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An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

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Re: An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

#41

Post by scarface74 »

digi_owl wrote: post #38
scarface74 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My son still gets together with his friends. They will bring over their PS4 and connect to his computer monitor in his room and they will play with each other “online” sitting right by each other. At one point, he’s had four friends over all with PS4s playing against each other on separate displays in the house - thank goodness for wired gigabit Ethernet through the house and a bidirectional gig-e Internet connection…

The latter was basically my thing in the neighborhood for a time. Started out with BNC connected coax and then upgraded the kit to TP and hubs/switches. Crazy thing is that i had perhaps the shittiest internet connection around...

It’s kind of amazing that they can get better networking performance today over the internet than we could get on the typical local lan back then.

Re: An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

#42

Post by kaoD »

soneil wrote: post #16
louthy wrote: post #3

> What emerged was a masterpiece that changed the industry and set many standards still seen in first-person shooters today. Erm, what? Quake already existed at that point. I always thought Goldeneye was poor compared to Quake, which was really mind blowing at the time.

Most my memories of Goldeneye involve having 4 people stuffed on a couch, cheap beer, pretending we weren't looking at each other's screens. Quake was a blast, but we weren't all in the same room, let alone the same couch. I don't think comparing the games themselves directly really encompasses the difference in the playing experience.

> Quake was a blast, but we weren't all in the same room, let alone the same couch.

I have fond memories of my Quake LAN parties and meeting to fight/exchange Pokémon on the Gameboy.

Playing GoldenEye on my friend's N64? I hated it. Found it pretty boring, and so did everyone else (except the N64 owner).

YMMV of course, circumstances are different, which I think is what OP was pointing at. E.g.: if you're on the USA PC gaming isn't (wasn't?) as ingrained in your culture as in Europe.

Re: An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

#43

Post by jacobush »

Jaruzel wrote: post #26
DanBC wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legal drinking age is five in the UK. It's 18 to buy alcohol.

Yup, and most savvy parents slowly acclimatise their children to alcohol by allowing them wine or beer on occasion with a meal when they are in their teens. Done right, by the time the child hits 18 they don't go crazy with booze, and treat it with respect.

I was always told that the evidence was against this theory.

Re: An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

#44

Post by giobox »

distantsounds wrote: post #21
orev wrote: post #20

One of the best aspects of GoldenEye multiplayer was social, real social, not in the “stream on twitch” kind of way. You had to all be in the same room, and you could yell and scream at each other, hear people’s reactions, other people could watch, share a few pizzas, and it just brought everyone together. These days everyone can be in their own room in different locations, and even with voice chat it’s just not the…

you're describing literally ever multi-player game before the dawn of the internet. it wasn't limited to just Goldeneye.

Not sure I’d agree, especially for first person shooters.

Sure, you’d been able to play Doom et al over a LAN and so on before Goldeneye, but the intimacy of the experience when you and three close friends are gathered around a single tiny CRT TV was something no Doom LAN deathmatch ever matched for me. Being able to watch your fellow players in real time on the other three quarters of the display also added a dynamic that LAN based shooters rarely had, when every player was hidden behind their own boxy CRT. What’s more this made the experience great even for observers who weren’t playing - at a glance you could watch the state of the entire game and all the players from your seat.

The many fun game modes (Golden gun, Slappers only etc) all contributed to a party style experience that very few other multiplayer games, typically with their much more straight laced approach to gameplay, had. Four player gameplay seems quaint now, but it was a very rare feature in console games prior to the n64, and of course almost always required additional hardware to add the extra ports. I suspect a majority of Playstation owners never even saw a MultiTap adapter, let alone owned one, given how few games could take advantage of it.

Let’s not forget the cost angle here either - while many of us may have been lucky enough to have participated in Doom LAN games, it was a pretty expensive (and technical) undertaking beyond the reach of many people, especially kids, in the mid 90s. Goldeneye was much more affordable and is all the better for it.

Re: An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

#45

Post by mediocrejoker »

GW150914 wrote: post #31
Jaruzel wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup, and most savvy parents slowly acclimatise their children to alcohol by allowing them wine or beer on occasion with a meal when they are in their teens. Done right, by the time the child hits 18 they don't go crazy with booze, and treat it with respect.

Given rates of alcoholism and alcohol related disease and injury in the UK, I’d say that’s not working.

Wouldn't the more relevant statistic be the relative rates compared to the US?

Re: An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

#46

Post by digi_owl »

sametmax wrote: post #5
louthy wrote: post #3

> What emerged was a masterpiece that changed the industry and set many standards still seen in first-person shooters today. Erm, what? Quake already existed at that point. I always thought Goldeneye was poor compared to Quake, which was really mind blowing at the time.

Quake had a very basic gameplay compared to golden eye, espacially regarding level design and the diversity in weaponery.

But damn it was easy and flexible to mod.

Re: An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

#47

Post by subcosmos »

scarface74 wrote: post #27
jdmoreira wrote: post #17

I wish I could go back to the days where our group would spend all our free time playing split screen GoldenEye at my friend's basement. If you were privileged enough (which we were) the 90s were a great time to be a child.

My son still gets together with his friends. They will bring over their PS4 and connect to his computer monitor in his room and they will play with each other “online” sitting right by each other. At one point, he’s had four friends over all with PS4s playing against each other on separate displays in the house - thank goodness for wired gigabit Ethernet through the house and a bidirectional gig-e Internet connection…

My midtower case has a big handle on the top of it. Its from that era! Don't see many of those anymore.

Re: An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

#48

Post by bluedino »

scarface74 wrote: post #23
bluedino wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was 18 for a while during the 70’s. But kids were getting drunk and crashing and dying like crazy, so Ronald Reagan raised the drinking age back to 22 in the 1980’s with the threat of cutting highway funding to states that did not comply.

18 was considered too young to have alcohol but it’s still old enough to join the military, legally sign contracts, etc.

That's the reasoning that was used to lower the drinking age after the draft/Vietnam War

Re: An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

#49

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

orev wrote: post #20

One of the best aspects of GoldenEye multiplayer was social, real social, not in the “stream on twitch” kind of way. You had to all be in the same room, and you could yell and scream at each other, hear people’s reactions, other people could watch, share a few pizzas, and it just brought everyone together. These days everyone can be in their own room in different locations, and even with voice chat it’s just not the…

Let's not forget all the cheating too, the predated "stream sniping", or all the cardboard solutions used to divide up the screen.

Re: An Oral History of ‘GoldenEye 007’ on the N64

#50

Post by swaggyBoatswain »

jdmoreira wrote: post #17

I wish I could go back to the days where our group would spend all our free time playing split screen GoldenEye at my friend's basement. If you were privileged enough (which we were) the 90s were a great time to be a child.

I remember in those days we used to ban playing oddjob because he had a shortness advantage
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