As a direct prequel to its Nintendo 64 counterpart, the game follows agent Joanna Dark as she completes her training at the Carrington Institute research centre and uncovers information against rival corporation dataDyne.

Perfect Dark was developed simultaneously with the Game Boy Color version of Donkey Kong Country.

The game received generally mixed reviews from critics, who criticised its difficult and superficial gameplay, but highlighted its technical aspects such as graphics and compatibility features.

Perfect Dark is an action game that is presented from a top-down perspective and where the player can move and shoot in eight directions.

These include the use of stealth, in which the player is challenged to kill enemies by sneaking up behind them without making noise (e.g. running or reloading weapons), complete a memory type game that involves pressing various buttons in a specific order to open up doors, and shoot targets from a first-person perspective.

Objectives range from rescuing hostages to exploring areas and recovering items such as keycards, explosives or laptop computers, which are useful to hack into electronic devices.

[8] Although production on the game began after Conker's Pocket Tales was completed, it was delayed while Mickey's Racing Adventure was still in development.

[19] Critics praised the game's technical aspects, including graphics, sampled speech, and compatibility features, but criticised its superficial gameplay, especially when compared to Metal Gear: Ghost Babel.

[13] The Electric Playground highlighted the game's full voice conversations and numerous sound effects like footsteps and gunshots.

[23] The lack of checkpoints and scarcity of health and ammunition frustrated some critics, who found the game unnecessarily difficult and unforgiving.

In practice, however, enemies turn around and attack even when you're sneaking up on them and defusing bombs requires no effort, so the suggestion of strategy is moot".

[23][13] The multiplayer mode was highlighted for its extensive options,[13] but IGN remarked that "there's no real strategy involved in these deathmatch games other than to find the other person and open fire until one dies and respawns elsewhere on the map".

[13] In a retrospective review, Jon Wahlgren of Nintendo Life concluded that Rare "did a great job on squeezing so many features and technical magic into the little cart, by focusing so heavily on the tech they seem to have sacrificed a lot of what would make it more fun to play".