All aboard for another trip in the "Way Back" machine. Going back now to the late 90's, when my friends and I didn't have a lot to worry about. Fresh outta high school, working crappy jobs just to have money to buy what ever we wanted, not to many worries to hold us down. Enter the Nintendo 64 and the game that would rule our nights for years, "Goldeneye 007". I am not sure that I or really anyone, can put a finger on what exactly it was about this game that made it such a time sink. One things for sure though, we all lost countless hours playing this game over and over and over again.
The story of the game followed directly the story of the movie. It made a few twists and turns but always kept up with the movies plot. You, of course, play as Pierce Brosnon, as the one and only James Bond. Shooting your way through several different environments, using many an amusing gadget, and different powerful weapons.
The story mode was fine and good, but it really took a back seat to the real draw for this game, the multi-player modes. Five different modes, Eleven different maps, and Thirty different characters to choose from. Countless different variations of the different modes lead to an almost endless list of ways to approach each and every map. My friends and I would play literally all night and never get tired of it. To this day I can still pick up the controller and almost always pinpoint where all the other opponents are strictly based on what they are seeing in their square of the screen. This game (and it's later successor Perfect Dark) was the biggest reason I had such a hard time giving up my N64 a few years ago.
About a year ago there was a rumor that it might eventually make its way onto the Xbox Live Marketplace. That, sadly, will probably never ever happen due to a mountain of red tape that apparently Microsoft and Nintendo and who ever else is involved can't seem to climb.
Until the day that they make it for some other system (possibly a download for the Wii Virtual Console) I will have only my memories to keep me company. I don't even care that the graphics haven't aged well AT ALL, I just love the game and everything that went along with it at the time.
2 comments:
I think game developers should take a good look at some older games and figure out why they were/are so much fun to play. Another game my friends and I played a lot was Army Man.
Great article by the way, nice to walk down memory lane once a while.
Such a great game, the MP was definitely the highlight, but I also had a ton of fun turning the cheats on and driving the tank around the runway map, racking up the kills.
excellent article.
-IceMan
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