This is the story of how GoldenEye conquered my university experience and why everything that happened was absolutely fantastic. It all started back in October 1997, when I finally got myself an N64 (a ludicrously expensive bit of technology at the time – I had to save up roughly two and half months wages from my part time job). My purchase included the N64 bundle game GoldenEye 007. Honestly I wasn’t that bothered about it. Come on, the movie was already ancient by 1997 standards and… let’s be honest, movie licence games are shit, right?
Oh how wrong I was.
GoldenEye took over University for me in my second year living in Manchester. The four of us shared a flat in your quintessential student housing complex; thin walls, thin carpets and (this was key) a TV older than any of us. However said TV, circa 21 inch CRT became our new best friend as soon as we discovered you could play GoldenEye with four players on a screen. Buy day 7 our little flat had posters and diagrams of maps pinned to the walls and pretty much anyone who was anyone dropped by at some point to join in the madness. Controller borrowing was rife, I’m pretty sure our flat-mate Dave started charging people 50p for cups of tea and biscuits.
You might be reading this as a young gamer and not understand what I’m going on about – there were no console FPS’s in the late ’90s. What few there were, were terrible. We were all PC boys, used to Doom and Quake with keyboards and mice. Four player on the same screen playing a proper FPS…shouldn’t of worked. The N64 controller looked like something designed by an alien who’d heard human beings described in a Geography lesson.
It worked.. Pure genius.
I remember it like it was yesterday. First time we plugged in all four controllers, booted up GoldenEye and selected the Facility map. It was magic. The fact you could see everything your other three opponents were doing created a whole new level of psychology. You watched your opponent across on reload their weapon and INSTANTLY beat a path towards them. Spot your enemy camping at the window with a sniper rifle? Pop around to your mate’s screen and take him out. Suddenly it was like playing poker with all your cards face up for everyone to see. But instead of making it less tactical, I found it brought out my inner Machiavelli.
GoldenEye rules were enforced faster than any Housing Officer could instate yet another pointless sub-committee. RULE NUMBER ONE: NO ODDJOB. EVER. Yeah he was hilarious and loved by all…but did you see the stupid tiny hit box on that man? Trying to hit him with the dodgy analogue stick meant of aiming was near impossible. My housemate Steve used to call picking Oddjob ‘cheatable’ and would stubbornly always pick him as his character. He went 20-0 one match. We nearly throttled him. From then on, picking Oddjob by accident meant you sat out that round and received verbal abuse.
GoldenEye was more important than our studies.
We mapped every map. knew every camping spot and death animation. Knowledgable discussion would commence on where everybody spawn’d, the times it took weaponry and armour to respawn and good lord those mines took some getting used to. Mines weren’t just there for strategy anymore, they became a way to mercilessly harass your friends. Tape a mine to the underside of that door everybody uses and watch them blame each other for it. Stack a mine on top of the health armour spawn and… trust me, some of you were saying things about me that you shouldn’t…
The weapons were great too. Every man and his dog wanted the big gun; Big gun = RCP-90. High damage, big magazine. Sweet. But the Klobb, man what a pathetic little weapon. So awful was the Klobb that if you picked it you were basically telling everyone else on the screen ‘Hey, I’m over here…Please come and shoot me!’ The guns weren’t amazing, but hey, they worked.
Variants were discussed. House rules were formed. And the fun never stopped. “The man with the Golden Gun” was basically our version of Hotgun; one hit kills and random golden gun drops around the map. Absolute madness. “Slappers Only” devolved into manic chaos as 4 grown adults ran around the map bashing each other senseless with our fists…nearly every time ended in uncontrollable fits of giggles after about 2 minutes. But my personal favourite was just old faithful “License to Kill” with pistols only. It turned every match into your own personal western…careful positioning and stealth became key rather than who could react quickest.
Cheats, and unlocking options gave us something to work towards in between online honing our skills. Beat the game within the time limit with only knives? Big brand new underwear icon added to your select menu. Complete a mission without dying? Well you unlock an option…..one of which was Invincible. Yeah Dave became obsessed with beating Facility under 2 minutes 5 seconds on 00 agent. I honestly spent more time sat watching him try and beat that clock for the 17th time than I care to remember, with about 10 of us crammed round the telly, slagging him off and drinking cheap cider.
DK Mode. Where everyone had massive heads and monkey arms. It was perfect. Weapons looked stupid in those mutant arms. And you could not miss a headshot. Once the beer had flowed and we were wrecked we’d usually crack out DK mode as nobody could care less about their ‘score’ by this point and we were just goofing around.
Don’t get me wrong, the game itself was great. But it was everything that went WITH the game that made it special. Four sweaty guys squashed on to a rubbish sofa, bickering over who got the ‘good’ controller ( You know the one, the analogue stick didn’t fall out. ), wolfing down bags of crisps and slagging each other off. But everyone saw EVERY kill. You wasted somebody and seconds later they fired a mine into their own leg. We saw it. Nobody died anonymously on GoldenEye. You showed someone you could handle your heavy sniper weapon by stabbing them in the back? Big nasty laughs from everyone.
By year three of University the majority, if not all student houses were GoldenEye crazed. Other flats would challenge us to tournaments. Someone even set up a legit bracket with teams from each floor competing. Finals were played in front of nearly 30 people on the big common room TV…I shit you not, it was taken more seriously than any World Cup Final I’ve seen.
My friend Tony even went as far as diagramming every map, detailing where you could x-hop and ideal camping spots. Spawn paths were analysed. Weapon spawns scrutinised. He even timed it take for armour to respawn. And I sat there throwing eggs in the corner learning how to not get shot… but Tony and I played so well as a team (him methodically crawling from spot to spot and myself chucking grenades into every room I passed), that we pretty much dominated whenever we were on the same team.
Speaking of controllers. After HUNDREDS of hours your hands JUST fitted them. It took me a while to get used to the ludicrous controller to begin with. Three prongs for each thumb? Who knew it would work so well with GoldenEye though. Analogue stick for movement, C-buttons for strafing/looking around, Z-trigger for firing = Amazing. Although lets be honest our controllers took more than a beating. Analog sticks went wobbly, buttons got stuck down. I even broke the Z-trigger on my main controller by the end, leaving me with a slight acceleration when pulling my weapon out and constant accusations of cheating.
Sure GoldenEye may have gotten old after a while but once Perfect Dark was released we all thought it would be the new big multiplayer staple. Higher graphics, more weapons, customizable bots, it was better in almost every conceivable way. And for a while it was, but…it just didn’t have that GoldenEye magic. Perhaps we were all getting older, perhaps University was coming to an end but…. Perfect Dark may have been better, but there was nobody there to take its place. You can’t beat your first love.
Fast forward to today and GoldenEye was released….and its alright. Definitely plays great with a group of friends over voice chat. Nostalgic for sure. But there isn’t the same aggression when playing online as you can’t see someone twiddling their thumbs waiting to round corner and plug you. You can’t actually punch your mate in real life when he dies by running head first into a group of enemies after you told him not too. And you can’t scramble around on the floor squealing like a child when you land that perfect kill through a bush.
I often wonder how different my Uni years would of been if we hadn’t discovered GoldenEye. Maybe I would have got good grades, maybe I would have got a First….but I made life long friends during those late night sessions that I still keep in touch with today. Best of all we still are a GoldenEye whenever we get the four of us together. Nostalgia might have bought us back playing online, but it’ll never replace the smaller CRT TV crammed around my tiny little living room that cozy winter evening when we all discovered multiplayer.
Because GoldenEye was never about the game. It was about experiencing something that was SPECIAL at that time. Nothing else was like it. Sure you could play locally with other people but nobody else was talking about GoldenEye…yet. It was our little secret and we LOVED it.
Sometimes things align perfectly in your life and GoldenEye happened to be one of those things for me (and a lot of other people judging by the tweets I get). It was here for a reason, and honestly, I loved every minute of it.
Joe’s a history teacher who treats the console wars like actual history. A lifelong Sega devotee from Phoenix, he writes with passion, humor, and lingering heartbreak over the Dreamcast. Expect strong opinions, bad puns, and plenty of “blast processing.”
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