Rare Limited’s Goldeneye 007 was released for the Nintendo 64 on August 25, 1997. Despite being 21 years old, this game still sits near the top of many, many older gamers’ top ten video games lists. It was glitchy, had several design flaws (like the extremely unbalanced Oddjob), and featured a control scheme that hasn’t aged gracefully — but none of that really matters.
The game will always hold a spot in our hearts. For many people, it was their first time getting their hands on a first-person shooter game. For others, it was the first time staying up all night long competing against a living room full of friends. Shooters might be a dime a dozen these days, but this game is a legend.
Here’s why it remains a hallmark title in the industry.
Or, you know, using to extreme DIY measures to prevent “screen cheating.”
(Photo via Reddit u/thx316)
Goldeneye 007 was one of the first major games to incorporate multiplayer into the first-person shooter genre for the home console. While there are multiplayer mods for Doom on the PC that predate Goldeneye, there weren’t any games that brought groups of friends together into the same living room, playing on the same console, and splitting the same TV into four different sections.
This laid the groundwork for a long lineage of other successive franchises, like Halo and Call of Duty, that later incorporated the same multiplayer mechanic into their games. This kind of high-octane, social experience was fun for all, and downright formative for some.
Of course, split-screen multiplayer also means that your sibling’s looking at your portion of the screen, but let’s be honest, everybody did it and that was part of what made the game so great. Once you understood that “screen cheating” was a given, it became part of the game — you could punish someone for looking away from their screen or lure them into a remote mine or two.
‘Goldeneye’ — “It’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”
(Rare Limited)
The game also sported several minor features that were mind-blowing back then, but have since become standard practice. There was a huge variety ofweapons available foruse, like shotguns, rifles, snipers, and handguns, but it also had offbeat selections, likesilenced weapons, lasers, insta-kill golden guns, and plenty of gadgets featuredthroughout the iconicfilm series.
The “cheats” in the game were also memorable for being just hilariously fun. Everyone, at some point, wouldtry out “big head mode” and “paintball mode,” just to experiencesomething new. Unlike modern games, where cheat codes are mostly offered as paid DLC, you earned these goofy rewards in-game by beating single player levels on a increasingdifficulties within a certain amount of time.
Today, Goldeneye 007 still holds a dear place in the hearts of many gamers. Computer and Video Games Magazine gave it the top spot on their “top 100 games of all time” back in 2000 and you’ll still find it ranking highly today.
The love for Goldeneye is universal. The game has been included in the Smithsonian American Art Museum for being “culturally and artistically significant.”