It’s been almost 20 years since the release of GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64, but we’re still learning new tidbits about the game’s fascinating creation. Hollis shared a couple choice anecdotes about how the publisher encouraged the developer to reconsider the virtual violence. Hollis mentions that they developed about 40 textures of “beautifully rendered gore” that were presumably nixed by Nintendo. When I saw it the first time, I thought it was awesome, it was a fountain of blood, like that moment in the Shining when the lift doors open.
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The team at Rare received a fax – a fax! – from the creator of Super Mario, Shigeru Miyamoto, about possible changes. “He found it a bit too frightful. I don’t think I did anything with that input”, said Hollis.
“He suggested that it might be nice if, at the end of the game, you got to shake hands with all your enemies in the hospital”, Hollis said, which would have made James Bond the world’s nicest secret agent.
1997’s GoldenEye 007 was a massive commercial and critical success for Nintendo, selling 8 million copies worldwide and generating an enormous amount of revenue.
If you remotely love GoldenEye you should read the rest of the piece from The Guardian, which has a few really interesting tidbits.
Nintendo has a reputation for being largely family-friendly when it comes to their image. No killing wouldn’t have been in keeping with the action film the game was based on and neither would a gag at the end, but too much gore wouldn’t have been very Bond-like either.
Martin Hollis (right) talking to Gary Penn about the genesis of legendary shooter, GoldenEye. Added Hollis: “It was very filmic, and the key thing was, it underlined that this was artifice”. When not gaming, he’s probably running cross country or writing.
Rare went on to create spiritual successor ideal Dark.
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To take the bitter sting out of all that gunplay and bloodletting, Miyamoto had a decidedly quirky solution: have Bond visit the assorted henchmen and soldiers at the end of the game, all laid up and recovering from their bullet wounds and slap marks.
