Continuing our week of James Bond 007 Video Game related posts let's take a look at Nintendo Power's 1997 mission briefings for what is arguably the best James Bond Game ever, GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64.
Goldeneye
Top Secret 16-Page mission Briefing
AS JAMES BOND, AGENT OO7, YOU MUST STOP THE MYSTERIOUS TERRORIST KNOWN AS JANUS FROM USING THE DEADLY Goldeneye
SATELLITE TO BLACKMAIL THE WORLD. WE HAVE A TOP SECRET FILE CRAMMED WITH MAPS AND TIPS FOR COMPLETING EVERY MISSION ON EVERY DIFFICULTY LEVEL. FOR ENGLAND, JAMES.
THE NAME IS BOND, JAMES BOND.
This month Nintendo and Rare present GoldenEye, a Rumble-Pak enhanced, movie based, 3-D action thriller that will redefine the quality gamers expect from first-person perspective games. Plug in your Rumble Pak and crank up the soundtrack—the tactile feedback from your controller will leave you shaken, and Goldeneye
’s breathtaking suspense will have you stirred.
The Cold War is over, but new foes are seizing control of the former Soviet Union's weapons of mass_destruction. One such device is the Goldeneye
Satellite, a space weapon capable of delivering a devastating electromagnetic pulse over a battlefield or city. Now a mysterious underworld figure has stolen the computerized control cards for the Goldeneye
Satellite and it's up to James Bond, British Secret Agent 007 to end the global crisis. But before Bond can make the world safe for future generations, he must solve-the mysteries of his past, beginning with the untimely demise of his friend and equal, Alec Trevelyan, British Secret Agent 006.
CAMERA'S ROLLING, ACTION 007
From exciting, action-packed cinematic , sequences to Monty Norman's famous James Bond theme music, GoldenEye has all the elements to make you feel like you're the leading man in a major motion picture. The animation sequences also serve a double purpose--these scenes contain vital clues that will assist you in meeting your mission objectives.
SUAVE AND SOPHISTICATED
Being a secret agent means you're in the intelligence business—you're required to use an equal measure of brains with your brawn. Many mission objectives involve breaking into computer Systems or locating and identifying allies that can assist you in your cause, which mirrors the high-tech intrigue found throughout the movie.
Most first-person perspective games involve blasting everything in sight, but Goldeneye
challenges players to use their brains with their brawn, especially on stealth missions in which they must locate allies or hack into computer systems. If you neutralize an innocent bystander or destroy the wrong computer your mission will be a failure.
TOOLS OF THE TRADE
Goldeneye
is packed with guns and gadgetry. While many first-person games focus on creating Carnage, the developers at Rare added lots of cleaver devices, and players are rewarded for choosing the appropriate tool for a given situation. There's usually more than one way to complete a mission, and if players use their brains, they might find easy ways out of their predicaments.
ALL THE DETAILS IN BRIEFS
Each assignment in the Mission Game begins with the review of six or seven pages in a dossier stuffed with confidential information from MI6. The first file always outlines your assignment's primary objectives. You cannot continue to the next mission until you complete the primary objectives and get out of the scenario alive. The other files contain brief summaries of the situation and notes from your meetings or Conversations with M, Q and Moneypenny.
THREE LEVELS OF THRILLS
GoldenEye has three difficulty levels Agent, Secret Agent and 00 Agent. While most first-person games make their difficulty levels harder by progressively weakening your character, GoldenEye's most challenging levels have increased assignments. For example, in Servernaya's Surface Mission, beginning agents must complete one objective. 00 Agents must sneak around and execute five times as many assignments before they are allowed to move on to the next assignment.
MULTIPLAYER MAYHEM
You can shoot it out with up to three other players in GoldenEye's Multiplayer Mode, just like Bond and Scaramanga did in The Man With The Golden Gun
. Multiplayer Mode has a varied assortment of arenas and characters featured in Goldeneye
and other 007 movies. You'll find additional hidden agents and arenas as you complete GoldenEye's Mission Mode at different difficulty levels.
[Source: Nintendo Power Volume 99, August 1997 P.10-25, scanned by retromags.]
You may have spotted that the last page of the briefing promised that the September issue would include the 100 best Goldeneye
Ambushes... So we posted that issue too, which also ranked Goldeneye number 7 in the 100 greatest games of all time (page 89) with an overall rating of 9.0 (page 105). The back page has an advert for the Official GoldenEye Strategy Guide, which we will post later this week:
[Source: Nintendo Power Volume 100, September 1997 P.58-66, 88-89, 104-105, scanned by retromags.]