Whether you have played the game or just know of it, GoldenEye 007 for Nintendo 64 is as much a cultural phenomenon as its namesake James Bond franchise. GoldenEra is a 2022 documentary about the creation and legacy of the game.
Before we get into this great documentary, I have to admit that I didn’t play much of GoldenEye 007. I only ever had access to it at friends’ houses who had a Nintendo 64. Genuinely, when it comes to first-person shooters, my journey generally ends with Quake. I played Wolfenstein and Duke Nukem 3D, but Quake was the end-all be-all. I was a PC Gamer, and I still am.
That mentality might be why I never jumped to consoles, but it doesn’t mean my awareness of them and their games was any less than my contemporaries, especially those bitten by the bug.
GoldenEye 007 was a tie-in video game. As stated in the documentary by games journalist Simon Parker, “In the late nineties, every major film that came along had to have a licensed video game attached. And this was not because Hollywood, you know, particularly valued or respected the video game industry. It was like, this is a really useful marketing tool.”
It was that mentality that allowed the small studio known as Rare to get the license and rights to build a James Bond game based on the 1995 Pierce Brosnan film. Rare was not unknown as a developer: they had a track record of success before GoldenEye 007 with Wizards & Warriors, R.C. Pro-Am, Battletoads, Donkey Kong Country, and Killer Instinct.
But the group that built GoldenEye 007 was young and inexperienced. That element of not knowing what you don’t know, or even what you can’t do, assisted all of the developers at every level for GoldenEye 007. It helped them build something that had never been seen before, especially on console.
This is why GoldenEye 007 is sort of a big bang moment. There is a clearly defined before period, where the games I was playing on PC were the standard in First Person Shooters (FPS) and an after where FPSs could succeed on console. As author David Craddock says, “GoldenEye became the game that set the gold standard for first-person shooters on console. It was the template that the genre would follow on consoles going forward.”
It wasn’t the only console shooter released in 1997. There was also Doom, Turok, Hexen, and Duke Nukem 64, but GoldenEye really stands the test of time.
The first half of the documentary is all about the creation of the game. My mind was legitimately blown that the multiplayer feature was a relative afterthought added to the game close to launch. The second half of the documentary gets into the legacy of the game, what happens next, and where they are now.
It also touches on speedrunning, the trials of the industry and corporate decision-making, and the indie recreations of the game.
Former EDGE Magazine editor Joao Diniz Sanches states, “Things have become a little bit more corporate and safe. And then generally, I think that’s true of all game development. You know, some of the risks that are taken in GoldenEye just wouldn’t fly in this day and age. And then going back to that inexperienced team, small team, you know, movie license, even the freedom that they had with the license these days wouldn’t happen.”
Compare that with the immortal words of Shigeru Miyamoto which start the documentary – “A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad” – and you start to understand just why this game had the cultural and industry impact it had.
GoldenEye 007 was a perfect storm, and GoldenEra is its perfect doppler radar.