GoldenEye 007

For the film, see GoldenEye

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GoldenEye 007
Missing image Goldeneyebox.jpg GoldenEye 007 N64 box cover
Developer(s)	Rare
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Release date(s)	1997
Genre	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: Teen (T), ELSPA: 15+
Platform(s)	Nintendo 64

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. It is notable for the quality of its multiplayer deathmatch mode and its incorporation of stealth and varied objectives into the single-player missions.

Contents

1 Development 2 Gameplay and design 3 Storyline and missions 4 Additional missions 5 Reaction 6 Sequels 7 See also 8 External links

Development

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, although many of the missions included in the game, as explained by game designer Martin Hollis [1] (http://www.zoonami.com/briefing/2004-09-02.php), were changed or extended to allow for the player to participate in a sequence that Bond originally either wasn't a part of or played a minor role in.

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, 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 setup as a 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 they wish 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 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

In the 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.

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.

During the "Silo" mission (a completely new addition to the game not present in either the film or its novelisation), Bond investigates an unscheduled test firing of a missile in Kirghizstan, believed to be a cover for the launch of a satellite known as GoldenEye. This space-based weapon works by detonating a nuclear bomb in the upper atmosphere and using the resulting electromagnetic pulse to immobilise any electrical circuit within range; from its orbit, it would be a threat to any city on Earth.

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. 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. Through his ally Valentin Zukovsky, Bond arranges a meeting with the head of the Janus organisation. This person is revealed to be Alec Trevelyan - his execution by Ourumov in the Arkhangelsk facility was faked. 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 Ouromov and rescues Natalya. However, Alec Trevelyan and his ally Xenia Onatopp escape to their secret control center in Cuba.

Although Bond tracks Janus to Cuba, MI6 is uncertain of the exact location of the main base from which the GoldenEye satellite is controlled. 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 centre 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 attempts to restore contact with the GoldenEye by manually re-aligning the main broadcasting antenna of the control centre's radio telescope. Bond kills Trevelyan and the GoldenEye burns up upon reentry.

Additional missions

Two additional missions were added as bonuses for the completion of the game on higher difficulties. The first, "Aztec", was partialy taken from the James Bond film, Moonraker, and is unlocked when the player completes the final Cradle mission on Secret Agent difficulty. During the mission, Bond is sent to the Aztec complex in Teotihuacan to investigate the Drax Corporation's unlicenced space exploration in which at least one space shuttle was stolen from NASA. MI6 belives 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. During the mission, Jaws makes a return in an effort to stop agent 007 from completing his mission.

The second bonus level, "Egyptian", blends elements from the films The Man with the Golden Gun and Live and Let Die. During the mission, M informs Bond that a person claiming to be Baron Samedi is in posession of Francisco Scaramanga's legendary "Golden Gun" pistol. Samedi has invited James Bond to el-Saghira temple in the Valley of the Kings to retrieve it. Knowing its a trap, M sends Bond anyway to to take pocession of the Golden Gun and eliminate Baron Samedi.

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. For some it still retains the distinction of being one of the best first-person shooters ever released.

Along with Shiny Entertainment's MDK, GoldenEye is credited with popularising the video game convention of a zoomable sniper rifle, enabling players to kill oblivious enemies from vast distances away with a single precise headshot.

In 1998, GoldenEye received the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment "Games Award" and Rareware won the award for best UK Developer of the Year [2] (http://www.bafta.org/interactive/). It also won four awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences [3] (http://www.interactive.org/awards/IAA-1/winners.asp) ("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 (http://rareware.co.uk/company/awards/all_awards.html).

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 later poll conducted by the magazine.

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", which was considered at the time but ultimately rejected.

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 [4] (http://www.the-elite.net/), those who battle others in its deathmatch mode [5] (http://www.goldeneyeforever.com), while others use GameSharks and similar devices to examine and modify the game's code. [6] (http://goldeneye.detstar.com/gameshark/gamesharkfaq.asp)

Sequels

Following the success of GoldenEye 007, Rare developed Perfect Dark in 2000 for the N64. Perfect Dark was marketed and hyped as a "spiritual" sequel to it, although despite using an enhanced version of the GoldenEye engine, Perfect Dark is an original franchise and has nothing to do with the James Bond license. It does, however feature many references to 007 and the earlier game: the "dinner jacket" characters strongly resemble the costumes worn by Sean Connery, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan; the BAFTA Interactive award that Rareware recieved for work on the earlier 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 development team eventually left Rare to form Free Radical Design, who have released the TimeSplitters series of first-person shooters. These are considered by some to be, like Perfect Dark, "spiritual sequels" to the original game (the dam setting of the opening level of the second game is one of the more obvious references).

The Bond license was later picked up by Electronic Arts, which created multiple games based upon other James Bond movies; however, their most recent James Bond games have had original scripts and have even had live actors playing the roles of many characters. But the majority EA's James Bond video games have stayed close to the GoldenEye 007's template, attempting to match its quality and features with varying degrees of success.

In the Fall of 2004, EA Games released GoldenEye: Rogue Agent for Xbox, PlayStation 2, GameCube and later 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, but rather an aspiring 00-agent recruited by Auric Goldfinger, the villain in the movie and book Goldfinger. The game has little to do with either the GoldenEye movie or N64 game, and was released to mediocre reviews.

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. [7] (http://www.goldeneyesource.com)

See also

• List of firearms in first-person shooters
• James Bond games
• List of Half-Life 2 mods

External links

• The Making of GoldenEye 007 (http://www.zoonami.com/briefing/2004-09-02.php) Speech given by game designer Martin Hollis to the European Developer's Forum
• GoldenEye Detstar site (http://goldeneye.detstar.com/) General information site
• the-elite.net (http://www.the-elite.net/) GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark time attack competition
• GoldenEye Forever (http://www.goldeneyeforever.com/) GoldenEye 007 multiplayer mode fan site
• The GoldenEye Arms Reference (http://www.rhodesmill.org/goldeneye/) Detailed analysis of the game's weapons
• GameRankings page for GoldenEye (http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/197462.asp?q=goldeneye)
• GoldenEye Source (http://www.goldeneyesource.com) A Half-Life 2 mod
• Compiled list of Goldeneye Cheat Codes (http://sonusingh27.tripod.com/archive/2/Goldeneye.htm)
• RareNet's hub of GoldenEye information (http://www.rarenet.com/wiki/index.php?title=GoldenEye)de:Goldeneye 007

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