019: We got our mate's little brother to unlock the Invincibility cheat for us
The 2:05 completion time of Facility on 00 Agent difficulty was a challenge that sorted the double-Os from the zeroes. Success meant unlocking the Invincibility cheat, but it relied on finding the aforementioned Dr. Doak in a convenient location and breezing past guards at breakneck speed.
And we're ashamed to say that it was beyond us back in the day. In fact, we had to enlist the help of our mate's little brother to do it for us. We should really go back one day and do it for ourselves! A challenge for the weekend, perhaps...
Despite our shame, the next item on this list made us feel a bit better.
020: Pierce Brosnan is great, but he's rubbish at GoldenEye
Despite having played the world's least secret agent, it turns out that Pierce Brosnan isn't much of a sharpshooter, at least in digital form.
As a guest on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon back in 2014, video game fan Fallon wheeled out an N64 with a copy of GoldenEye to play a two-player deathmatch against the former 007. Brosnan gamely took part in the skit while admitting he had only played the game once and "shot himself in the foot".
You can check out the short Fallon vs Brosnan clip below, with Normal, Complex, First to 5 points, Power Weapons being the settings they opt for:
021: There were plans for a casino level
Alyse Knorr also notes that there were plans for a mission in a Casino — specifically, the one in the movie where Bond meets Xenia Onatopp face-to-face.
However, designer Duncan Botwood recalled that "there would have been such a lot of work to make a good casino background that we decided against it." Items including money and casino tokens are still present in the ROM, though.
022: It influenced... everything
GoldenEye played an integral part in shaping the evolution of the next decade of first-person shooters on console and beyond. Games like Bungie's Halo: Combat Evolved and Valve's Half-Life iterated on its innovations and would, in turn, go on to influence other shooters to the point where FPS became the industry's dominant genre.
As noted by Chris Kohler in Mel Magazine's oral history, the term 'first-person shooter' rose to prominence following GoldenEye's release, quickly gaining favour over 'Doom Clone' after 1997.
Speaking with Retro Gamer, Doak described an encounter with the Half-Life team not long after GoldenEye's release:
"My favourite moment was meeting the original Valve guys at ECTS, a UK trade show, in 1998 and them joking that GoldenEye had forced them to redo a bunch of stuff on Half-Life. They went on to do all right."
023: It's still got a surprisingly active mod scene
Despite its age, the game is still attracting modders to create tweaked versions and even total conversions that run on original hardware. SubDrag's Goldfinger 64 (above) is perhaps the most well-known, a campaign mod which takes the locations and plot of 1964's Goldfinger and builds an entire game around it in the GoldenEye engine (read more about it in this article by NL alumni Martin Watts).
More recently, another mod creates a 64-bit adaptation of The Spy Who Loved Me with Roger Moore in the lead role. And while these game may run best via emulator, both of these are playable on original hardware if you have an Everdrive 64 or similar device.
024: The RCP-90 is the best firearm in video games
Nope, no quotes or sources for this one. Just objective fact, really.
With a Rumble Pak locked into your N64 pad, the purring feedback coupled with this gun's rolling pfbtpfbtpfbtpfbtpfbt sound effect makes for one of the most satisfying and powerful weapons to wield in all of video gaming. There really is nothing quite like it.
Observe:
025: They made a Rare Replay documentary for it, just in case
Along with any games featuring Nintendo IP, GoldenEye was conspicuously absent from 2015's Rare Replay collection for Xbox due to the well-known licensing issues — the same ones that have kept it a Nintendo 64 exclusive for the past quarter-century.
However, with many of the original team already assembled for interviews on other Rare titles, the team charged with creating documentaries to accompany the retrospective Replay package made one for GoldenEye anyway, in the event that it could be included. And, fortunately for us, it somehow made its way onto the internet for our enjoyment!
So, to finish, why not grab yourself a Martini or a Vesper and kick back with 25 minutes of golden nostalgia?
There are plenty more anecdotes floating around when it comes to GoldenEye. For instance, did you know that Shigeru Miyamoto wanted you to go to the hospital at the end of the game and shake the hand of all the guards you had shot, to make it clear that all the violence wasn't real?...
Oh, you did, did you? Very good, carry on! Feel free to share your Goldeneye stories below. We're off for another crack at Facility on 00 Agent.