Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Goldeneye 64's inspirational startup story

alexbaldwin.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 75 posts

Re: Goldeneye 64's inspirational startup story

#61

Post by TomAnthony »

heyitsnick wrote: post #56
anthonyb wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things that I liked about Goldeneye was just how damn many multiplayer modes there were. eg. The Klobb was a crappy gun (low damage, huge cone of fire), but switch to one-shot-kills and it's suddenly an uber weapon :) My favorite modes were one shot kills with knives or slappers only, power weapons with health cranked up, or anything involving prox mines :> I haven't played it for years now, and I'm not su…

"One Shot Kills" and "No Oddjob" were my house-rules.

Mine too!

One shot kills created a whole different kind of experience where you needed to be ultra careful about exposing yourself.

Re: Goldeneye 64's inspirational startup story

#62

Post by NickPollard »

avar wrote: post #35

I'd be just as interested in how Rare went from doing Goldeneye 64 to making what seem to be relatively mediocre games today.

Much of the main talent who led the GoldenEye team at Rare (David Doak, Karl Hilton, Steve Ellis, Graeme Norgate) left to form their own studio, Free Radical Design[1]. FRD went on to release the Timesplitters games to good success, but later hit trouble and have now been bought out by CryTek and renamed CryTek UK.

Martin Hollis, the other senior member of the team also left for pastures new after working on Perfect Dark.

I'm sure Rare still has a lot of brilliant hard working team members, but the main drivers of GoldenEye have long since gone.

[1] Disclaimer: I used to work at Free Radical at one point.

Re: Goldeneye 64's inspirational startup story

#63

Post by pknight »

Jonanin wrote: post #13
dhconnelly wrote: post #7

I enjoyed reading this until I reached the end: "I still have nightmares about playing Temple and not being able to find the proximity mines. If you like James Bond, lattes, startups and design, you'd enjoy my tweets." Talk about a non sequitur.

Yeah, what the hell? I don't get why people beg for followers at the end of their blog posts. It just leaves a sour taste in my mouth after what would have been a great reading experience.

It's this kind of mindset that prevents a lot of people from actually getting the shit they work hard for seen by other people.

The people that make their work matter in the world find ways to extend influence and this is just one small tactic that simply works.

Re: Goldeneye 64's inspirational startup story

#64

Post by lmm »

ekianjo wrote: post #50
nikatwork wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The N64 was a peculiar sweet spot for games and I'm not sure why. That's arguably age-related nostalgia. I feel the same way about the Super Nintendo instead of the N64. http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1322

The N64 was a very poor system for games. You had a few very good ones and a lot of crap. The Playstation was a way more versatile system with great games in all genres. Hell, even the Saturn was more complete in terms of software.

The N64 had fewer games and more expensive than the competition, but the quality standard was far higher (there was a whole lot of unbelievably crap shovelware produced for playstation) and it was a more powerful system; the best N64 games (of which Goldeneye was certainly one) were by and large better than the best Playstation games.

In "top 10 games of all time" lists the only Playstation game you tend to see is FFVII, which deserves its place but is more a triumph of storytelling than gameplay; from the N64 Ocarina of Time and Goldeneye both regularly feature. It was only towards the end of its life that we saw Playstation games comparable to those in technical terms (heck, while it's been overshadowed by later instalments I remember being blown away by Rogue Squadron back in '97 or so), and I don't think we ever saw the equal of Perfect Dark until the next console generation and Halo.

Re: Goldeneye 64's inspirational startup story

#66

Post by DanBC »

nikatwork wrote: post #43
DanBC wrote: post #31

I really loved the menu screen showing you what levels you'd done and what difficulty level you'd done them on. Simple, efficient. It took me weeks to realise that the cut-scene graphics were actually useful and not just fluff. They often provided hints and tips or let you know about enemies. There's a bunch of stuff still in the rom code that isn't accessible from the game - the hidden island; some glitchy levels. A…

> The N64 was a peculiar sweet spot for games and I'm not sure why. That's arguably age-related nostalgia. I feel the same way about the Super Nintendo instead of the N64. http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1322

Perhaps, I'm 42 though.

I think "sweet spot" is the wrong term.

There were some excellent games. 1080; Super Mario 64; Golden Eye; some of the Zelda games. These aren't just "very good", these are "among the best", and they are still very very good games.

I'll admit there were also some real duffers. Superman, that claymation fighting game, etc.

Sega Saturn has been mentioned, and that had some great games despite some serious flaws with the system. Sega Rally on Saturn is almost perfect, even though you only have 3 cars and a handful of tracks.

Re: Goldeneye 64's inspirational startup story

#67

Post by michaelgrafl »

ashray wrote: post #45
michaelgrafl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like being manipulated. Every time I see a "You should follow me on Twitter" kinda thing I make it a point to not follow the author, or maybe even unfollow them. Holding your readership in higher regards than a meaningless metric can be worth a lot in the long run, too.

Manipulated ? He just said in other words - "Hey follow me on twitter if you want to stay updated". Is that manipulation according to you ? I actually looked for the twitter button on his site so that I could follow him - since I did enjoy the post and would like to see more from him. Didn't feel manipulated though.

Fair enough.

The way he embedded the suggestion seemed contrived and inorganic to me. If some one puts a link to their Twitter account beneath a post, I know what to do if I want to follow them because of their output.

If I have confidence in my output I will trust my audience to find the right degree of involvement they want to have with me. No need to push it. Maybe I'm weird that way, but I think the OP knew exactly what he was doing, and stuff like that rubs me the wrong way because I find it undignified, harshly put.

Re: Goldeneye 64's inspirational startup story

#68

Post by michaelgrafl »

Qualman wrote: post #54
ashray wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manipulated ? He just said in other words - "Hey follow me on twitter if you want to stay updated". Is that manipulation according to you ? I actually looked for the twitter button on his site so that I could follow him - since I did enjoy the post and would like to see more from him. Didn't feel manipulated though.

I think the idea is that, if I like what he has to say, I'll just do it. He doesn't have to ask, and doing so _inside_ the post shifts the whole thing from inspirational anecdote, to well-written justification of why you should follow his Twitter.

I agree. It devalues the article because it becomes part of an agenda instead of standing on its own.

Re: Goldeneye 64's inspirational startup story

#69

Post by icefox »

lmm wrote: post #64
ekianjo wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The N64 was a very poor system for games. You had a few very good ones and a lot of crap. The Playstation was a way more versatile system with great games in all genres. Hell, even the Saturn was more complete in terms of software.

The N64 had fewer games and more expensive than the competition, but the quality standard was far higher (there was a whole lot of unbelievably crap shovelware produced for playstation) and it was a more powerful system; the best N64 games (of which Goldeneye was certainly one) were by and large better than the best Playstation games. In "top 10 games of all time" lists the only Playstation game you tend to see is FF…

Besides FF, Metal Gear Solid is another game for the PS1 that I have seen pop up on top 10 lists. Both the N64 and the PS1 had a range of good games for their system. Tomb Raider, Gran Turismo, Spyro, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night all come to mind as quality games that you could pick up today and enjoy for the PS1. But really these days you can pick up the systems for pocket change ($20 tops?) so if you are a gamer owning both to experience the best in both systems seems like a no brainer.

Re: Goldeneye 64's inspirational startup story

#70

Post by thornofmight »

rrbrambley wrote: post #4

Power Weapons in the Stack. I owned the top floor. Immediately prior to reading this, I was writing about how non-game developers can indeed bring a unique perspective to the table when developing games. This is definitely an inspirational story and helpful in reaffirming my thoughts. Thanks for sharing.

PF90 right next to the body armor on the upper level? Unstoppable. Especially if you added proximity mines.
Post reply on HN