GoldenEye 007

• 1. Introduction

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  GoldenEye 007 started life as a side-scrolling platform game for the Super Nintendo. It finished as a first-person shooter for the Nintendo 64, released in 1997 and built by the British studio Rare. Nintendo published it.

  The game adapted the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. The player takes the role of the secret agent and tries to stop a criminal syndicate from using a satellite weapon.

  The team behind it was inexperienced, and the job took two and a half years. So how did a film tie-in made by newcomers come to be ranked among the greatest games ever made? Why did a console shooter change how a whole genre behaved? And how did one underpowered submachine gun become the thing many players remember best?

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• 2. Borrowed Ideas

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  In November 1994, Martin Hollis told Rare's managing director, Tim Stamper, that he wanted to work on a Bond game. Nintendo and Rare had just been discussing a game based on the upcoming film. Rare's success with Donkey Kong Country earlier that year had pushed the early talk toward a 2D game.

  Hollis had worked as second programmer on the arcade version of Killer Instinct. He pitched a 3D shooter for the Nintendo 64, a console that did not yet exist. His design document listed gadgets, weapons, characters, departures from the film, and enemies that react to the player.

  Sega's 1994 light gun game Virtua Cop gave the team several ideas. Reloading, hit reactions that depend on where a bullet lands, and penalties for shooting innocent characters all came from it. So did the aiming system on the controller's R button. Doom, from 1993, and Super Mario 64 were also named as influences. Mario's stages, each with several different tasks, inspired the idea of multiple objectives in every mission.

  Some ideas never survived. The developers wanted players to reload by unplugging and re-inserting the Rumble Pak on the controller, but Nintendo opposed it.

  The team visited the GoldenEye film studios several times to collect photographs and blueprints of the sets. Eon Productions and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the companies that control the Bond films, granted a broad licence. Many levels were stretched so that players could take part in sequences the film never showed.

  John Woo's films, including Hard Boiled, shaped the kinetic moments and visual effects. Hollis wanted bullet marks, ejected cartridge cases and exploding objects so that every shot got a reaction from the world. Adrian Smith, the third and last artist on the project, produced muzzle flashes and explosions. He pointed to the 1995 film Heat as an influence.

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• 3. Missions and Spaces

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  The campaign opens in 1986 at the Byelomorye Dam in Arkhangelsk, in the Soviet Union. Bond and fellow 00-agent Alec Trevelyan are sent to plant explosives in a chemical weapons facility. General Arkady Ourumov shoots Trevelyan, and Bond escapes by taking an aeroplane.

  The story later reveals that Trevelyan's execution was faked. He now leads the Janus syndicate, and he is the man behind the GoldenEye satellite. That satellite fires an electromagnetic pulse that disables any electrical circuit within range. The story ends with a gunfight on a platform above a radio telescope dish in Cuba.

  The levels themselves were built in an unusual order. The designers first made interesting spaces. Only afterwards did they place start points, exits, characters and objectives. Hollis said this unplanned approach gave many levels a realistic, non-linear feel, and some rooms had no bearing on the mission at all.

  Because nobody knew how the Nintendo 64 controller would feel, the team considered both on-rails and free-roaming play. The gas plant was modelled with a fixed path in mind. For early playtests they used a modified Sega Saturn controller.

  Once the levels existed, the team modelled around 40 gadgets from the Bond films and hunted for ways to use them. In one level, the player must use Bond's electromagnetic watch to get a jail cell key.

  Designer David Doak joined after the first year to help with levels and the artificial intelligence scripting. He described how stealth worked: "Whenever you fired a gun, it had a radius test and alerted the non-player characters within that radius." Firing again soon afterwards triggered a larger radius, and a third, larger still, came after that. Shoot one guard in the head and stay quiet, and the timer reset. Windows were programmed so that enemies cannot see through them, which let players spy on guards.

  Each level offers three difficulty settings: Agent, Secret Agent and 00 Agent. Higher settings change enemy toughness, ammunition and the number of objectives. Finishing the game on all three unlocks a mode where the player sets enemy health, reaction time, aim and damage by hand.

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• 4. Squeezing the Cartridge

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  In January 1995, Hollis assembled his first team. Mark Edmonds was the programmer, Karl Hilton the background artist, and B. Jones the character artist. Final Nintendo 64 specifications and development kits were not available, so the team guessed at the console's power using an SGI Onyx workstation and Nintendo's NINGEN software. Designer Duncan Botwood soon joined to build levels. The first year went on art assets and an engine that only let the player and enemies move around.

  When the real hardware arrived, it drew polygons faster than the Onyx. Some backgrounds had been running at 2 frames per second on the workstation, before any enemies or objects were drawn. Even so, the textures had to be halved. Hilton explained the trick: "A lot of GoldenEye is in black and white. RGB colour textures cost a lot more in terms of processing power." He added a touch of colour through the vertex when needed.

  Super Mario 64 arrived in 1996 and changed one thing. Its 3D collision system influenced Hollis, because GoldenEye 007 had been using a 2D method.

  Graeme Norgate and Grant Kirkhope composed most of the music. Norgate had scored Blast Corps, and Kirkhope had written the music for Donkey Kong Land 2. Robin Beanland wrote only the elevator music heard in some levels. Norgate made all the sound effects, and according to Hollis, a single gunshot can trigger up to nine different sounds at random.

  Shortly before release, Nintendo reviewed the game and worried about the violence. The team toned down the killing and added an end credits sequence introducing every non-player character. The Entertainment Software Rating Board gave the game a Teen rating.

  The game shipped on a 96-megabit cartridge. It reached Japan on the 23rd of August 1997, North America on the 25th of August 1997, and the United Kingdom on the 7th of November 1997. That timing put it just before the sequel film Tomorrow Never Dies, and it gained from the publicity. The budget was US$2 million.

  Hidden in every cartridge is a ZX Spectrum emulator loaded with ten games developed by Rare. It began as an experimental side project and was switched off in the final version. Fan-made patches have since unlocked it.

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• 5. Four Players, One Screen

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  Steve Ellis, a second programmer hired by Hollis, built the multiplayer mode roughly six months before release. He also programmed the cheat options. Doak recalled that Ellis "sat in a room with all the code written for a single-player game and turned GoldenEye into a multiplayer game." The team spent many late evenings playtesting it.

  The multiplayer levels are drawn from the single-player missions. Some of them cannot host four players, because they were never designed for that kind of action. A firing range was modelled as a multiplayer arena but never added.

  Up to four people can play on one split screen across five scenarios. Normal awards points for kills, with teams or solo play. You Only Live Twice gives each player two lives, and the last survivor wins. In Licence to Kill, any weapon kills in a single hit.

  The Man With the Golden Gun places one gold weapon, which kills in one shot, at a fixed spot. After it is picked up, the only way to get it is to kill whoever holds it. In The Living Daylights, players compete to hold a flag the longest. The flag carrier cannot fire weapons, but can gather them so rivals cannot stock up. Level, characters, weapons and game length can all be customised.

  The team assumed it could use anything from the Bond universe, so the roster includes characters from earlier films. For a time, the actors who had played Bond in previous films were playable too. Rare could not get Sean Connery's permission to use his likeness, so they were removed. The select screen showing those actors is still in the game, reachable only with cheat devices.

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• 6. An Imperfect Gun

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  More than 20 weapons fill the arsenal, from pistols to a sniper rifle, grenades and throwing knives. Despite invented names, most were modelled on real firearms, including the Walther PPK, the AK-74 and the FN P90. The DD44 Dostovei, based on a Tokarev pistol, carries the initials of David Doak. Damage depends on where a bullet lands, so head shots hurt most and limb shots least.

  The weapon people talk about most is the Klobb, a submachine gun with a folding stock, inspired by the Czechoslovak Škorpion. During development it was called the Skorpion VZ/61, after its real counterpart, but legal concerns forced a change. The next name was Spyder, which proved to be trademarked by a paintball manufacturer. The final name honoured Ken Lobb, Rare's contact and producer on the Nintendo side.

  In play, the Klobb fires fast and sprays widely, but it is severely underpowered and kicks hard. It can be used in each hand at once. In Licence to Kill, where one hit is fatal, its speed and spread become a real advantage.

  Edge, in a contemporary review, called dual-wielding the Klobb one of the most satisfying moments. The magazine argued that imperfection adds realism and unpredictability, and that designers were learning those moments can matter as much as a perfect weapon. Simon Parkin of Eurogamer saw the naming episode as one of the first times real gun names caused trouble in console games, since this was among the first with 3D firearms.

  The Klobb kept turning up elsewhere. The game Too Human includes it as KLOBB, because Ken Lobb was linked to its developers, Silicon Knights. In Perfect Dark, the KL01313 copies the Klobb, with the numbers spelling its name. GoldenEye 007: Reloaded and 007 Legends have the Kl-033 Mk2. State of Decay lists "Klobb" as a nickname that network operatives give the Skorpion.

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• 7. The Verdict

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  Expectations were low. Gaming media were doubtful, and the game had an unsuccessful showing at the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Atlanta in 1997. Even so, it became the second best-selling home console game by units in its first US month, behind Star Fox 64. It stayed in the top five for the rest of 1997.

  Through 1998 it remained in the top ten in the United States, selling approximately 2.1 million copies. By 2001 it had passed seven million worldwide. The total eventually exceeded eight million, making it the third-best-selling Nintendo 64 game, after Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. A paper on the Entertainment Software Association's website put its worldwide gross at $250 million. That was more than 70% of the film's box office from 3.3% of the film's budget.

  Reviewers praised the varied, detailed environments, realistic animations, and effects such as transparent glass and lingering smoke. Nintendo Power called the multiplayer frame rate high, while Electronic Gaming Monthly found it somewhat choppy and sluggish. Edge called the zoomable sniper rifle a "novel twist". Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot noted it helped with distance fog, and he saw the elevator music in some levels as a sign of attention to detail.

  Critics also admired the depth. IGN's Doug Perry said it "blends smart strategy gameplay with fast-action gunmanship". Greg Sewart of Gaming Age liked having "a bit of freedom as to what they want to do in any given situation". The controls felt more intuitive than those of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter, though some found cursor targeting hard to master. GameRevolution criticised the pacing and said the game "takes it for granted that you have already seen the movie".

  In multiplayer, IGN judged it the system's best, "edging Mario Kart 64 by a hair". GamePro said the modes "will have you shooting your friends for the rest of the year". It also called the game "one of the best movie-to-game translations ever".

  The 1998 awards followed. GoldenEye 007 won the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award, and Rare was named Best UK Developer. At the first Interactive Achievement Awards, it took Interactive Title of the Year, Console Game of the Year, Console Action Game of the Year, and Outstanding Achievement in Software Engineering. Edge had given it 9 out of 10 on release. In 2013, the magazine admitted it deserved the highest score.

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• 8. The Long Afterlife

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  For a time, first-person shooters belonged mainly to the PC. GoldenEye 007 showed that a console could deliver both a solo campaign and multiplayer deathmatch. It is often credited with paving the way for Halo and Call of Duty. Edge said its multiplayer set the console standard until Halo: Combat Evolved in 2001.

  Stealth was a new idea for the genre, and so was its grounded style compared with Doom clones. The 1996 Team Fortress mod for Quake had already introduced headshots. Alongside the 1997 shooter MDK, GoldenEye 007 helped popularise scoped sniper rifles. Its mission design, enemy behaviour and stealth influenced Half-Life, Thief: The Dark Project, Syphon Filter and Deus Ex.

  Rankings piled up. In 2000, readers of Computer and Video Games placed it first in a poll of the 100 greatest games. In 2011, the Smithsonian American Art Museum chose it as one of 80 games for its Art of Video Games exhibit. In 2025, The Strong National Museum of Play inducted it into the World Video Game Hall of Fame. A 2023 Hard Drive ranking said its most enduring legacy is how "it's grown to overshadow the movie it's based on."

  Rare's spiritual successor, Perfect Dark, arrived in 2000 on an upgraded engine. While it was in development, Hollis left to consult on the GameCube at Nintendo of America. Other team members formed Free Radical Design, maker of the TimeSplitters series. TimeSplitters 2 even opens on a Russian dam.

  A remaster for Xbox Live Arcade was nearly finished in 2008, and Rare reportedly needed two more months. It was cancelled because Nintendo, MGM and Microsoft, which had acquired Rare in 2002, could not agree on licensing. A full playthrough of a prototype appeared on YouTube in January 2021, and a near-final ROM later leaked.

  An official rerelease came on the 27th of January 2023. The Xbox version, remastered by Code Mystics, runs on 4K displays. The Nintendo Switch version offers online multiplayer through the Nintendo Classics service. Nintendo had considered a Wii Virtual Console release in 2006, but legal issues over the many licence holders blocked it.

  Activision, which acquired the Bond game licence in 2006, released a 2010 remake of GoldenEye 007 starring Daniel Craig. It lost the licence in 2014. Fans have kept building. GoldenEye: Source, a multiplayer mod, appeared in 2010. A fan remake called GoldenEye 25 became an original game, later titled Deceive Inc., after MGM sent a cease and desist letter.

  Speedrunners have never left the game. Karl Jobst, who runs GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark and also makes documentaries, found that community in 1999. In 2022, on the game's 25th anniversary, a feature-length documentary titled GoldenEra told the story of its chaotic development.

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