GoldenEye 007\u2019s legacy is as strong as ever as game celebrates 25th anniversary RareGoldenEye 007 was an iconic game of the late 1990s, with everyone huddled around their Nintendo 64s to get in on the split-screen action. 25 years later, we spoke to some of the masterminds behind it, and how the game\u2019s legacy stands strong today. When gamers discuss what some of the most iconic video games are, GoldenEye 007 is one title that is sure to be mentioned. The game defied all odds \u2013 being from a licensed movie franchise and all \u2013 and was a colossal success for the Nintendo 64. GoldenEye managed to sell more than eight million units worldwide, making it the third best-selling game for the N64 behind Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. In 1998, GoldenEye won the Games Award at the BAFTAs and in the same year, won four major awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. One aspect of the game that players still talk about is the audio design and soundtrack. One of GoldenEye\u2019s composers, Grant Kirkhope, sat down with Dexerto to discuss his work on the game as well as reflect on the development process, initial reception to the game and how, 25 years later, the game is considered a classic. How an inexperienced team came together to create a classic Development for GoldenEye 007 began in 1995, with Rare enlisting a team that, before GoldenEye, had very little experience playing games. Kirkhope has managed to build a name for himself now with World of Warcraft, Banjo-Kazooie, and the Civilization franchise on his resume. But back then GoldenEye was one of his first-ever jobs, and a breakout one at that. \u201cI think I didn\u2019t know enough to feel the pressure like I\u2019ve only been there a few weeks really, and it\u2019s my first job I\u2019ve ever had in my life and I was playing rock bands and all sorts of stuff before I went to work at Rare,\u201d he told Dexerto. \u201cI was just excited to be there. None of the team had made a game before. So you know everybody was just kind of going, I don\u2019t know, sounds right to me, looks alright to me. I sometimes feel that\u2019s why the game is good because no one knew what we were doing. We just kind of crossed our fingers and hoped for the best.\u201d Kirkhope chalks the success of GoldenEye 007 up to the \u201cessence\u201d of the team as being a pivotal factor. And of course, the fact that everyone working on the project was a \u201cmassive Bond fan.\u201d However, for Kirkhope and the rest of the audio team, the hardest obstacle they had to overcome was the limitations of the N64 cartridge: \u201cI think the whole cartridge was 8 megabytes like megabits. It was tiny and we had one megabit for the music\u2026 We couldn\u2019t have anything that was even remotely approaching CD quality. We couldn\u2019t have anything that long, so we have to kind of wait to loop symbols, which is ridiculous.\u201d Kirkhope added that despite being a slightly \u201cdreadful\u201d process he is amazed that \u201cpeople still like the sound of it these days\u201d given \u201cit\u2019s pretty primitive.\u201d GoldenEye\u2019s iconic multiplayer mode almost didn\u2019t ship One element to GoldenEye that really helped the game reach the heights it did was its groundbreaking first-person shooter experience. In particular, the game was one of the first examples of how the FPS genre could be a juggernaut for the multiplayer experience. GoldenEye\u2019s split-screen multiplayer game mode is what many gamers will have fond memories of. To this day, people still fire up their N64, grab up to four controllers and boot up the classic split screen experience. While this element of the game was a major contributing factor to the success of the game, it was apparently something Nintendo didn\u2019t think it would be worth \u201cinvesting in.\u201d Kirkhope said this was likely due to the game already being 2 years late. However, the dev team decided to go \u201cbehind Nintendo\u2019s backs\u201d and make the multiplayer in secret. It\u2019s amazing to think of GoldenEye 007 without multiplayer really, an experience that Kirkhope describes as a \u201cfun memory\u201d for many people. \u201cThat was the college dorm game for years, sitting on your bedroom on the floor, having beers and pizza and hitting each other when you\u2019re playing. I feel like that\u2019s \u2019cause people play online these days, it\u2019s. I think they\u2019re super fun times that people will remember, especially about that game, I just think that\u2019s a great memory for people.\u201d Even now, the multiplayer experience lives on, with online tournaments still held as a way for players to compete and show off their GoldenEye skills. Big gaming events like PAX have even held these tournaments. GoldenEye 007\u2019s legacy 25 years on Players may look back on GoldenEye 007 with rose-tinted glasses, but whether you played it or not, it\u2019s undeniably a gaming classic. Kirkhope admits the game \u201cdoesn\u2019t look great\u201d to anyone but admits that he still feels \u201cprivileged and humbled\u201d that so many people still want to play it and that all these years later it is still talked about. \u201cI\u2019m glad people still want to play it. I think that nostalgia really does play a big part of that game. If you\u2019re part of somebody\u2019s childhood and even in the smallest way, it\u2019s such a special thing that\u2019s not lost on me.\u201d And when finally asked if he would ever work on another James Bond game, Kirkhope was quick to jump at the chance: \u201cSign me up. I\u2019ll start tomorrow. I\u2019d love to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GoldenEye 007\u2019s legacy is as strong as ever as game celebrates 25th anniversary RareGoldenEye 007 was an iconic game of the late 1990s, with everyone huddled around their Nintendo 64s to get in on the split-screen action. 25 years later, we spoke to some of the masterminds behind it, and how the game\u2019s legacy stands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}