Photo: MobyGames
In previous editions of Nintendo Nostalgic, we’ve covered some real MVPs from Nintendo’s golden age. We looked back on Super Mario Bros. 3, and saw that it remained a gaming treasure. We even looked back on Majora’s Mask — and we’d be lying if we said it didn’t still make us crap ourselves a tiny bit (with or without pizza involved).
Those were the days: Mandatory’s Favorite ’90s Video Games We’d Like to See Remade
But in this edition, we got a game with serious pedigree; a license to kill, in fact. It helped sell the N64 by the millions and revolutionized the console FPS scene. It’s the James Bond-tastic Goldeneye 007! Here we look back on its many moments of awesomeness — and hilarity — that ensured it beat the living daylights out of any game that tried to match it.
Fun facts: 5 Things You Didn’t Know About ‘GoldenEye 007’
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That 'Facility' Level
GoldenEye’s first level, built around the opening sequence of the movie where Bond dives off the dam, was a fun little opener. But level two, The Facility, taught you everything you needed to be a real secret agent. And it had a kick-ass theme song, which is now in your head. Don’t deny it.
Better still, parts of the level involved sneaking around in air vents to assassinate Soviet soldiers while they were taking a leak in the bathroom! Ah, espionage. Such a pissing contest.
Photo: MobyGames
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Tanks For The Memories
GoldenEye 007 also had some levels that went beyond the standard shooting. For example, later in the game you got to drive a tank through the streets of Moscow, chasing down rogue MI6 agent Trevelyan to stop him from getting his hands on the GoldenEye satellite.
Controlling a tank in any game always makes you feel like some beautiful god of destruction, crushing everything in sight under your unstoppable tank tracks, and blasting everything else to smithereens. GoldenEye’s Runway and Streets levels have all of this, plus some blood-curdling screams every time you run a poor enemy over.
Just try to block it out. It’s for Queen and country, after all.
Photo: MobyGames
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The Weapons
No discussion of GoldenEye could be complete without mentioning the arsenal of weapons waiting for players to have fun with. It’s still one of the greatest collections ever put into a game.
Picking up an assault rifle for the first time on the Jungle level reveals a weapon that has no equal. But you’ve still made plenty of friends along the way: the incredible rocket launcher, the trusty AK47 and even the laughably pathetic Klobb, a submachine gun so useless it seemed to spew bullets away from targets instead of at them.
But things got even madder in the best game mode GoldenEye had to offer…
Photo: MobyGames
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The Multiplayer Mode
GoldenEye on split-screen four-player mode was the absolute freaking best. There is no other experience on the Nintendo 64 that compares. It had the entire cast of the film (plus classic Bond villains) to choose from, all of the weapons, and all of the levels. It was the reason you had more friends come over to your house than you usually did.
And the amount of ways you could change it up were endless. Rocket launchers only on the Bunker level? That’s the way to go, unless you’re partial to them Moonraker lasers. Just as long as you’re not playing with anyone who insists on playing as Oddjob, or with the Golden Gun. There’s a special place in hell for those kinds of cheapskates.
Photo: comicbook.com
