25 Years of GoldenEye Dev

I had such a great time at the Centre for Computing History, indulging myself in memories of the years where my friends and I regularly gathered together around a TV to play the GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64. The panel session with three members of the development team is now up on YouTube, along with the post-talk Q&A. Both are well worth watching.

They developed the game with very little help from other teams at Rare. It was fascinating to hear about the challenges of having so much going on in the game without the frame rate suffering to an unacceptable degree. Who knew that the placement of doorways on levels would have such a huge bearing on processing?

Some of the game features — such as AI characters that go off to do things other than running straight at you and the inclusion of a sniper rifle — are now standard elements that you expect with any first-person shooter. Multiplayer was added to the game only four months before their deadline; remarkable as the game probably wouldn’t be as celebrated today without it.

I managed to get tickets to the event through being a Patreon of the Centre and being altered before they went on general release. If this kind of thing interests you, it is well worth setting up a small monthly donation to help them to continue their work.