“GoldenEye 007” might be the biggest conundrum (or at least the toughest call for inclusion) on this entire countdown of what I consider to be the most essential retro video games a person can play.
On the one hand, you have a game that is by many metrics among the most important games in the entire history of gaming. GoldenEye personified a platform – the Nintendo 64 – in a way few other games have ever come close to doing. It provided a template for first-person shooting on home consoles for essentially the next decade (and to some degree, it mapped out what developers are still doing today). And it was immensely popular, providing joy (and misery) to countless millions of people.
However, on the other hand, you also have a game that is virtually unplayable for many younger gamers, who upon playing it will almost inevitably declare it overrated and terrible and miss the whole dang point of why it mattered in the first place.
The reasons for this are easy to identify.
Firstly, it’s the general look of the game, which featured early-polygons that are fuzzy, colorless, and ugly and offer comically unrefined edges, creating the “blocky” effect that so many games of that era had.
“Oh hey, that guy looks like an extra from Dire Strait’s ‘Money for Nothing’ video!”
“Wow, that lady’s chest looks like Madonna’s famous cone bra for some reason.”*
* That these jokes are themselves somewhat dated does not escape me. It’s fine. Everything’s fine. We all get old. I linked to the source material for the younger pups out there. Also, here’s a more modern version for you: These people look like less colorful Minecraft characters.
So yes, the graphics were super ugly. But that would be easy to forgive with good controls and … WELP.
Yeah, here you’ve got to contend with that wonky N64 controller,* early first-person “tank” controls that everyone has by now (justifiably) declared to be entirely inefficient at accomplishing things (you can’t aim or move quickly), and perhaps worst of all, critical stuff mapped to those silly yellow arrow buttons on the N64 which are annoyingly small and difficult to find in real time … which is unfortunately what we’re dealing with here – real-time battles wherein baddies are trying to shoot you in the face.
* The N64 controller is famously wonky. It features three prongs giving it the appearance of a tripod, those stupid tiny yellow buttons your fingers can’t locate without you glancing down at the controller (getting you killed in the process), and a cute little joystick for analogue control which is positioned squarely in the middle of the controller for some reason and baffles newcomers endlessly. The idea behind the whole thing is that you use the middle prong when you’re using the joystick and the left prong when using the standard d-pad, but that’s not intuitive, people constantly get it wrong, and the whole dang thing is super weird regardless.
In summation, the controls and visuals of GoldenEye 007 can best be described as “dated” and at worst be labeled as something akin to getting a splinter stuck under your fingernail.
You don’t want that there. It hurts. As a piece of a greater whole, it served a purpose. But now it sucks and you want it to go away.
These controls and graphics suck, and you want them to go away.
Thusly, encouraging people to play this is to invite scorn and misunderstanding.
And yet…
People LOVE this game.
I LOVE this game.
GoldenEye is an all-timer, and it represents a simpler time for so many of us, full of gaming, friends, laughs, continual virtual murder, and general hilarity. The flaws, such as they are, weren’t really flaws at the time, because nothing better existed to compare them to. It was just an awesome game.
So, the case for GoldenEye essentially comes down to this: Either we encourage people to play it knowing they simply won’t have the same experience people did in the late 90s, OR we let it be forgotten completely as us older people die off.
Morbid, I know, but that’s kinda the point here. What games shouldn’t pass away from our society’s consciousness. Which ones need to be celebrated and remembered?
GoldenEye, for better AND worse, needs to be celebrated and remembered.
So, prepare to have a nice, long splinter shoved up under your fingernail, because we’re doing this thing.
GoldenEye 007 at a glance:
Genre: First-person shooter
Released: 1997
Platform: Nintendo 64
No. 29 on IGN’s Top 100 Games of All Time
Continue reading GoldenEye 007 — Retro Gaming Essentials (No. 39)
