What Goldeneye 64 Could’ve Been…

Speaking to IGN at GDC Europe, Martin Hollis, the director of Goldeneye 64 has let out some of the game’s development secrets.

Remember those days when you did anything to get your pals together for a 4-player split screen match on Goldeneye 64? Imagine if those days had never happened. As Hollis revealed, all those memories might never have happened. Multiplayer was added to Goldeneye after two solid years of development. 

The multiplayer element came at the “last minute” according to Hollis. He also told IGN that the big wigs at both Rare and Nintendo had no idea that they had put it into the game until it was fully functioning. The Goldeneye local multiplayer certainly changed the world of video games and I’m so glad that it made it in.

Hollis explained how the game was well behind schedule. Rare had been commissioned to make a SNES game. However, as development slowed, they knew they had to step up to the N64. They had designed a ‘Virtua-Cop’ style game before they even knew of what the controller was going to be like. Despite this, the Goldeneye movie came at the right time, leading to a movie inspired video game being released, thus Goldeneye 64 was born.