Goldeneye 007 Texture Pack

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AtArs Technica, our love of classic shooter video games usually revolves around the PC, but it's hard to talk about that golden age of shooters without talking about Goldeneye 007. Rare's first shooter for the N64 was an astounding technical achievement in 1997, and many of its innovations still hold up nearly 25 years later... but that's only part of its modern mystique.

In light of the latest leak, I spoke via email to two of the Goldeneye 007 remaster project's eight original team members, artist Ross Bury and programmer Mark Edmonds, to fill in as many gaps as they could remember 14 years later. I tracked those names in part because they're not credited in the leaked game's normal credits sequence, but rather are visible when looking at any in-game computer terminals. When pressed about his involvement, Bury began his first email with two modest answers: "Not sure that there's too much to tell," and "I'm pretty sure I'm no longer under an NDA regarding it."

"It started as a 'let's start and try this' while we get approval," Edmonds says. "I'm sure it must have come partly from Ken [Lobb, longtime Rare and Xbox producer], since he was procuring games for Xbox, was well-connected with Rare and [studio co-founder] Chris Stamper, and well-connected with Nintendo from when he worked there."

[Update, February 9: A follow-up interview by Video Games Chronicle's Andy Robinson includes an additional morsel from ex-Rare dev Chris Tilston, who was co-lead on the remaster. He claims that the project began life when Nintendo representatives made a phone call offer to Microsoft and Rare. The handshake was contingent on Nintendo releasing a version of the original Goldeneye 007 on Wii, and Rare releasing their own on Xbox 360. Exactly what happened with that Nintendo version remains unclear, nor whether any negotiating followed up between Nintendo and Activision to pave the way to a wholly different Goldeneye game on Wii in 2010.]

Seemingly sheltered from the hustle to secure those rights, the team moved forward with a modest plan: to build off the N64's existing source code and art assets, which Rare had saved in their entirety, and "keep the game exactly the same as the original, but with newer graphics and networking," Edmonds says. He claims there was no plan to increase the game's scope with additions like refreshed music or tweaked AI: "Changes like that would have required a larger team, and much more testing! Plus, we wanted to stay true to the original."

On the coding front, Edmonds recalls porting the N64 game's C code to C++, then modifying the interface to Xbox 360's low-level libraries: "The idea was to keep the code as close as possible to the original, and compile it as it was where possible." Where things got interesting was the addition of a "swap graphics" button. Any time a player tapped that button, the game's new Xbox engine would bolt new models and textures on top of the N64 version's geometry, collisions, movement, and "joint and skinning" systems, then increase the in-game resolution and remove an N64-like anti-aliasing filter. Tap the button again, and the game would go back to the original resolution, textures, and base geometry.

It would be another four years after the project's 2007 cancellation before anyone tried this on Xbox 360 again, in the form of 2011's Halo CE: Anniversary. And the results are quite impressive as the first version of this trick on 360 hardware.

Playing through the leaked GE360 beta, it's apparent how and where this system applied, which Bury and Edmonds clarify. Levels' distant backgrounds can bolt new geometry like mountain ranges onto the older, simpler versions, while various parts of characters, particularly the number of polygons dedicated to faces, can be swapped in and out with higher-resolution textures attached. But the ways joints come together and animate is identical, even if you furiously tap the "new graphics" button over and over. Some objects, like weapons and Bond's hands, were rebuilt with new geometry and textures; others, particularly vehicles, buildings, and wooden crates, couldn't be overhauled any further than texture updates without breaking the original code base.

Updated character models and faces were handled by Sergey Rakhmanov, who Bury says "had a great pipeline to work through in-game characters quickly. For main characters, I believe he just used his skills to improve their look from his source library and Internet reference, certainly nothing official to use." In other words: Remade faces were built from scratch without official MGM/OEM documentation. With the exception of Natalya's updated "boxy" head, they look quite impressive, especially as made by (apparently) only one artist.

"When it was put to Nintendo, everyone there approved it," Bury says. "Except they didn't check with the one guy who mattered." Bury then clarifies who that person was: former Nintendo Chairman Hiroshi Yamauchi, who had vacated the post by 2007 but was still Nintendo's largest Japanese shareholder.

"I believe I was told his response went along the lines of, 'There is no way a Nintendo game is coming out on a Microsoft console,'" Bury adds. (If you're wondering how some of Rare's N64 games eventually wound up on Xbox consoles, remember: Rare took many of its older games' rights with it to Microsoft, but not all of them. 2005's Conker: Live and Reloaded was the first example.)

Neither Edmonds nor Bury has particular insights on the evolution of Nintendo, Rare, and Microsoft's combined rights relationship, having both left Rare years ago. When pressed about a leaked mini-documentary from 2014, which hinted to Goldeneye 007 almost landing on Xbox One via the Rare Replay anthology, Bury shrugs his shoulders. "I am assuming that all the information and quotes around rights negotiations on the 'Net are from this time period, as previous to that, [the Nintendo boss]'s orders trumped everything," he says. (This includes loud rumors that MGM and OEM's handling of Bond video games evolved over the years to place serious restrictions on the license in games, many of which have never been confirmed.)

Also I seem to remember that nintendos original plan for goldeneye was to bring out a camera device so you could capture yours and your friends faces and put them on characters but they canned the idea due to worry about legal issues and it inspiring violence against real humans

I remember it was the gameboy camera that you would have used with perfect dark but yes the idea you could put someones face on there and shoot them to hell meant it could drive you to do it in real life

When talking about the dark ages of game development (at least regarding the jump between the fifth and sixth console generations), it's not a hot take to say that the games seldom withstand the test of time. From that period, there came the original blueprints for how concepts taken for granted in modern games would come to fruition. Goldeneye 007 for the Nintendo 64 is one of the more important games made...but how playable is it...?

Developed by Rare and released on the N64 in 1997, Goldeneye 007 is based on the movie of the same name, featuring the debut of Pierce Brosnan as James Bond. Among other things, this was also a period in the medium where more quality games based on intellectual properties were getting much better in the mainstream court of public opinion. Along with Judge Dredd, Batman, and the Star Wars line of games, Goldneye does great service in recreating key events from the movie and keeping the story intact, while not getting muddy on pacing.

Yeah, it's probably old hat to pick on the foggy visuals and ultra-blocky character models, but if I were to give credit where it's due on mapping the actors faces. While there's no expressions or anything, it looks totally fine, one of those elements that came off genuinely impressive for the time, but aged rapidly as rendering textures improved in a really short window.

There's some comical clipping, as models will halfway warp into and out of walls, that remains good for a laugh decades later. There are a couple of nice touches with the physics, like the enemies reacting to the area of damage, something not seen before in first-person shooters. The maps are navigable, and the fully rendered 3D environments get some of the best out of the Nintendo 64. While there's no voice acting, the music composition and sound effects are the stuff that practically gets embedded into the DNA of people who grew up with their N64s.

Polygons and fuzzy faces are one thing, but when talking Goldeneye, the controls are always the key factor; how do you make these games work on a console? First-person shooters around this time were primarily developed on PC, where the control scheme on a keyboard compliments the style at the time. There wasn't the idea of headshots or aiming at weak points, thus no need to factor this. I've had my opinions regarding the Nintendo 64 controller and its ergonomic design and button layout, it gave game engineers the light bulb needed to change how a first-person shooter could thrive on console. With the directional C-buttons acting as a crude secondary directional pad to accommodate aiming, this leaves more free range motion with the analog stick.

Mind you, I was never good at this, and remain a little perplexed how people were able to play this game effectively. Being tied to Doom and Quake, which were far more self-explanatory, Goldeneye's various control schemes and names did everything possible to remove any misinformation in its layout and functions. Archaic, sure, but this was very forward-thinking during a time where dual analog controllers weren't commonplace.

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