Today marks the 25th anniversary of the launch of golden eye 007 on the Nintendo 64. The first-person shooter, based on the James Bond film of the same name, debuted in the United States on August 25, 1997 and made an unexpected impact. Not only because it was a best-seller and received notable reviews, but also because it paved the way for the arrival of FPS —a genre that is still in its infancy and mostly reserved for PCs— in the realm of consoles.
It is still considered one of the best video games of all time today, and it maintains a significant fan base. This has given rise to multiple unofficial projects to remaster and modernize it so that it can be enjoyed on newer consoles. Although this has not always been to the liking of Nintendo or MGM, owner of the intellectual property of the saga Bond.
But beyond what is offered by the game itself, golden eye 007 has stood out for its innovative development process. Not only because it was part of the advance in the landing of titles with three-dimensional graphics, but also because when Rare (Rareware, at the time) started working on it, the Nintendo 64 was not yet on the market, nor were there console development kits.
golden eye 007pioneer of FPS on consoles
As its name indicated, golden eye 007 presented an argument based on golden eyethe seventeenth film in the James Bond saga and the first to have Pierce Brosnan in the role of 007. The striking thing is that the video game hit the market almost two years after the feature film dand Martin Campbellwhich debuted in 1995.
Despite the disparity of dates between golden eye 007 and its cinematic counterpart, the game’s release was not completely left to chance. The Rare title was released a few months before the premiere of Tomorrow Never Dies, the second film with Brosnan in the role of James Bond. This allowed the video game to benefit from the advertising campaign of said film, despite not being based on it.
Although Rare began its work in 1995, by the end of 1994 it had begun to consider creating a James Bond game. However, the first idea was not to allocate golden eye 007 to the Nintendo 64, which began development in 1993 under the code name Project Reality, but to the Super Nintendo. However, the possibility of producing a shooter 3D-graphics first-person shooter for the next-gen console quickly altered plans.
As we mentioned before, the studio in charge of the game did not have Nintendo 64 development kits available. But not only that, but I also did not know what the final specifications of the device would be. As a result, the project managers were forced to use the SGI Onyx, a graphics supercomputer priced from $100,000 to $250,000, and to use loose estimates of the N64’s technical capabilities.
To model the scenarios of the levels based on the film, the team of golden eye 007 received plans and photographs of the film sets. However, not all of Rare’s planned features made it to the final version of the game. Originally, the multiplayer mode included characters from other Bond films, but they had to be removed as they failed to get approval to use the likeness of Sean Connery, the first actor to portray Agent 007 on film.
On the other hand, the developers wanted the action of reloading weapons to be done by removing and re-inserting the Rumble Pack, the device that added vibration to the control of the console. But Nintendo did not authorize it.
golden eye 007 It hit the public on August 25, 1997, garnering most praise and being an instant bestseller. In fact, it is the third best-selling Nintendo 64 game in history, with just over 8 million copies sold. In said ranking, it is only behind Super Mario 64 Y mario kart 64.
The legacy
golden eye 007 became a cult video game and years after its original release almost landed on the Xbox 360. In 2008, Rare worked on a remaster of the Nintendo 64 title that would reach the public through Xbox Live Arcade. However, the plans were canceled because the parties involved – Nintendo, MGM and Microsoft, then owner of Rare – could not reach an agreement.
Since then, the failed version of golden eye 007 for Xbox 360 has been the subject of endless rumors and leaks. However, it has never officially seen the light of day.
Yes, there have been other very promising unofficial projects, but they have not prospered either. years ago met Golden Eye 25, a revert made in Unreal Engine 4 that was intended to be released in 2022 to celebrate its 25th anniversary. But it had to be canceled when MGM sent a cease and desist request to the project leader.
In 2021, a fan used the level editor of far cry 5 on the PS4 to recreate all the scenarios from golden eye 007. The initiative, named GoldenCry, was also decommissioned when MGM urged Ubisoft to remove it. What was striking about this case was that the developer did not use the source code of the Nintendo 64 version, but copied the appearance of the levels manually and made them freely accessible.
Officially, several James Bond games have been released after golden eye 007. Even a reversal which came under the same name to the Nintendo Wii and DS in 2010, and to the PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2011. But none achieved even a shred of recognition that the original N64 title did..