Many people who owned a Nintendo 64 in the late 90s played or knew of the famous Goldeneye 007. The first-person shooter that gave people of all ages hours of entertainment shooting block-like/pixelated enemies with all sorts of weapons from the Golden Gun to the Moonraker Laser was released 20 years ago today in 1997. While the expectations from Nintendo regarding the game's potential were initially not great, its great success led it to a number of awards and grossing millions of dollars around the world.
Not only was the game popular among the public, but the first-person shooter style of game sky-rocketed in production after the game's success.
It is known as the golden standard (pun intended) for first-person shooting. It was not just the game play that made this game so great, there was also the number of crazy modes like "paintball" and "DK" mode as well as the memorable musical score in all the stages and of course the multiplayer.
Originiation
The game was developed by RARE in 1997 and based the story and characters off the James Bond movie Goldeneye (1995), the first 007 film featuring Pierce Brosnan. It was originally going to feature a 2D sidescroller gameplay like that of the previous Nintendo hit, Donkey Kong Country. However the development team decided to go first-person, which is fair to say was the correct move.
Most of the stages of the game are visibly based on the sets of the 1995 film which include the pre-credits facility, the streets of St.
Petersburg and the antenna cradle in Cuba. Same goes for the characters they used, the likness of the ones in the movie from their facial features to the clothes they wore. They even brought back some James Bond characters from other movies to feature in bonus levels and multiplayer mode such as Jaws, May Day, Baron Samedi and Oddjob.
Of course today the human figures in the game seem blocky and cartoonish, for the time it was really incredible how they captured the likes of those characters.
Revolutionary and memorable features
When the game was released 20 years ago, players were captured by many of its features and modes. It had so many different weapons ranging from pistols, to machine guns to lasers and also cool gadgets like the watch and different explosive launchers and mines.
The cheat option menu also gave players a number of cool things to do like shooting paintballs, having giant heads, having all the weapons with unlimited ammo and even be invisible to enemies. It was easy to play through the game and then go back and mess around with all the different gadgets and weapons.
Arguably the most memorable part of the game and biggest pop-cultural impact from it was the multiplayer. Four people on one screen could play at once in first-person in a number of different stages with different player modes. The funny "Slappers Only" mode could cause a long time of frustrating yet hilarious play as people try to kill each other with karate chops. Or the opposite of that using the golden gun which was a one shot kill every time and whoever had it had an unreal advantage in the round.
Goldeneye 64 revolutionized so much in terms of shooter video games. It brought the popularity of first-person shooter to the world, it really influenced a lot of gaming with its multiplayer modes (which were apparently an afterthought when the game was being developed) and its campy yet fun play still makes the game relevant today.