Do you remember the sleepless nights and countless hours you spent shooting way past Trevelyan and his thugs, blowing them up with grenades? Well, today we look back at GoldenEye Video Game and the movie that inspired the making of the game.
Back in the '90s, there was a growing trend of making video games out of hit movies. GoldenEye is a product of this ingenuity. It was based on the 1995 James Bond film with the same name GoldenEye.
GoldenEye belongs to the legendary range of groundbreaking shooter games like Doom, Half-life, Wolfenstein, and Quake. It differs from others because it showed the muscles of Nintendo 64. It demonstrated that Nintendo 64 could make a cool shooter game just like Doom.
Besides the twenty-levels strategy that the game borrowed from the movie, it also had multi-player matches against your mates in enclosed areas. The game was released in two versions, one was the gamepad variant, and the other one was the Grip Games variant that was shaped like a pistol. The two editions differed from each other completely.
Originally, GoldenEye 007 was planned to be a 2D, one-player side-scrolling game, just like Donkey Kong King. The lead creator, Martin Hollis, indicated that the Nintendo 64 would be the first 3D shooter game. By that time, technology had not reached that point.
Before we dig deep into the GE video game, let's mentions something about the GE movie one which the game was based on.
GoldenEye (The Movie) 1995
The GoldenEye was a classic James Bond movie from the '90s. It was written by Jeffrey Caine and Bruce Feirstein penned the screenplay.
Story by Michael France based, naturally, on the characters of Ian Fleming.
Lead Actors: Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean, and Judi Dench. Since it's Bond, we should include Izabella Scorupco and Famke Janssen, too.
Director: Martin Campbell (who returned for 2006's Casino Royale, another series ground breaker).
The Plot
Only Agent 007 will save the planet from catastrophe when a lethal satellite missile device falls into the wrong hands. In the film, Bond is granted a license to kill as he looks for the lost access code for "Goldeneye," a space weapon that can shoot a lethal electromagnetic pulse into the earth. Yet 007 is up against an opponent who anticipates his every move: a mastermind guided by years of hatred.Bond also stands up against Xenia Onatopp, whose ultimate weapon was a pleasure. She is the turning point of this movie as she bridges the gap between young and old. Her name was suggestive, and her scenes were more overt than any Bond girl before her. In this film, she's a lot of fun to watch.
I think GoldenEye was a classic movie of the '90s because it made James Bond be fun again. The sequel was slowly losing its grip, but the GoldenEye renewed it, and many people fell in love with the Bond Sequel once more.
My most favorite scene in the movie was when everyone was at the airstrike operations center and Bond reports on the real-time imagery. M answered, "We tend not to get CNN's negative news like the American government." This was a very funny comment at the time when the media was full of negative news about just about everyone.
All the same, the film did not have the most enticing plot, I will give it an 8 out of 10. It was a little bit like what we saw in the previous release. However, it was still a great action-packed movie with awesome characters. Trevelyan made a great villain, and Xenia was the best accomplice.
Now let us delve into the GoldenEye Video game that was inspired by this movie.
GoldenEye (The Video Game)
GoldenEye was a third-person handheld video shooter game developed by Tiger Electronics. It was based on the 1995 action-packed James Bond movie by the same name.
It was one of the most famous Nintendo games for many of us. The visuals were not as amazing as the new games nowadays, but all the same, it was over 20 years ago. That is the best technology of the time could give us.
"Facility" was one of the most exceptional single-player campaign levels of GoldenEye. It could also be played in Multi-player mode.
GoldenEye was, without doubt, the Greatest Video Game back in the ’90s
The '90s remains an amazing decade. For people around my age in here, you don't have to argue that Nintendo 64's GoldenEye 007 was the best game aver back in the '90s. It was the game of our childhood and reminded me of my college teenage experiences.
Nonetheless, it was one of the best first-person shooters game ever. When GoldenEye was released, the gaming world was divided between the Sony Playstation and Nintendo 64.
By the time of its release, we were prepping to enter our junior year of high school. My buddies were not only gamers but more die-hard video-game addicts. Before GoldenEye, we were all hooked up on EA Sports game, sometimes using Twisted metal which was a priceless PlayStation car battle game with an amazing ice cream truck. GoldenEye came with the revolutionary multi-player mode that changed everything in the gaming world. Bond was the staple of our post-school lives. Am sure am not alone in this.
GoldenEye changed the face of gaming in the '90s. First of all, the game conquered the DOOM and Virtual Cop, which were fixed rail shooter game. GoldenEye came with its freewheeling, practical shooting experience that every gamer fell in love with.
Nintendo 64 controls provided more buttons and joysticks, allowing players the ability to snap and ascend, and take cover rather than just moving forward. With these changes, the entire skill set for an FPS game changed. It was no longer a matter of rapid action on threats by being able to shoot fast. You had to shoot fast, while also figuring out how to get away from trouble.
GoldenEye's single-player difficulty levels had newer challenges and provided players with unlocked levels, cheats (Like DK and the funny Tiny Bond). It also offered rewards in the multi-player mode.
The multi-player mode was designed as an after-thought because players wanted to plug in more than one controller on the console. GoldenEye became the first game to have a split-screen deathmatch that allowed head-to-head gaming.
Choosing a Character.
Choosing a character on GoldenEye was the most critical part of the game as it defined the kind of person you are and how you would wish others to perceive you. This was my analysis of what I thought when my friends picked a character:
- Bond: Classic, moderate, Democratic Nelson Rockefeller. Place hot dogs ketchup.
- Natalya: Someone who reads fictional novels, sassy, and likes the style.
- Trevelyan: Stylish, slow, loves cats, passed through the black turtleneck phase.
- Xenia: Sexually loaded and grumpy. Feminist.
- Ourumov: Obsessed with law, very cold. Product of a divorce.
- Boris: Ironic, nerdy, and friendly.
- Valentin: Cocky or incompetent. How fat Valentin was made him a "big" target!
- Mishkin: stubborn, crash dieters and watches Pixar movies.
- Mayday: Fan of David Bowie. Hates fresh-cut grass.
- Jaws: Loves reading books by Roal Dahl, an orthodontist in the making.
- Boron Saturday: fashionista, loves magic.
- Odd job: This is a perennial liar.
People who insisted on using Oddjob were beginner players with something to hide. Some people changed the styles of controllers, by customizing them to Solitaire, Goodnight or Kissy. Some deep-cut nerds used dual controllers to strafe and jump while shooting; this was cheating. Personally, I would rather stick to the default settings called Honey or Dr No's Honey Rider, since it was more realistic for me.
If you were in high school in the '90s (or Middle school, or college), being good at the GoldenEye game was the thing that defined a real teen form the rest. I could be invited to college parties just so that I can be the player number 4 in a Bond tourney. Bond was a very important part of the teenage culture back in the '90s. Your video game skills would make you a hero.
Count Down of GoldenEye Deathmatch Levels
Let's talk about the GoldenEye Deathmatch levels. I will not talk of the ones I could not unlock with the solo campaigns or cheat devices—just the originals and Facility, since we all played Facility.
7. Caves: Where the f**k is everyone? This level is the worst of the worst, the veritable Klobb of multi-player levels. Too dark and weirdly laid out, you could wander for minutes not running into anyone, and still end up dead because it's also one of those levels only enjoyed by people who like to play with grenade launchers and took the time to figure out how to shoot bank shots into other rooms. It's like playing HORSE against someone who sucks at basketball but is good at underhanded free throws.
6. Basement: The tiniest of all the multiplayer maps, it was too easy to figure out where people would regenerate after getting killed, so you could get in a groove and ambush them immediately. One of the only saving graces in the Basement is the pillars, which are fun to hide behind. But the small size means very little strategy and my favorite board game is Stratego, so you understand how I have no choice but to lose all respect for Basement aficionados.
5. Library: Just Stack and Basement combined. It's too big, so you don't get enough action. That's my only real complaint. You run into people like every couple of minutes. It's more like you're playing Google Maps Street View in an occasionally violent area.
4. Complex: For most of my friends, this is the clear No. 1 stage. Lots and lots of Bond fans like it for a variety of reasons, from the hiding places to the fact that it looks like it comes from a future where everyone has a robot that intuitively dislikes Will Smith. I thought it was fine but would freak out if whomever I was playing against chose to be Janus Marine, as that sneaky sumbitch could chameleon himself into walls just long enough to kill you with essentially any weapon besides a Klobb.
3. Facility: This is the stage that all my friends who aren't in the Complex camp get behind. And to be honest, many of those people were just excited by the titillating possibility that they could get into a firefight in the men's room. I liked playing in Facility, partially because of the men's room thing, but also because you were constantly just opening doors and trying to figure out how to strafe across a doorway while firing accurately, which is a different skill set to master than the top two, and I wanted to be a well-rounded player so my father would be proud of me.
2. Temple: Giant and open, this left everything out there. It's a great level for constant action but starting far enough away from each other so you can use some real skills before you engage. In the tight corridors of some of the smaller levels, ducking and running and jumping are all for naught -- you're still going to get smoked. But in Temple, you can show off all of the strafing and shooting skills you've acquired, and constantly be involved in the action. I kept it from being No. 1 because I always wanted that weird lighter-colored door to open and be the entrance to some sort of secret room filled with throwing knives, but it was just a ruse to get me to stand in one place and get Klobb-ered.
1. Stack: The perfect open, medium-sized world where taking a high position on the upper level with a sniper rifle while playing as Xenia is the most glorious thing a person can do. Conversely, figuring out how to knock off someone who has that ground while you're darting around the lower level is the Bond equivalent of simultaneously getting a PhD and a motorcycle driver's license.
It was amazing going through these levels with the nice soundtrack of the classic 007 twang-da-da-dang. I still hear the nostalgic arcade bleeps in my head.
It seems unthinkable now, but back in the 90s you could shoot the average Franken-Nazi directly in the face, and it'd harm them equally as much as a graze on the shin. GoldenEye introduced the scaling of damage on enemies depending on where you shoot them and how protected they are at that point, which revolutionized shooters.
Suddenly you were either a gung-ho bullet-sprayer with all the finesse of Prince Philip firing into a barrel of endangered species or a superhuman sniper using the brand-new scope mode to one-shot enemies from across the sodding map.
