So for today’s article I wrote, its a retrospective on GoldenEye 007. Specifically with a bent towards the odd legal mix it caught itself up in with so many different entities being rights holders.
I covered how it was made (a team of nine, most of which had never developed games before!), how it was received (to say ‘well’ is an understatement), how it didn’t fit in with what was typical on the Nintendo 64 at the time, and more besides.
Its not a hard-hitting piece, but it you wanna jump back in time and enjoy some nostalgia for the N64 or for GoldenEye, then you might enjoy my retrospective on it:
https://gardinerbryant.com/goldeneye-007-the-accidental-masterpiece-trapped-in-licensing-limbo/
It’s wild in retrospect how influential a throwaway movie tie in video game ended up being.
Part of that is because it wasn’t a throwaway movie tie-in game. The E.T. Atari game was appalling shit that came out the same year as the movie after a full 5 weeks of development and was definitely a throwaway tie-in. Goldeneye came out two years after the movie because the team thought it was the raddest shit ever and wanted to make it a good game. By the time the game came out, the movie was already long gone from theaters and had been out on VHS for almost a year.
And how crazily good this is, even by today’s standards, compared to the others from that era!
They really did change everything…all without really meaning to :)