Bond--James Bond. In the 80s and 90s, the debonair superspy's games
failed to live up to the giddy thrills of his films. That all changed
when British studio Rare unleashed GoldenEye 007 in 1997. In basements
and college dorms across the world, friends bumped shoulders while
shooting, knifing, exploding, and slapping each other's digital faces in
the Nintendo 64 game that would redefine the modern first-person shooter
genre and become the most badass party game of its generation. But
GoldenEye's success was far from a sure thing. For years of development,
GoldenEye's team of rookie developers were shooting in the dark with no
sense of what the N64 or its controller would be like, and the game's
relentless violence horrified higher-ups at squeaky clean Nintendo. As
development lagged far behind the debut of the tie-in film GoldenEye,
the game nearly came out an entire Bond movie too late. Through
extensive interviews with GoldenEye's creators, writer and scholar Alyse
Knorr traces the story of how this unlikely licensed game reinvigorated
a franchise and a genre. Learn all the stories behind how this iconic
title was developed, and why GoldenEye 007 has continued to kick the
living daylights out of every other Bond game since.
