GoldenEye 007 dev says the game 'sucked' halfway through development, team worked 100-hour weeks

GoldenEye 007 is looked back on as one of the most important games not only for the Nintendo 64, but gaming in general. GoldenEye almost single-handedly ushered in local multiplayer first-person gaming on consoles, and also revolutionized what FPS gaming could be like outside of the PC. It was an absolutely seminal moment in gaming, but the dev team had a hell of a time putting it together.

In an interview with The Guardian, designer Martin Hollis spoke about the struggles the team faced in trying to get GoldenEye 007 to come together. A lot of work went into the project, yet the experience was struggling to find its voice. Hollis said that midway through development he played through the opening stage, and he had quite a negative reaction.

A trench mentality developed. With each missed deadline, the game’s release date drifted further from the GoldenEye film. The next Bond movie, Tomorrow Never Dies, was announced and Rare’s game remained incomplete. Nobody wanted to let down their colleagues by leaving the office early.

It wasn’t until the multiplayer component that GoldenEye 007 would start to turn a corner. Even though multiplayer came very late in the game’s development process, the team knew they had something incredibly fun on their hands. Unfortunately, that meant a lot more work ahead of them.

Developer David Doak spoke very candidly about the crunch the team faced to get GoldenEye out the door, and it sounds like an absolutely grueling gauntlet.

The end result of all that blood, sweat and tears was a game that is still praised decades later.

It’s certainly important to recognize the achievements of GoldenEye 007 and applaud the game’s quality, but I think we can all agree that the pressure it put on the dev team taints the situation considerably, and deservedly so.