowned for it's soundtracks and omitting it entirely is confounding.
On the other hand, using the music injects some personality to the game, but it removes immersion with a detached feeling of watching someone play rather than playing yourself. Music itself, is serviceable, not exceptional.
The game itself, was actually Timothy Dalton last appearance Bond, and uses it's original story, but it clearly takes reference from the movies as the villains and settings are a collage of the spies most remembered encounters.
It's original story though, it non existent. The levels have a sense of connection, within the levels themselves the scenery will change as you transition from one scenery to the next, but there are no cutscenes or dialogue adding context, merely a score count at the end (bizarrely) referring to him as "Commander Bond"???
Enemies though frequent, gameplay and in particular the enemies have little to no variation. All being "man walks left and right" and turrets - it's beyond uninspired given how synonymous the series is with the absurd, the antithesis of generic.
Boss battles, of which few exist, are poorly designed, it's possible to stand still in the corner for many and not really be required to do much, just wait for the enemies path loops.
Exploration is rewarded with brief cases and (quite literally) collecting barely dressed women as rewards yielding life, it's welcome but ultimately not paricuarly interesting.
James Bond: The Duel is a serviceable game that potentially could have been great. It's non existent audio, bland enemies and lack of creativity culminate to stunt whatever aspirations it had. There are worse Bond titles, far worse, but this stands as a missed opportunity for "The Kremlin", which as history has written - would be their last game.
