GoldenEye 007



GoldenEye 007 is a first-person shooter video game for the Nintendo 64 based on the James Bond film GoldenEye. It was produced by then second-party Nintendo game developer Rareware, and released in 1997.

One of the most popular games to be released on the N64, GoldenEye 007 is well-known for the quality of its multiplayer deathmatch mode and its incorporation of stealth and varied objectives into the single player missions.

Development
The development team working on GoldenEye 007 was very inexperienced; for all but two of them, it was their first game. As David Doak explained:


 * "Looking back, there are things I'd be wary of attempting now, but as none of the people working on the code, graphics and game design had worked on a game before, there was this joyful naïveté."

And:


 * "We were like a mini-company inside Rare making an atypical game that no-one really thought was going to be any good. The general feeling was we were a bunch of students wasting time. And then when it went into testing there was this very good feedback, initially from testers in-house but also from Nintendo. People were putting in voluntary overtime to test this game."

GoldenEye 007 was originally intended to be an on-rails shooter similar to Virtua Cop, only becoming a first-person shooter later in development. It is based upon the GoldenEye film and its novelization by John Gardner, but—as explained by game designer Martin Hollis —many of the missions were extended or modified to allow the player to participate in sequences of which Bond was not originally a part, or those in which he only played a minor role.

The original sets that were created for the film were first converted into complete, believable virtual environments by one group of game designers; when this process was complete, other designers began populating them with objectives, characters and obstacles in order to create a balanced and fun game. As Martin Hollis explained in his speech:


 * "The benefit of this sloppy unplanned approach was that many of the levels in the game have a realistic and non-linear feel. There are rooms with no direct relevance to the level. There are multiple routes across the level."

Gameplay and design
GoldenEye 007's menu system is set up as an MI6 dossier. The player has four dossiers, each representing a single save file, to choose from. The next selection screen allows the player to choose the mission he or she wishes to tackle. Each of the twenty missions can be played using one of several difficulties: Agent, Secret Agent, 00-Agent and the customisable 007 setting, which is unlocked upon fully completing the game. After the difficulty select, the player is given another dossier, which includes background information on the mission and its objectives (higher difficulties incorporate extra, more complex objectives) and comments by MI6 personnel including M, Q and Miss Moneypenny.

Once a mission is completed, the player has the option of either continuing on to the next or going back and replaying that mission over on the same or harder difficulty. Certain missions also challenge players to earn bonus cheat options (including invincibility and infinite ammunition; a full list may be found here) by beating them in a limited amount of time on a specific difficulty setting, which gives the single player mode significant replay value as a time attack game.

Storyline And Missions
Mission sequence Dam: Byelomorye Dam
 * Mission 1: Arkhangelsk
 * 1) Facility: Arkhangelsk
 * 2) Runway: Runway


 * Mission 2: Servernaya
 * 1) Surface: Severnaya
 * 2) Bunker: Severnaya


 * Mission 3: Kirghizstan
 * 1) Silo: Kirghizstan


 * Mission 4: Monte Carlo
 * 1) Frigate: Frigate


 * Mission 5: Severnaya
 * 1) Surface 2: Severnaya
 * 2) Bunker 2: Severnaya


 * Mission 6: St Petersburg
 * 1) Statue: Statue Park
 * 2) Archives: Archives
 * 3) Streets: St Petersburg
 * 4) Depot: Military Depot
 * 5) Train: Train

In the mid-1980s, MI6 uncovers a secret chemical weapons facility at the Byelomorye Dam near Arkhangelsk in the USSR. The facility has been producing nerve gas that has been turning up in the hands of numerous hostile regimes and terrorist factions across the world. James Bond is sent to the facility to join his friend and fellow 00-agent Alec Trevelyan in destroying the chemical weapons facility. Prior to gaining access to the facility, however, Bond must fight his way through the many Russian soldiers guarding the dam and bungee jump to its base, where the facility is located. During the mission, Trevelyan is killed by Colonel Arkady Ourumov, but Bond escapes by commandeering an aeroplane.
 * Mission 7: Cuba
 * 1) Jungle: Cuban Jungle
 * 2) Control: Janus Control
 * 3) Caverns: Water Caverns
 * 4) Cradle: Antenna Cradle

Several years after escaping the facility, Bond is sent to Severnaya, Russia where a British spy satellite has detected increased levels of activity including shipments of computer hardware and the arrival of personnel. Bond's mission is to covertly find out what is happening there. He also meets Boris Grishenko during that mission.

During the "Silo" mission (which takes place two years before the main story, presumably in 1993), a completely new addition to the game present in neither the film nor its novelization, Bond investigates an unscheduled test firing of a missile in Kirghizstan. It is 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 (EMP) at any Earth target to disable any electrical circuit within range; from its orbit, it would be a threat to any city on Earth. 007 briefly encounters Colonel Ourumov, who escapes. Bond succeeds in blowing up the facility with C-4 plastic explosives.

Several years later, after the end of the Cold War, Bond is sent to Monte Carlo where members of the Janus crime syndicate have taken hostages aboard the French frigate La Fayette in order to steal a prototype Eurocopter Tiger. He rescues the hostages and plants a tracker bug on the helicopter. As in the film, the Tiger helicopter is tracked via satellite to Severnaya, but in the game Bond is sent there a second time to infiltrate the satellite control bunker. During the mission Bond is captured and locked up in the bunker's cells, along with Natalya Simonova, a Russian computer programmer at Severnaya imprisoned under suspicion of treachery. The two escape the complex seconds before it is destroyed - on the orders of Ourumov, now a General - by the GoldenEye satellite's EMP.

Against the wishes of MI6, Natalya returns to St. Petersburg, where she is captured by Janus. MI6 arranges ex-KGB agent Valentin Zukovsky to meet Bond to arrange a meeting with the head of the Janus organization. This person is revealed to be Alec Trevelyan - his execution by Ourumov in the Arkangelsk facility was faked. Trevelyan was apparently a Lienz Cossack and wants revenge on the British goverment. Bond rescues Natalya, but they are captured by the Russian authorities and taken to the military archives for interrogation. They manage to prove their innocence and the treachery of Ourumov to Defence Minister Dimitri Mishkin, although once on the streets of St. Petersburg, Natalya is captured by General Ouromov. Bond gives chase in a tank, eventually reaching a depot used by Janus to coordinate illegal arms deals and terrorist actions around the world. After making his way through the depot and destroying its weaponry stores, 007 hitches a ride on Trevelyan's Soviet missile train, where he kills numerous guards and Ouromov and rescues Natalya. However, Alec Trevelyan and his ally Xenia Onatopp escape to their secret control center in Cuba.

Although Natalya manages to track Janus to Cuba, MI6 is uncertain of the exact location of the main base from which the GoldenEye satellite is controlled. Surveying the jungle aerially from a light aircraft, they are shot down and crash into the Cuban jungle. 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 center to disrupt transmissions to the satellite and force it to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. Afterwards, Trevelyan escapes through the flooded caverns under the base and manages to get up to the Antenna Cradle. He attempts to restore contact with the GoldenEye by manually re-aligning the main broadcasting antenna of the control center's radio telescope. Bond kills Trevelyan and destroys the main computer terminal which causes the GoldenEye to burn up upon reentry.

Additional Missions
Mission sequence
 * Mission 8: Teotihuacan
 * 1) Aztec: Aztec Complex

Two additional missions were added as bonuses for the completion of the game on higher difficulties. The first, "Aztec", was partially taken from the James Bond film, Moonraker, and is unlocked when the player completes the entire game on Secret Agent difficulty. During the mission, Bond is sent to the Aztec complex in Teotihuacán to investigate the Drax Corporation's unlicensed space exploration in which at least one space shuttle was stolen from NASA. Although Hugo Drax was sucked into space by Bond in the movie, it has seemed that his corporation still existed after his death due to remnants and fragments that were still active. MI6 believes their intentions with the shuttle in space are military in nature and authorize Bond to reprogram the shuttle's guidance computer so that MI6 can take control of the craft once it reaches orbit. He goes into the complex, picking off the guards, and also during the mission, Jaws makes a return in an effort to stop Bond from completing his mission. Bond kills him and takes a security card from his corpse. Many of the rooms in the mission were from the movie and included several new features as the launch room for the Moonraker shuttle in the games that Bond needs to launch back.
 * Mission 9: el-Saghira
 * 1) Egyptian: Egyptian Temple

The second bonus level, "Egyptian", blends elements from the films The Man with the Golden Gun, The Spy Who Loved Me and Live and Let Die. To access this level players must complete the entire game on 00 Agent difficulty. Prior to the mission, M informs Bond that a person claiming to be Baron Samedi is in possession of the since deceased Francisco Scaramanga's legendary "Golden Gun" pistol. Samedi has invited James Bond to the el-Saghira temple in the Valley of the Kings (which partially replicates the location of Bond's first encounter with Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me) to retrieve it. Knowing it is a trap, M sends Bond regardless to take possession of the Golden Gun and eliminate Baron Samedi. Despite being seemingly killed by Bond three times, Samedi can be seen in an end-of-level cutscene, laughing, à la the ending of Live and Let Die.

Multiplayer mode
GoldenEye 007 features one of the most popular multiplayer modes of any console game.

According to David Doak, the majority of the work on the multiplayer mode was done by Steve Ellis, who "sat in a room with all the code written for a single-player game and turned GoldenEye into a multiplayer game."

Characters
The multiplayer mode features all of the characters in the game, including enemies and civilians. At first, only 12 characters are available, with 21 more becoming available as progress is made through the game. A button code will allow players to temporarily unlock 31 other characters, most of them likenesses of the programmers.

The mode had also previously allowed players to choose from the four different Bond actors, but that feature had been removed before the game was released (see All Bonds).

Multiplayer Arenas
As with the selectable characters, only a few arenas are available at first, with more becoming available as progress is made in the game. There are eleven arenas, not counting levels that can be only be accessed with a GameShark, and a "random" button that chooses the level randomly. The multiplayer-only arenas are Temple, Complex, Caves, Library, Basement, and Stacks. Arenas taken from the single player version are Facility, Bunker, Archives, Caverns, and Egyptian. GameShark codes allow one to play Cradle and Statue as well as eliminate the two-player and three-player restriction for certain levels such as Egyptian.

Weapons
Weapons in multiplayer mode can be selected by type, such as pistols or automatics. Other selectable weapons include those not easily found in single player mode, such as laser guns or the Golden Gun, and the somewhat comical "Slappers Only!" selection (which Rareware named due to the horizontal striking movements characters make when executing barehanded attacks), which lets players defeat each other only by "slapping" an opponent until their vitalities are depleted.

Scenarios
The multiplayer mode features five general scenarios, within which options such as weapon schemes may be altered.


 * Normal: A basic free-for-all deathmatch mode, in which players attempt to kill their opponents as many times as possible within a set amount of time. This mode can be played in teams of 2 versus 1, 2 versus 2, and 3 versus 1.


 * You Only Live Twice: Similar to Normal mode, except players only have two lives before they are eliminated.


 * The Living Daylights [Flag Tag]: In this adaptation of the playground game "Smear the queer", a flag is placed in a random location in the map. The player who holds it the longest wins the match. A player cannot use weapons while holding the flag, but can still collect them to keep opponents from stocking up on ammo.


 * The Man with the Golden Gun: A single Golden Gun is placed in a random location on the map. Players must find and pick up the Golden Gun, which is able to kill opponents with only one shot, regardless of where they are hit. After a player acquires the gun, the others are able to see him or her on their radar.


 * License to Kill: All attacks, including "slapping", will kill opponents in one hit. This mode can be played in teams of 2 versus 1, 2 versus 2, and 3 versus 1.

Weapons
The various weapons found in GoldenEye 007 are mostly modeled after real-life counterparts. The names were changed for possible copyright reasons, but the designs are the same. Some are also available in "silenced" versions. Many of the GoldenEye 007 guns also returned in the game Perfect Dark as renamed "classics".

Detailed analysis of the properties of these weapons may be found at The GoldenEye Arms Reference.

See also Firearms in GoldenEye 007

Easter eggs, oddities and glitches
Like most N64-era Rare games, GoldenEye 007 contains many bugs, strange objects and areas to fuel the exploration efforts and wild speculation of many gamers. Few of them are intentional easter eggs, but unlike the glitches in many games, some players find that the oddities here only make the game more interesting.

Among the most notable:


 * In the first Surface level, triggering the alarm occasionally causes a group of guards to spawn with mis-textured heads. In particular, one has additional faces on the sides of his head, while another has what looks like a visor going around his head. If the alarms are activated in the Dam level, two guards may be spawned. One of these guards does not have a weapon at all.


 * In both Bunker missions, by throwing a lot of mines onto the hanging screens in the control room, and then detonating them, it is possible to cause all objects in the level to freeze in place until the level ends. Crates and boxes will no longer move when shot or exploded, and grenades, knives and rockets thrown or shot will hang in the air.


 * One Easter egg may be found in the second Bunker mission, in which one of the objectives is to retrieve a CCTV tape of Bond's capture. The case the tape is in has the cover of the VHS release of the GoldenEye movie.


 * As in several other 3D computer and video games, a well known exploit of the physics engine is straferunning. A player can move significantly faster by running forward and sidestepping at the same time. This tactic can be of great benefit when attempting to achieve the single-player target times in order to unlock cheats, and when ambushing spawn points in multiplayer.


 * In the Multiplayer Temple level there is a green ammunition box located in the large room with the hole in the center. In that room, if the player shoots that specific box it will split into two boxes, the first containing the intended ammo and the second being that for whatever weapons scheme is used.


 * If the "Domino" control setting is used, the player is able to shoot during end-of-level cutscenes by pressing Z on the second control pad. This method may be used to kill certain characters, including Baron Samedi in the final cutscene at the end of of the Egyptian mission or Natalya in several missions.

The distant island
The very first level, "Byelomorye Dam", contains a visible but inaccessible section which had been removed from earlier, more elaborate versions of the level. The sniper rifle can be used to look across the lake to a distant island, which contains a guard tower and a machine-gun bunker. The island can only be reached by using Gameshark cheat codes, and serves no gameplay function.

Citadel
GameShark users found several references to a level called "Citadel" in the game. Rareware explained its nature, and joked about players' speculation that multiplayer-mode Bond characters could be seen in the single-player game:


 * "'Citadel' was a very rough test level designed during the early stages of Multiplayer mode. It's not in the finished game in any shape or form, and Oddjob and Mayday wouldn't be in it if it was."

It was thought that a few textual references were all that remained of the level. However, in 2004, GoldenEye 007 fan websites uncovered an unplayable but viewable single-player version of the level (with implemented sky and water textures). 

In 2005 the GoldenEye Forever website revealed that it was possible to access a fully playable multiplayer version by linking a GameShark to a computer. The codes to access Citadel in its fullest state totalled nearly 10,000 lines. The test map is largely a mass of shapes and ramps that the players can climb upon, thus giving players many opportunities for sniping and for hiding.

All Bonds
All Bonds Before GoldenEye 007 was released, Rareware had placed a feature in the multiplayer mode of the game, known as the "All Bonds" option. This would allow players to choose four of the five actors that had portrayed Bond in various films; Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan. George Lazenby was not included, presumably because he only appeared in one film. However, before the game was released, Rareware removed the feature for unexplained reasons. It is assumed that Rareware had had every intention to release the game with the feature, but was later forced to remove it (possibly due to legal problems with EON Productions, Danjaq, LLC, or the other Bond actors themselves). Rareware stated on the matter,


 * "Yes, it was the hope of the team that they [all Bonds] would be available to play, but for various reasons they weren't."

In addition, the actors' portraits were at one point used to illustrate the four single-player save file dossiers; this was also removed, with Pierce Brosnan's likeness appearing on all four in the final version.

Not all remnants of the All Bonds feature were completely removed from the GoldenEye software. One major clue was the fact that the portraits of the four Bonds in the selection screen for multiplayer mode were accessible by using a GameShark. Also, various screenshots in the game manual, such as one from the multiplayer selection screen, show traces of the former Bond portraits.

The feature was brought to the attention of many gamers when a gaming magazine, Electronic Gaming Monthly, published an April issue with what they called the "All Bonds Cheat", using some fake screenshots "to support" its claim. The magazine reported that to unlock the option in the cheat menu, a player must realize the Aztec mission on 007 difficulty in less than nine minutes with all customisable enemy settings on the highest difficulty. The claim was later found to be an April Fools prank, which the magazine held annually.

In 2005, a program called the GoldenEye ROM Editor was released by the Rare Witch Project. The coders SubDrag and Ice Mario cracked the compression format of the images used by the game, allowing any image in the game's memory to be viewed and edited, by opening up a ROM image of the game. It was then discovered that the All Bonds faces and suits are still in the game; Rareware had only removed the ability to use them. By mapping them onto other multiplayer characters' faces and bodies, one can try to recreate All Bonds, although since the body and head shapes do not match the textures, it will not look as it was intended.

Reaction
GoldenEye 007 is one of few cases in which a video adaptation of a film or novel is rated highly amongst gamers. At the time of its release in 1997 its stealth elements and varied objectives contrasted with the approaches taken by Doom and Quake, and its split-screen deathmatch mode proved that a console game could also match those titles' multiplayer modes. It sold eight million copies and retains still the distinction of being one of the best first-person shooters to ever be released.

Along with Shiny Entertainment's MDK, GoldenEye is credited with popularizing the video game convention of a zoomable sniper rifle, enabling players to kill oblivious enemies from vast distances away with a single, precise headshot; context-sensitive enemy hit-locations were also pioneered by the game.

In 1998, GoldenEye received the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment "Games Award" and Rareware won the award for best UK Developer of the Year. It also won four awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences ("Console Action Game of the Year", "Console Game of the Year", "Interactive Title of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Software Engineering") in addition to nominations for "Outstanding Achievement in Art/Graphics" and "Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Design". A full list can be found on Rare's official website.

In a January 2000 poll, readers of the long-running British video game magazine Computer and Video Games voted GoldenEye 007 into first place in a list of "the hundred greatest video games". It also placed highly in a subsequent poll that the magazine conducted.

The game originally received a "nine out of ten" score in Edge, but the magazine has since stated that it is the only other game that should have received the prestigious "ten out of ten" rating, which was considered at the time but ultimately rejected. It placed third on Edge's list of the top 100 games of all time.

The game continues to be played by fans, many of whom have developed online communities based around popular aspects of the game. There are those who enjoy replaying single-player levels in an attempt to achieve fast times, those who battle others in its deathmatch mode , while others use GameSharks and similar devices to examine and to modify the game's code. 

Sequels
Following the success of GoldenEye 007, Rare commenced work on a similar-style first-person shooter, entitled Perfect Dark. It was decided that this game would use an enhanced version of the GoldenEye 007 engine but would be a completely new franchise that would be owned by Rare. For this reason, when Perfect Dark was eventually released for the N64 in 2000 after numerous delays, it was marketed and hyped as a "spiritual sequel" to GoldenEye. Although it has no official Bond license, it features many references to 007 and the former game: the four "dinner jacket" characters strongly resemble the tuxedos that were worn by Sean Connery, by Roger Moore, by Timothy Dalton and by Pierce Brosnan; the BAFTA Interactive award that Rareware received for work on the previous game can be found hidden in a vault in one level; several of the maps from GoldenEye return for use in Perfect Dark's deathmatch mode.

A number of the GoldenEye 007 team left Rare soon after development on Perfect Dark commenced, beginning with Martin Hollis in 1998, who after working on the GameCube at Nintendo of America formed his own company Zoonami in 2000. Other members formed Free Radical Design, and four of the team of nine who originally worked on GoldenEye 007 are now employed there, including David Doak and Steve Ellis. This company's most prominent creations are the TimeSplitters series of first-person shooters, which are considered by some to be, like Perfect Dark, "spiritual sequels" to the original game. The TimeSplitters series contains many references to GoldenEye 007; the design of the health-HUD and the dam setting of the opening level of the second game are among the more obvious. David Doak commented on Perfect Dark:


 * "GoldenEye pretty much exhausted the performance of the machine. It was hard to push it further. Perfect Dark had some good ideas but was dog slow."

The James Bond game licence was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1999, which published new games based upon the then-recent James Bond films Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough. The latter game, along with others published by EA such as Agent Under Fire and Nightfire are similar in-style to GoldenEye 007, attempting to match its quality and features with varying levels of success.

In the Autumn of 2004, Electronic Arts released GoldenEye: Rogue Agent for Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube and later the Nintendo DS. This is the first game based on the 007 franchise in which the player does not take on the role of James Bond himself; rather they control an aspiring 00-agent (named GoldenEye) who is recruited by Auric Goldfinger, the villain in the movie and book Goldfinger. The game has little to do with either the film GoldenEye or the N64 game, and was released to mediocre reviews and was criticised for using the "GoldenEye" name in an attempt to sell the game by riding on the success of Rare's game.

GoldenEye: Source
There is currently a group of fans working on GoldenEye: Source, a mod for Half-Life 2 ' s Source engine that aims to recreate the original game with updated physics and graphics. An alpha version of GoldenEye Source was released on December 25, 2005.

Doom II GoldenEye Mod
Another group is working on a GoldenEye mod for Doom II. 

General

 * The Making of GoldenEye 007 Speech given by game designer Martin Hollis to the European Developer's Forum
 * GoldenEye section of Detstar.com General information
 * RareNet's GoldenEye Wiki page
 * The GoldenEye Arms Reference Detailed analysis of the game's weapons
 * GameRankings page for GoldenEye
 * Compiled list of GoldenEye Cheat Codes
 * GoldenEye ROM Editor
 * GoldenEye Beta Information on pre-release versions of GoldenEye

Player communities

 * The-Elite.net GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark time attack competition.
 * The Speed Demos Archive Alternative host for many of the Elite's speed run videos
 * GoldenEye Forever GoldenEye 007 multiplayer mode fan site

Mods

 * GoldenEye Source A Half-Life 2 mod
 * GoldenEye Doom 2 Total Conversion A Doom 2 mod