Post
The game that proved console shooters could work, and destroyed friendships via split-screen.
GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 should not have been as good as it was. A movie tie-in game developed by a small team at Rare with no FPS experience somehow became one of the most important shooters ever made. The single-player campaign featured varied objectives that changed with difficulty level, but the four-player split-screen multiplayer was the real phenomenon. Proximity mines in the Facility, Oddjob being banned for being too short, screen-looking accusations. GoldenEye proved that first-person shooters were not just a PC genre and laid the groundwork for Halo and every console shooter that followed.
Example
Picking Oddjob in multiplayer was considered cheating because his shorter character model made him harder to hit. Every friend group had to establish house rules about whether Oddjob was allowed, and the arguments were legendary.
Why it matters
GoldenEye proved that FPS games could thrive on consoles with controller input. Without it, the path to Halo, Call of Duty, and the console shooter dominance of the 2000s looks very different.
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