My first multiplayer shooter was on the Index for 23 years – Now coming to Switch and Xbox Game Pass

Just over a year ago, Golden Eye 007 was surprisingly removed from the index. The N64 game from 1997 was never really released in Germany, but it still had a lot of fans here and is considered one of the best shooters of its time. MeinMMO author Maik Schneider also got his hands on the title and is looking forward to seeing you again.

GoldenEye 007 is the video game adaptation of the 1995 Bond film of the same name. The legendary Pierce Brosnan was in top form and apparently inspired the developers of the appropriate video game.

Because GoldenEye was groundbreaking in many ways and a milestone in the development of single player shooters and the introduction of new gadgets to the genre. GoldenEye wasn’t the first modern shooter, but it was definitely a big step forward.

However, the development was also on the brink: a relatively small team developed the title and had little experience. However, this led to unconventional solutions that ended up being very good for the game.

This is how the level structure was designed before thinking about the gameplay. This meant that there were often several ways to reach the goal, which did not always make sense for the player (via webarchive.org). This made the levels feel organic, like a real house, not simple hose levels.

We include an overview trailer from the past here:

The same goes for the cool gadgets and weapons without which a Bond adventure would probably never work. They only came into play when the levels were already finished and you needed creative solutions to integrate them in a meaningful way.

All in all, the development was probably very chaotic and was characterized by “crunch”, i.e. constant overtime and extra work.

But somehow the team managed to come up with a damn good shooter – and I haven’t even mentioned the best part yet: the 4-player mode with the possibility of split-screen.

A bit of chaos here too: The mode wasn’t actually planned at all, was added to Studio Rare and Nintendo without the knowledge of those responsible and developed within a month (via gamespot.com).

And it was precisely the multiplayer mode that turned the good shooter into a milestone in my personal video game history.

Sometimes it’s the coincidences that make for great things:

Countless hours we sat huddled together in front of the much too small television and caused hundreds, thousands of digital deaths. The nasty proximity mines stuck in my mind and required unnecessarily complicated tactics to lure friends into the booby traps.

You still needed persuasion to be successful in a multiplayer shooter. Ok, maybe a little screen cheating helped too.

I was 10, maybe 11 at the time and had no idea until recently that the game was indexed in Germany.

The shooter was indexed for its explicit depictions of violence from a first-person perspective. Apparently, this time their creativity was fatal to the developers: because GoldenEye 007 incidentally invented the “Headshots” for video games and thus provided the extra kick “endangerment of young people”.

But that’s over now and GoldenEye 007 can also be officially advertised in Germany. Two big players in the video game market want to benefit from it – Xbox and Nintendo.

• GoldenEye 007 is coming soon to Xbox Game Pass with 4K resolution, achievements and local multiplayer
• Golden Eye 007 is coming soon to Switch, and it’s more like the original but with online support

For me, the game was a defining factor in my gaming career. From then on, I played every James Bond film game, but never watched the films.

But at some point even I realized that GoldenEye was the first and at the same time the best Bond game. Let’s see if that’s still the case 25 years later.

Leave me a comment with your thoughts on the topic. If you’d rather read more about new games on the Switch, then have a look here: New co-op game on the Switch is like Stardew Valley – but with 4 players, magical fairies and 3D graphics