I’ve never been what you’d call a gamer.
That is unless you count the arcade era of the late 70’s-early 80’s.
When it came to SPACE INVADERS and GALAGA, for a time I had what you could call hampster-wheel endurance and maybe even something coming close to ‘erratic brilliance’. Yeah. What a laugh.
But there was one game – one ‘phenomena’ would be a better description – that so completely rocked my world in the early 2000’s, it took me a number of years to emerge from the iron grip of it’s lit-up, action-fueled adrenaline buzz.
That game was GOLDENEYE 007.
And now a look-back documentary titled GOLDENERA has been made that celebrates the game’s frontier-changing influence and legacy.
I watched this documentary back in July on-board a plane to South Korea. Strapped to my seat, I was in every sense of the word a captive audience.
For a narrative-led first person shooter game that would go on to define a generation and was innovative in so many ways – from it’s story-telling, visuals and sound to it’s weapons, stealth, and AI and even right down to the background wall textures in many scenes – turns out it was the very first project after graduating University for a bunch of young British programmers and designers.
Work on GOLDENEYE 007 began in January 1995.
The creative team visited the studio sets of the Pierce Brosnan film GOLDENEYE several times to seek inspiration. The 1995 Robert DeNiro movie HEAT (love that film!) has also been cited as a visual influence.
The young and inexperienced team of designers and techs worked 100 hour weeks, pouring everything they had into creating a first person shooter game unlike any other before it. Their efforts would pay off way beyond how any of them dared dream.
The film GOLDEN EYE was the fourth highest worldwide grossing film of 1995. It didn’t take long, two years later, for GOLDEN EYE the game to surpass the movie’s takings.
Made by RARE STUDIOS, the game cost $2 million to make and has grossed over $250 million worldwide since, with more than 8 million copies sold.
A great documentary on an amazing unutterably glorious video game.
Ready for your HAPPY DAYS hit? Then go clickety click HERE.
