back to article Goldeneye

Playing Goldeneye always felt more like an event rather than a gaming session. Four controllers and a 20in telly – it seemed huge at the time, believe me – headshotting friends had never been such fun. I have always had a soft spot for commies but playing Pierce Brosnan – wreaking havoc on Eastern Europe in Goldeneye – made me …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Its a good game....

    I picked up an N64 from a boot sale, plus Goldeneye and it really took me back to my school days.

    but on my 42" TV, together with being used to playing such games as CoD, man I stated getting a headache after 10 minutes and my eyes were straining!

    Still, it was worth it. 4 player split screen certainly kept me and y school friends up till gone 2am!

    1. tmTM

      Re: Its a good game....

      Old games consoles need old screens.

      The low res poor definition provided by an old CRT telly will help smooth some of the rough edges and textures making it much easier on the eye.

      Goldeneye is a good game because it's a good game, graphics are irrelivent it's still a blast.

      1. sisk

        Re: Its a good game....

        "Goldeneye is a good game because it's a good game, graphics are irrelivent it's still a blast."

        Such is the case with a lot of old school games. At some point the industry shifted it's focus from making games fun to making them pretty.

  2. kororas

    Relive those moments with the PC mod for the valve source engine.

    http://www.moddb.com/mods/goldeneye-source

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Or get the Reloaded HD PS3 version.

      As it's excellent... Has all good stuff from the original, but doesn't look shit.

      1. Dave 126

        The best mod is...

        ...this one!

        It retains the authentic Goldeneye hostage AI, but with photo-realistic graphics. Perfect.

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RR5V0rmN4o

  3. Rob 75
    WTF?

    Arguably Perfect Dark was a 'better' game when it came out, but only because it was just Goldeneye with new skins pasted on top and a few futuristic weapons. It didn't have anywhere near the impact of Goldeneye, nor was it particularly innovative.

    Goldeneye played a far more important role in gaming history, anyone preferring Perfect Dark is a heretic.

  4. Robert Grant
    Stop

    "Goldeneye was pretty much the foundation for first person shooters"

    Boggle.

    1. Horridbloke
      WTF?

      @Robert Grant

      We can go a lot earlier than Doom 2. How about Encounter on the Commodore 64 (1984)? or the Battlezone arcade game (1980-ish)?

    2. Bassey

      Re: "Goldeneye was pretty much the foundation for first person shooters"

      "Foundation" doesn't mean "first". And, in any case, Doom was certainly NOT the first FPS either. Although I do agree it is stretching things to say Goldeneye was THE foundation. One of several, particularly for the multiplayer components, but certainly not THE.

      1. Dave 126

        Re: "Goldeneye was pretty much the foundation for first person shooters"

        It was the first FPS to show that it could work with a gamepad rather than a mouse and keyboard, IMHO. It was also a more accessible multi-player option than many PC games, since it didn't require assembling several computers, network cards and monitors round to a friend's house.

        Some people did use a co-ax splitter and two televisions, each with half its screen blanked off with cardboard, to prevent cheats peeking at their opponents window.

        1. Joe Cooper

          Re: "Goldeneye was pretty much the foundation for first person shooters"

          "It was the first FPS to show that it could work with a gamepad rather than a mouse and keyboard, IMHO"

          I really adored playing Turok on the same pad. It was easy to precisely aim, strafe, jump and do everything I needed at the same time.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Goldeneye was pretty much the foundation for first person shooters"

      If you only had consoles, and so had never played any of the other first person shooters that were

      a) available first

      b) much better

      then you might actually think that.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "Goldeneye was pretty much the foundation for first person shooters"

      Almost as hilarious as being told that the Dreamcast pioneered online multiplayer. The mind does indeed boggle.

  5. Herer
    Alert

    because i am one of the moonraker elite

    What a great game.

    00 agent pistols only on the facility level, what superb fun

    Mine's the one with the two Dostovei akimbo!

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    N64 4 Player

    How can this be antique?

    Our days kinda went like this.

    Golden eye 4 player. 1 shot kills, weapons (cowboy gun cougar, a fancy auto pistol, the crap staple gun called Klobb and Sniper rifle).

    And we only played level Stack (sniper fun), Facility (the back corridor loop) and occasionally Archives (for shooting in to glass shattering rooms). When we all finally got violent off screen towards each other.

    We then put in Mario kart cart, 4 player koopa beach and the great waterfall short cut debate, go for it and risk all, or shortcut across the tidal path and go for the blue shell atop the big rock. Then when that led to fights we put in 4 player super smash brothers, and then back to golden eye and repeat en mass.......

    Occasionally ISS 64 soccer game would go in on wet days.

  7. rich_a

    I was crap at the single player game (and I'm still rubbish at 'shoot people in the face' games now), but multiplayer was fantastic.

    The screenshots in this article look decidedly dodgy, though. Don't remember all the textures for the on screen text being so heavily clipped on the N64. Have these been taken using an emulator?

  8. ukgnome
    Thumb Up

    Big screen action

    or at least is was at the pub I used to run - the best use of the projector ever. And one of the best games of its era!

  9. Chris Morrison

    How many hours of my life did I spend on this!?

    Honestly for me Goldenye has to go down as the best console game ever. You could play it for months and still find it fun. It was a movie game that actually worked. Yes there are better games out now but for me COD or similair in 2012 technology is nowhere near as big an achievment as Godlenye was in 1997 technology.

    The one thing perfect dark had that goldenye lacked - the ability to jump.

    1. Steven Raith
      Thumb Up

      Re: How many hours of my life did I spend on this!?

      You couldn't jump in Perfect Dark - maybe in the heretical XBox 360 spin off, PD Zero - or are you referring to being able to drop off ledges more readily?

      I played Goldeneye to death, got all cheats (Except all weapons, a friend got me that) and just ate it up for over a year near non-stop.

      I think both Goldeneye and PD still stand up as one of the best all round FPSs ever released - both multiplayer and single player have withstood over ten years of multiple repeat plays, and mutliplayer is still as frantic and fun as it was on release day - mainly thanks to the excellent controls and staggering variations of play - pick your weapons, your arena, how much auto-aim you get, whether you get crosshairs for manual aiming, time limits, one hit kills, etc.

      In that regard, I think it's pretty fair to describe it as the "Doom" moment of the console world - it made console FPSs get real and be taken seriously, as up to that point the phrase 'lacklustre' would describe pretty much all of them. Goldeneye wasn't just the best console FPS at the time, it was the equal of the best FPSs available across all platforms, period.

      Steven R

  10. skipper
    Thumb Up

    Spent days playing this at Uni - at the time it was the best multiplayer since Saturn BomberMan

  11. Jon Double Nice

    Double Dostovels

    That is all

  12. The lone lurker
    WTF?

    Look at his face on the box!

    What has been seen cannot be unseen!

  13. Maxson

    I must be...

    The only person who doesn't revere this game as a classic. I loved it back in the day, but it's actually quite shit in a lot of ways.

  14. Tom 38

    Goldeneye made me buy an N64. The first 20 seconds of the game had me hooked - pick up a snipe rifle, shoot someone in the balls, and they grab their balls. No other game I can remember had different reactions like that depending on where you hit people.

    Also, it wasn't about shooting people. Some levels, you shoot people, you will lose, as the sound brings an ever increasing number of goons to investigate.

    Finally, each level had a timer associated with it. Beat the timer, enable a cheat mode. Even after we had finished the game in single player multiple times, and bored of multiplayer, there was always someone trying to beat one of the levels. FYI, got them all but one. I think it was luxor, you had to do it in a minute or some such crazy shit.

    The cheats made for awesome multiplayer fun. Stick on Donkey Kong mode (massive heads) and golden gun mode, everyone running around with single shot boom sticks. Legendary.

    1. Annihilator
      Thumb Up

      "No other game I can remember had different reactions like that depending on where you hit people."

      Not sure if you're saying that no other game did this (as it was probably a first) but Soldier of Fortune was the first I saw to do it really well, about 3 years after Goldeneye. Think SoF was the first implementation of the GHOUL damage model.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        I remember a friend of mine got the SoF demo one day from the CD that came with PC Gamer. The next 6 months myself and 3 or 4 other friends went around to his house every lunchtime to take turns playing the first 2 levels over and over.

        Shoot a goon in the legs and they go flying across the room in one direction whilst the rest of him goes another. It blew my mind :P

      2. Tom 38

        Yar, "no other game before this". Nowadays, I get my jollies cutting zombies in half with the grav gun and a cutting blade in HL2. 1000 different ways to dismember zombies.

  15. Justin 9
    Thumb Up

    Great Game on Wii too.

    I have this for my Wii and came with a gold handheld controller.

    1. Big O
      Pint

      Re: Great Game on Wii too.

      Got seriously addicted to the online multiplayer.... but I've given up getting to level 56 (I'm not great at it, as it turns out!)

  16. A. Lewis

    Another fondly-remembered classic

    Goldeneye was one of those games that just worked. A good single-player with lots of scope for replay to unlock all the difficulties, and of course the cheats you could earn! That was an excellent feature that's been copied by surprisingly few games.

    And of course the multi-player was incredibly good, and rightfully has a place in my teenage-years nostalgia.

    Top stuff!

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Writing your name in Paintball Mode...

    Placing remotely detonated mines at the feet of scientists and then sending them bouncing off the ceiling...

    Shooting your mate through a door with a Magnum...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      First game I ever loved

      I loved sneaking up behind soldiers and doing the mine trick, great fun.

      Also, level 18 in Severnaya (when you are protecting the girl whilst she's hacking into the computer) was one of the most difficult levels I had ever played at the time. Always made a beeline for the stash of body armour and mines under the stairs to blow the tanks with though.

      Man i loved that game

  18. b166er

    Grenade Launchers on Temple :D

    Or Prox mines on Facility

    Or Slappers on Caves

    But Grenade Launchers on Temple wins, camping the armour in the corridor under the ramp on the rear left corner while flinging grenades up the ramp and along the top corridor.

    Check out goldeneyeonline.com and goldeneyeforever.com

  19. DiskJunky
    Pint

    N64

    Goldeneye was good for multiplayer...but super smash bros was better. I've probably buried a significant portion of my life playing that game with friends. We ended up getting so good we were effectively playing pong with any n00b gullible enough to play us. Against each other, nafarious tactics such as deliberatly diving off the edge of the platform so that noone else gets the kill point and donkey kong's suicide throw to carry someone off the edge with him made for many, many hours lost.

    Dammit, I wanna play now!

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Great game. Fantastic single player missions, true to the film and great memories of friends round for a 4 player on the 32" widescreen nicam (!) when I had the house free to myself.

    4 players in multiplayer, playing as oddjob. There was also a way of walking about on your knees (down yellow C button?) which made him even shorter.

    Picked up an N64 at a car boot with this and a couple of other games for a £5.

    On the 19" LCD TV/Monitor (with RF) it looks good without inducing headaches.

    (The other option is an emulator, but you need a good joypad, keyboard play is not great).

  21. Dayjo
    Thumb Up

    Slappers Only on License to Kill

    Or was this just me? >_>

    You end up just running around side stepping in circles trying to slap each other.

    Definitely one of my top 3 games.

  22. Bernard

    That video someone posted above

    Is one of my favourite youtube videos ever.

    It's hard to top 'man falling and hitting his groin', but this manages.

    Compulsory viewing for anyone who played Goldeneye back in the day.

  23. boombelly
    Happy

    Two things

    Two great things about this game:

    1) It was the first game (at least that I can remember) that showed game developers could actually make a game based on a movie / tv series that *wasn't* a complete and utter bag of cashing-in bull-crap.

    2) Its the only game ever where I managed a triple headshot from a single bullet!

    Happy days

  24. John 62

    Geddan

    Get down!

    http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/get-down-geddan

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