GoldenEye 007
GoldenEye 007 is a 1997 first-person shooter game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It is based on the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye, with the player controlling the secret agent James Bond to prevent a criminal syndicate from using a satellite weapon. They navigate a series of levels to complete objectives, such as recovering or destroying objects, while shooting enemies. In a multiplayer mode, up to four players compete in several deathmatch scenarios via split-screen.
Development began in January 1995. An inexperienced team led by Martin Hollis developed GoldenEye 007 over two and a half years. The game was conceived as a side-scrolling platform game for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, but evolved into a 3D shooter for the Nintendo 64 inspired by Doom and Virtua Cop. Rare visited the GoldenEye set for reference, and Eon Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer allowed them to expand the game with sequences and characters not featured in the film.
GoldenEye 007 was released in Japan on 23 August 1997, North America on 25 August 1997, and the United Kingdom on 7 November 1997, two years after the release of the film but shortly before the release of its sequel Tomorrow Never Dies. It faced low expectations from the gaming media during development. However, it received critical acclaim and sold over eight million copies, making it the third-best-selling Nintendo 64 game. The game was praised for its visuals, gameplay depth and variety, and multiplayer mode. In 1998, it received the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award, as well as four awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.
GoldenEye 007 demonstrated the viability of home consoles as platforms for first-person shooters and signalled a transition from Doom-like shooters to a more grounded style. It pioneered features such as atmospheric single-player missions, widescreen gaming, stealth elements, and console multiplayer deathmatch. The game is considered to be one of the most influential and greatest video games ever made, with many of its elements, such as the Klobb gun, leaving an enduring impression in video game culture. A spiritual successor, Perfect Dark, was released in 2000, while a remake developed by Eurocom, also titled GoldenEye 007, was released in 2010. The original game was rereleased in January 2023 on Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S via Xbox Game Pass and Nintendo Switch via the Nintendo Classics service.
Gameplay
GoldenEye 007 is a first-person shooter in which the player takes the role of Secret Intelligence Service agent James Bond through a series of levels. In each level, the player must complete a set of objectives while computer-controlled opponents try to hinder the player's progress. Objectives range from recovering items to destroying objects, defeating enemies, or rescuing hostages. Some objectives may also require the player to use high-tech gadgets. For example, in one level, the player must use Bond's electromagnetic watch to acquire a jail cell key. Although the player begins each level with a limited amount of supplies, additional weapons and ammunition can be acquired from defeated enemies. There are no health-recovery items, but body armour can be acquired to provide a secondary health bar.The game features more than 20 weapons, including pistols, submachine guns, assault rifles, a sniper rifle, grenades, and throwing knives. Most weapons have a finite magazine and must be reloaded after a certain number of shots. Although each weapon has its own characteristics, ammunition is interchangeable between some weapon types. For example, pistols and submachine guns share the same ammunition. Weapons inflict different levels of damage depending on which body part they hit. Head shots cause the most damage, while arm and leg shots inflict the least damage. The Klobb, a submachine gun with a folding stock, possesses a high rate of fire and a wide bullet spread compared to other weapons, but is severely underpowered with a heavy recoil. The Klobb can be dual-wielded for additional firepower. Stealth is often encouraged, as frequent gunfire can alert distant guards, and alarms can spawn enemies. Certain weapons incorporate a suppressor or a telescopic sight to aid the player in killing enemies discreetly.
Each level can be played on three difficulty settings: Agent, Secret Agent, and 00 Agent. These affect aspects such as the damage enemies can withstand and inflict, the amount of ammunition available, and the number of objectives that must be completed. Two bonus levels can be unlocked by completing the game on Secret Agent and then on 00 Agent. The player may also replay previously completed levels within target times to unlock bonus cheat options such as infinite ammunition or invincibility. Upon completing the game on the three difficulty settings, an additional mode is unlocked, allowing the player to customise the difficulty of a level by manually adjusting enemies' health, reaction times, aiming accuracy, and the damage they inflict.
Multiplayer
GoldenEye 007 features a multiplayer mode where up to four players can compete in several deathmatch scenarios via split-screen. These include Normal, You Only Live Twice, The Living Daylights, The Man With the Golden Gun, and Licence to Kill. Normal is a standard mode where players score points by killing opponents. Players can be grouped in teams or compete individually. You Only Live Twice gives players two lives before they are eliminated from the game, resulting in the last surviving player winning the match. In Licence to Kill, players die from a single hit with any weapon. Due to its high rate of fire and wide bullet spread, the Klobb is highly advantageous in this scenario.In The Man With the Golden Gun, a single Golden Gun, which is capable of killing opponents with one shot, is placed in a fixed location in the level. Once the Golden Gun is picked up, the only way to re-acquire it is by killing the player holding it. In The Living Daylights, a flag is placed in a fixed location in the level, and the player who holds it the longest wins. The flag carrier cannot use weapons but can collect them to keep opponents from stocking ammunition. Options such as the chosen level, characters to play as, weapons available, and game length can be customised for each scenario. Additional levels and characters can be unlocked as the player progresses through the single-player game.
Plot
In 1986 Arkhangelsk, Soviet Union, MI6 has uncovered a secret chemical weapons facility at the Byelomorye Dam. James Bond and fellow 00-agent Alec Trevelyan are sent to infiltrate the facility and plant explosive charges. During the mission, Trevelyan is shot by General Arkady Ourumov, while Bond escapes by commandeering an aeroplane.Five years later in 1991, Bond is sent to investigate a satellite control station in Severnaya, Russia, where programmer Boris Grishenko works. In 1993, Bond investigates an unscheduled test firing of a missile in Kyrgyzstan, believed to be a cover for the launch of a satellite known as GoldenEye. This space-based weapon works by firing a concentrated electromagnetic pulse at any Earth target to disable any electrical circuit within range. As Bond leaves the silo, he is ambushed by Ourumov and a squad of Russian troops. Ourumov manages to escape during the encounter.
In 1995, Bond visits Monte Carlo to investigate the frigate La Fayette, where he rescues several hostages and plants a tracker bug on the Pirate helicopter before it is stolen by the Janus crime syndicate. Bond is then sent a second time to Severnaya, but during the mission, he is captured and locked up in the bunker's cells along with Natalya Simonova, a captive computer programmer unwilling to work with Janus. They both escape the complex seconds before it is destroyed—on the orders of Ourumov—by the GoldenEye satellite's EMP. Bond next travels to Saint Petersburg, where he arranges with ex-KGB agent Valentin Zukovsky to meet the chief of the Janus organisation. This is revealed to be Alec Trevelyan—his execution by Ourumov in the Arkhangelsk facility was faked.
Bond and Natalya escape from Trevelyan, but are arrested by the Russian police and taken to the military archives for interrogation. Eventually, Bond escapes the interrogation room, rescues Natalya, and communicates with Defence Minister Dimitri Mishkin, who has verified Bond's claim of Ourumov's treachery. Natalya is recaptured by General Ourumov, and Bond gives chase through the streets of St. Petersburg, eventually reaching an arms depot used by Janus. There, Bond destroys its weaponry stores and then hitches a ride on Trevelyan's ex-Soviet missile train, where he kills Ourumov and rescues Natalya. However, Alec Trevelyan and his ally Xenia Onatopp escape to their secret base in Cuba.
Natalya accompanies Bond to the Caribbean. Surveying the Cuban jungle aerially, their light aircraft is shot down. Unscathed, Bond and Natalya perform a ground search of the area's heavily guarded jungle terrain but are ambushed by Xenia, who is quickly killed by Bond. Bond sneaks Natalya into the control centre to disrupt transmissions to the GoldenEye satellite and force it to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. He then follows the fleeing Trevelyan through a series of flooded caverns, eventually arriving at the antenna of the control centre's radio telescope. Trevelyan attempts to re-align it in a final attempt to restore contact with the GoldenEye, but Bond destroys machinery vital to controlling the antenna and defeats Trevelyan in a gunfight on a platform above the dish.
Development
Design
GoldenEye 007 was developed by the British studio Rare and directed by Martin Hollis, who had previously worked as a second programmer on the coin-op version of Killer Instinct. In November 1994, after Nintendo and Rare discussed the possibility of developing a game based on the upcoming James Bond film GoldenEye, Hollis told Tim Stamper, Rare's managing director, that he was interested in the project. Due to the success of Rare's 1994 game Donkey Kong Country, GoldenEye 007 was originally suggested as a 2D platformer for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. However, Hollis proposed a 3D shooting game for the upcoming Nintendo 64 console. He created a document with design ideas, including gadgets, weapons, characters, story digression from the film, and artificial intelligence that would react to the player.Rare named Sega's 1994 light gun shooter Virtua Cop, id Software's seminal 1993 first-person shooter Doom and the Nintendo 64 launch game Super Mario 64 as influences. Features such as gun reloading, position-dependent hit reaction animations, penalties for killing innocent characters, and the aiming system that is activated with the R button of the Nintendo 64 controller were adopted from Virtua Cop. The developers considered having players reload weapons by unplugging and re-inserting the Rumble Pak on the controller, but Nintendo opposed the idea. The concept of several varied objectives within each mission was inspired by the multiple tasks in each stage of Super Mario 64.
The team visited the studios of the GoldenEye film several times to collect photographs and blueprints of the sets. Eon Productions and MGM, the companies that control the James Bond films, granted the team a broad licence, and many levels were extended or modified to allow the player to participate in sequences not seen in the film. Although the reference material was used for authenticity, the team was not afraid to add to it to help the game design. John Woo films such as Hard Boiled influenced the visual effects and kinetic moments. Details such as bullet marks on walls, cartridge cases being ejected from guns, and objects exploding were part of the design. Hollis wanted players to receive a lot of feedback from the environment when they shot.
The team considered implementing both on-rails and free-roaming modes because they did not know how the Nintendo 64 controller would work, and the game's gas plant location was modelled with a predetermined path in mind. A modified Sega Saturn controller was used for some early playtesting. The designers' initial priority was purely on the creation of interesting spaces; level design and balance considerations such as the placement of start and exit points, characters and objectives did not begin until this process was complete. According to Hollis, this unplanned approach gave many levels a realistic and non-linear feel, with several rooms having no direct relevance to a level. After completing the levels, the developers modelled around 40 James Bond gadgets that had been depicted in the films and attempted to find uses for them in each level.