FGC #188 GoldenEye 007

The Eye of the Beholder is a Twilight Zone episode you have likely seen before (or at least seen parodied). The basic plot is remarkably straightforward: Janet is undergoing surgery because she wants to “look normal”. Unfortunately, the procedure fails, and she is revealed to be… beautiful. But the twist is that everyone else in her society looks like some kind of puffy pig man, and her conventional beauty is regarded as a threat to the state. In the end, she is taken away by a handsome man, so she can flourish and frolic with her own kind. And we all learn a valuable lesson about how “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, and what some consider attractive could be ugly to others. Then you watch that episode about the dude with the glasses.

GoldenEye 007 is my The Eye of the Beholder. Everybody is talking about how great it is to be normal, and I’m off in the corner, wondering when we’re going to get back to Street Fighter. Somewhere, one of my friends is cleaning his snout.

I mentioned it in the Splatoon article, but I do not get along with FPSs. I’m not going to go through the reasons again (I trust you remember everything I have ever written), but know that this has been an affliction as long as the genre has existed. When my friends all got into Quake and Doom, I was advocating Bomberman and Mortal Kombat. It wasn’t because I was somehow worse at FPS games than any other genre, I just had about as much fun with even the best FPS games as I did with other “that’s nice, let’s play something else” games like, I don’t know, anything that involved going outside.

My distaste for FPS games may have elevated my position with the faculty of my high school. I was a member of the computer club (shocking, I know). I could maybe believe that there was a time when the computer club didn’t just sit around having LAN parties, but that was apparently long ago, because when I joined, PC FPS games ruled every meeting. I had a tendency to hang out during these events, but it was primarily for the “meeting” portion of the meeting, and not the death matches. This apparently did not go unnoticed, and I was approached by the advisor of the club, who informed me that I was, “the real future of the computer club, not like these kids that just joined to play videogames.” I joined to play videogames! Just other videogames! But I don’t think it was a coincidence when, shortly thereafter, I wound up with random teachers asking me for help with their various devices and computer problems.

So what I’m trying to say is that I’m apparently a nerd even among nerds. Hooray.

Wait… what was I talking about again?

Oh, right. GoldenEye sucks.

Alright, sorry, I know that’s not true. GoldenEye 007 is, from a purely objective perspective, a great game. It’s got interesting levels when most FPSs were simply gray corridors. It had stealth mechanics when that was still new and novel. It’s got a movie license and isn’t a complete pile of crap, which is still a rarity today. And it even has that “interactive cut scene” thing going on that has become so popular with the FPSs of today. Couple this all with the fact that Goldeneye practically singlehandedly revived any and all interest in the N64, and I really shouldn’t be complaining about such a revolutionary game.

But it’s that revolution that has caused me so much turmoil.

Back to the computer club: Do you know why LAN parties were so popular? It was because FPSs were pretty much only on computers (specifically PCs), and, while they tried, Doom and alike ports on the home consoles were pretty much always crap. Even if the graphics translated properly, you were still hampered by a gimped controller more meant for Mario than Heretic, and a complete lack of that all-important death match mode. So, go where the fun is, if FPSs were bad on consoles, it’s time to hit that PC market, and enjoy the Wolfensteins of the keyboard.

But, and this may shock some of you younger readers, PC gaming was stupidly expensive at the time. The old adage of “it’s out of date before you get it out of the box” was in full swing during this period, and, even if you could afford a top of the line PC, you also had to have three friends who could all afford their own top of the line PCs, and those three friends all had to live in your house, because a 56K modem could barely load a proper JPEG, left alone support a full online experience. This was the appeal of the computer club: one could exploit the school’s endless resources (man, it’s weird being a kid), and get those super fun LAN parties a-goin’. Later we’ll burn some music on the school’s 2x CD burner!

But Goldeneye changed all that. Suddenly, there was a viable console FPS experience. And it didn’t hurt that it stared the iconic pinnacle of masculinity, James Bond, either. Now even your dad could understand the appeal of running around an ocean liner with a golden gun, so certainly the other kids from homeroom would comprehend. It’s predominantly because the game was so good to begin with, but Goldeneye was practically always going to make the FPS the hottest new genre on consoles. Halo (2) would one day perfect the stranglehold, but Goldeneye made it all possible.

And I can’t stand it.

Everyone started playing Goldeneye 007. I got Goldeneye for… I want to say Christmas? I didn’t buy it with my own money. I still own that same copy of Goldeneye 007, and it somehow has four completed game saves on it. I’ve never beaten the game myself once. Where did these save files come from? Simple, I had friends that were so obsessed with the game, they save the day, repeatedly, on my copy, just to unlock new cheats / characters / stages. Such was the universal adoration for Goldeneye; that it somehow compelled people not only to play death match after death match, but also play through the single player campaign multiple times on (apparently) multiple carts. I can probably count the number of games released in the last three decades that can match that fervor on one hand.

And… I never got it. I never understood the adoration. I played it with my friends, because that’s what they were playing, but… it wasn’t fun for me. I… participated, and that’s the most I can say about it.

Bah, maybe I need to go off to the island of handsome people that play Secret of Mana. I should fit in there just fine.

FGC #188 GoldenEye 007

• System: N64. Remakes do not count.
• Number of players: Four. This is the primary way I experienced this game. For hours.
• Favorite Crony: I don’t like playing this game, I want to be playing someone else. I’m choosing Oddjob, and you can’t stop me.
• This guy are sic: Oddly, Microsoft Word is okay with “goldeneye” but not “GoldenEye”. So many red underlines…
• Filthy Cheater: The “cheats” for this game are more like unlockable bonus options, and not really “cheats” at all. You would not believe how much this annoys me. I AM SO ANGRY AT THIS GAME! Eh, at least we got DK Mode.
• Further Computer Club Stories: There were no girls in the computer club. None. One day, a girl who was a friend of mine asked me if she could join the computer club and hang out. I explained to her that she probably wouldn’t like it, because all anyone ever did was sit around and play FPSs. She didn’t join. It took me years to realize she was maybe interested in something else (which would be sometime around our first date).
• Did you know? I could probably fill an entire article with all the cool little details in this game. Perfect for James Bond fans!… Except, screw it, I got better things to do.
• Would I play again: Inevitably, because someone is going to notice that N64 sitting under my TV, and suddenly there will be the question, “You know what we should play?”

What’s next? Random ROB has chosen… Sonic the Hedgehog 3! Please look forward to it! And Knuckles!