This was one of the greatest games ever made, no doubt. I've actually never been able to relate to a lot of my buddies who can game for hours on end. Starcraft, WoW, etc.. bore me after 30 minutes.
Goldeneye on the other hand ... I could have easily died from starvation without the parental supervision.
Anyhow, back to the original post. It's interesting to me that the original team had no idea what they were doing. I still look back on apps or things I built years ago, lacking absolutely any idea of what I was doing, and being amazed at how successful or great they ended up. Inversely, sometimes the product or thing I spent the most time agonizing over ended up being a total flop. More and more I am learning that you just gotta side with the majority of the 80/20, stick to your gut feelings, and jam jam jam to get that puppy out the door.
It's always tricky to find that perfect place between being a bootstrapped/scaffolded/barebones MVP product and a well-thought out, carefully designed product. I'm glad the Rare team managed to hit it with Goldeneye, they're an inspiration.
I'm not sure exactly what it says, but I'm a decade older than you, and I lost countless days to this game. The best opponent I had was four years older than me!
I don't quite understand the love for the four player multi though. It seemed unplayably choppy to me with with that many opponents, but I never did get that expansion pack that sticks in the front. Also didn't care for the limited view range. But heads up multi-player... fantastic.
I remember Perfect Dark (the spiritual successor to Goldeneye) required it to run most of the game.
[0]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_64_accessories#Expansi...
I went to bed pretty quickly after that - my vision came back, thankfully :)
Edit: This was about 3am, for the record, after I'd been playing for about 12 hours or so.
Immediately prior to reading this, I was writing about how non-game developers can indeed bring a unique perspective to the table when developing games. This is definitely an inspirational story and helpful in reaffirming my thoughts. Thanks for sharing.
My favorite modes were one shot kills with knives or slappers only, power weapons with health cranked up, or anything involving prox mines :>
I haven't played it for years now, and I'm not sure how easy it is to get N64 consoles now, but if you want something similar, TimeSplitters for the Gamecube had very similar gameplay (and a lot more options, including bots and fully customisable loadouts).
God that was a great game.
Talk about a non sequitur.
The people that make their work matter in the world find ways to extend influence and this is just one small tactic that simply works.
You don't understand why people promote themselves? You made it to the end of the blog post, which likely indicates that you enjoyed the content. Why wouldn't he say "hey follow me on twitter so that if I write another post that doesn't make it to HN front page, you can hear about it," to try to get some extra followers? Would you prefer he ask you to follow him at the beginning of the post?
[1]: http://www.nowgamer.com/features/921602/the_making_of_golden...
Especially in levels like the bunker, if you hovered just a breadth out of distance in a two-player game, it was possible to wrack up multiple kills very easily and would often take an equally experienced player to even have a chance of making it to the nearest weapon in time.
It took me weeks to realise that the cut-scene graphics were actually useful and not just fluff. They often provided hints and tips or let you know about enemies.
There's a bunch of stuff still in the rom code that isn't accessible from the game - the hidden island; some glitchy levels. And there's some bits left over from the "notorious" but removed "put your face in the game" mode. (Which used the GB camera to map face photos onto game models for multiplayer but got removed after a mass shooting.)
I loved the train; I loved the tunnel in the damn. I hated trying to keep the bloody hostages alive on the boat. The first few times I set the alarm off were scary.
This was an amazing game. The N64 was a peculiar sweet spot for games and I'm not sure why.
That's arguably age-related nostalgia. I feel the same way about the Super Nintendo instead of the N64.
I think "sweet spot" is the wrong term.
There were some excellent games. 1080; Super Mario 64; Golden Eye; some of the Zelda games. These aren't just "very good", these are "among the best", and they are still very very good games.
I'll admit there were also some real duffers. Superman, that claymation fighting game, etc.
Sega Saturn has been mentioned, and that had some great games despite some serious flaws with the system. Sega Rally on Saturn is almost perfect, even though you only have 3 cars and a handful of tracks.
Tangential to OP's article, http://console.fm is awesome.
Martin Hollis, the other senior member of the team also left for pastures new after working on Perfect Dark.
I'm sure Rare still has a lot of brilliant hard working team members, but the main drivers of GoldenEye have long since gone.
[1] Disclaimer: I used to work at Free Radical at one point.
GoldenEye 64, Blast Corps, Donkey Kong Country, Killer Instinct, Banjo-Kazooie, and Perfect Dark.
After MS buyout?
What is amazing about Viva Piniata was that my retired mom (afraid of turning on the computer) got interested seeing me play and started playing herself! She ended up unlocking every single feature/award in the game, and this led her to play other Animal Crossing on the GameCube. I got her the first iPad when it came out and she is now essentially a regular computer user! While Viva Piniata might not have been a commercial success, I know one life it changed and I'd bet there are a lot more.
Frankly, I wish the world had more daring developers/game companies/people. The situation with Rare isn't a good one as your quip points out. Sadly, no matter how artistically awesome your games are, without commercial success, you cannot survive. This leads to a world of xbox games where pretty much every game is a shooter. IMHO, that is why tablets are kicking console gamings behind. It seems more creative titles for tablets (and perhaps the indie game section of xbox live) than for the xbox today.
Edit: And by that I mean you should take point and make it happen ;)
They redid the original Goldeneye for Wii and sadly I bought it. It's a horrible remake. Aiming with pointing using the Wii Remote is really hard and turning around takes ages, but this isn't the worst thing. They changed the multiplayer game mode: You can't pick up other weapons as you could in the 64 version - you have to chose in the beginning which weapons you'd like... I always loved this in the 64 version (proximity mines..oh yes :D)
Point: Maybe more mainstream games should be created by inexperienced teams to compete with the 6-month Call of Duty plot change cycle (i.e. same shit different day).
