25 Years Ago, GoldenEye Proved FPS Games Worked On Consoles

pcmag.com:

Since the days of Doom, PC gamers proclaimed their supremacy over the unwashed console masses in a number of genres—strategy games, western RPGs, and most notably first-person shooters. The argument was that underpowered consoles couldn’t handle the speed and precision that these games required, especially with their clumsy control pads. But then, courtesy of some very unlikely parties, everything changed. The release of GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 a quarter century ago on Aug. 25 brought FPS gaming to the TV set in a big way. Let’s open the case and see how it happened.

For a while, James Bond was one of the biggest—and longest-running—movie franchises in the world, dependably dropping new installments every few years. The role of the titular agent would pass through a number of actors, but the late 80s saw a gap with Timothy Dalton leaving. But by 1994 the studio was deep in production on the next flick in the series and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as Bond—GoldenEye.

Past Bond movies had seen tie-in games of dubious quality, mostly for UK microcomputers but a few for American consoles. Most notable was Parker Brothers’ mediocre 1983 shooter for Atari and Colecovision, so not a very high water mark to aspire to.

Rare had just completed Donkey Kong Country, a smash hit game that pushed the aging Super Nintendo to its graphical limits, so when they talked to Nintendo about the license the general assumption was that they’d do it as a side-scrolling action game, much like 1992’s James Bond 007: The Duel. But Rare director Martin Hollis had other ideas. He’d heard about the new console Nintendo was working on, which could push polygonal graphics and boasted a unique controller with an analog stick, and he wanted