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| Nintendo "GoldenEye 007" "Boys with toys," indeed: The video game that out-performed the movie.
The game received highly positive reviews from the gaming media and sold over eight million copies worldwide, making it the third-best-selling Nintendo 64 game. GoldenEye 007 is considered an important game in the history of first-person shooters for demonstrating the viability of game consoles as platforms for the genre, and for signalling a transition from the then-standard Doom-like approach to a more realistic style. It pioneered features that have since become common in first-person shooters, such as varied mission objectives, a zoomable sniper rifle, stealth elements, and a console multiplayer deathmatch mode. The multiplayer mode allows two, three or four players to compete against each other in five different types of split screen deathmatch games: Normal, You Only Live Twice, The Living Daylights (Flag Tag), The Man With the Golden Gun, and Licence to Kill. Normal is a basic deathmatch mode in which the main objective is to kill opponents as many times as possible. It can be played as a free-for-all game or in teams. In You Only Live Twice, players only have two lives before they are eliminated from the game, and Licence to Kill is a mode in which players die from a single hit with any weapon. In The Man With the Golden Gun, a single Golden Gun, which is capable of killing opponents with only one shot, is placed in a fixed location on the map; once the Golden Gun is picked up, the only way to re-acquire it is to kill the player holding it. The player with the Golden Gun is unable to pick up body armour while opponents can. In The Living Daylights, a "flag" is placed in a fixed location on the map, and the player who holds it the longest wins. The flag-carrier cannot use weapons but can still collect them to keep opponents from stocking ammunition. Aspects of each gametype can be customised, including the chosen map, class of weapons, and winning condition. As players progress through the single player mode, new maps and characters are unlocked in the multiplayer mode.  Despite an unsuccessful showing at E3 1997 and low expectations among the gaming media, GoldenEye 007 turned out to be both a critical and a commercial success. It received very high critical praise and sold more than eight million units worldwide, making it the third best selling Nintendo 64 game, behind Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64. According to a paper published on the website of the Entertainment Software Association, the game grossed $250 million worldwide. The game has collected numerous awards, including the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment "Games Award" in 1998, and four awards from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences: "Console Action Game of the Year", "Console Game of the Year", "Interactive Title of the Year" and "Outstanding Achievement in Software Engineering". Rare was also recognized for its work on the game and won the BAFTA award for "Best UK Developer".. GoldenEye 007 is frequently included in gaming publications' "greatest game" lists. In a January 2000 poll, readers of the long-running British magazine Computer and Video Games voted GoldenEye 007 into first place in a list of "the hundred greatest video games", and it was ranked 5th in a poll the following year.[55] Also that year, the game ranked 16th in Game Informer's list of the "Top 100 Games of All Time". In 2005, a "Best Games of All-Time" contest at GameFAQs placed GoldenEye 007 at 7th, and in a list made by IGN in 2005, the game was ranked 29th, while the Reader's Choice placed it at 7th. Video game review site ScrewAttack rated GoldenEye 007 number one in three separate top ten lists: a June 2008 list of the "Top 10 FPS Games Ever", a June 2009 list of the "Top 10 Movie-Based Games", and an October 2010 list of the "Top 10 Local-Multiplayer Console Games". Edge has featured GoldenEye 007 prominently in three "greatest game" lists: it placed third in a staff-voted poll in 2000; seventeenth in a staff, reader, and gaming industry-voted poll in 2007; and it was also included as one of the publication's "Top 10 shooters" in 2003. In 2011, the game was selected as one of 80 titles from the past 40 years to be placed in the Art of Video Games exhibit in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Meanwhile, the James Bond game license was acquired by Electronic Arts in 1999, which published new games based upon the then-recent James Bond films, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough, as well as entirely original ones, including 007: Nightfire, 007: Everything or Nothing and GoldenEye: Rogue Agent. However, none of them reached the critical or commercial success of GoldenEye 007.[74] In 2006, the James Bond game license was acquired by Activision,[74][75] which published additional games in the James Bond video game series, such as 007: Quantum of Solace, James Bond 007: Blood Stone, and a reimagining of the Nintendo 64 game, also titled GoldenEye 007. The reimagining features Daniel Craig as the playable character, modern FPS conventions, entirely new level-layouts, and an online component. It was exclusively released for the Wii and Nintendo DS in 2010 to generally positive reviews, and later re-released as GoldenEye 007: Reloaded for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 the following year.   |
