Andy Tomlinson

Goldeneye is a great “better to ask for forgiveness than get permission” story. Released in August 1997, the game made $250m on a $2m budget. A major reason was its insanely fun multiplayer mode…which Nintendo didn’t ask for and developers snuck into the game at the last second. Many years later, Steve Ellis — a game developer for Rare — explained what went down: ➡️ “One of the things that always strikes me as crazy in retrospect is that until something like March or April of 1997, there wasn't a multiplayer mode at all. It hadn't even been started. It really was put in at the last minute – something you wouldn't dream of doing these days – and it was done without the knowledge or permission of the management at Rare and Nintendo. The first they knew about it was when we showed it to them working. However – since the game was already late by that time, if we hadn't done it that way, it probably never would have happened.” ⬅️ Rare had a team of only 10 core developers and it took 2.75 years to make the game, which actually came out 18 months after “Goldeneye” the film. Nintendo briefly cancelled the game but then pushed to release it (and expectations were low). Goldeneye was an instant hit with innovative stealth play, remote-control bombs and sniper rifles. Gaming mags (IGN, GamePro) have called it N64’s best multiplayer game, which is wild when you consider the platform also had Mario Kart and Super Smash Bros. Goldeneye became N64’s 3rd best-selling title ever (also impressive because 7 of the top 9 are all original Nintendo IP). 1. Super Mario 64 (12m units) 2. Mario Kart 64 (10m) 🚨3. Goldeneye (9m) 4. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (8m) 5. Super Smash Bros (6m) 6. Pokémon Stadium (5m) 7. Donkey Kong 64 (5m) 8. Diddy Kong Racing (5m) 9. Starfox 64 (4m) Most importantly: without the unapproved last-second addition of multi-player, I couldn’t have spent 100s of hours being OddJob and smoking my unsuspecting friends with proximity mines.