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Boss Fight Books #29
GoldenEye 007
Bond—James Bond. In the 80s and 90s, the debonair superspy’s games failed to live up to the giddy thrills of his films. That all changed when British studio Rare unleashed GoldenEye 007 in 1997. In basements and college dorms across the world, friends bumped shoulders while shooting, knifing, exploding, and slapping each other’s digital faces in the Nintendo 64 game that would redefine the modern first-person shooter genre and become the most badass party game of its generation.
But GoldenEye’s success was far from a sure thing. For years of development, GoldenEye’s team of rookie developers were shooting in the dark with no sense of what the N64 or its controller would be like, and the game’s relentless violence horrified higher-ups at squeaky clean Nintendo. As development lagged far behind the debut of the tie-in film GoldenEye, the game nearly came out an entire Bond movie too late.
Through extensive interviews with GoldenEye’s creators, writer and scholar Alyse Knorr traces the story of how this unlikely licensed game reinvigorated a franchise and a genre. Learn all the stories behind how this iconic title was developed, and why GoldenEye 007 has continued to kick the living daylights out of every other Bond game since.
But GoldenEye’s success was far from a sure thing. For years of development, GoldenEye’s team of rookie developers were shooting in the dark with no sense of what the N64 or its controller would be like, and the game’s relentless violence horrified higher-ups at squeaky clean Nintendo. As development lagged far behind the debut of the tie-in film GoldenEye, the game nearly came out an entire Bond movie too late.
Through extensive interviews with GoldenEye’s creators, writer and scholar Alyse Knorr traces the story of how this unlikely licensed game reinvigorated a franchise and a genre. Learn all the stories behind how this iconic title was developed, and why GoldenEye 007 has continued to kick the living daylights out of every other Bond game since.
256 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 2022
10 people are currently reading
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 13, 2023
I was in my mid-teens when Goldeneye came out, and it struck a chord with me. I began to play it for hours on end, and became ‘that guy.’ I unlocked all the secret modes, some of which took days upon days of play to achieve. I beat my friends so often that they actually began to believe the joke that my limited-edition gold controller was built better than theirs. I attended tournaments and won both physical awards and monetary prizes. My first internship may have resulted in the demise of the company as, after having been beat so badly by me during the lunch break, the entire staff began to obsessively practice instead of getting their work done. The company closed its doors shortly after my stay. Was I the best? No. I got my butt handed to me by the actual professional players, who force-fed me a serious dose of humility. But this game had a profound impact on my life and changed the way I looked at games and interacted with my friends. And it did so for a very specific reason: it was damned good.
I’m 40 now, and I still look back fondly on those years. So, when this book came out, I backed it on Kickstarter, assuming I’d get to relive some of those memories through the stories of others and whatnot. Boy did I undersell myself on this book. The author went to great lengths through interviews and research to bring us a complete history of all the people who worked at Rare, along with the tireless effort they went through to bring the game to fruition. This book answered many questions that I, as an avid player, still had after all these years, and really brought forth a lot of details that explained why the game played the way it did, and how specific details that I both marveled at and was frustrated by came to light. It even revealed a few secrets that I was still unaware of, as well as the current state of the Goldeneye community, who still remains devoted to the game.
I am delighted I got a chance to read this book, and if you’re a fan of Goldeneye, you really, really owe it to yourself to read this.
I’m 40 now, and I still look back fondly on those years. So, when this book came out, I backed it on Kickstarter, assuming I’d get to relive some of those memories through the stories of others and whatnot. Boy did I undersell myself on this book. The author went to great lengths through interviews and research to bring us a complete history of all the people who worked at Rare, along with the tireless effort they went through to bring the game to fruition. This book answered many questions that I, as an avid player, still had after all these years, and really brought forth a lot of details that explained why the game played the way it did, and how specific details that I both marveled at and was frustrated by came to light. It even revealed a few secrets that I was still unaware of, as well as the current state of the Goldeneye community, who still remains devoted to the game.
I am delighted I got a chance to read this book, and if you’re a fan of Goldeneye, you really, really owe it to yourself to read this.
July 30, 2022
What a blast to the past. I remember playing hours and hours of this game in split screen as a child and nostalgia made me want to read this so much.
The book did not disappoint, it’s a fascinating story behind how the game was made with plenty of new primary sources.
The book did not disappoint, it’s a fascinating story behind how the game was made with plenty of new primary sources.
March 27, 2025
Could have used a bit more about the game and less about the game designers, but overall it was a fun read.
September 26, 2024
1) "The Stamper brothers' talent had shined from an early age. Chris started tinkering with electronics as a young boy and eventually built his own computer in college. He got his first programming job—in arcade games—before he had even graduated. Meanwhile, Tim brought to the table an artistic eye and a knack for graphic design. Uncanny business sense combined with excellent creative instincts and big dreams had led the Stamper brothers to enormous success in their earliest days as a company, when they produced games under the trading name 'Ultimate Play the Game,' chosen because, in Tim's words, 'it was representative of our products: the ultimate games.'
In May 1983, Ultimate's very first release—a 2D shooting platformer called Jetpac—hit it big on the ZX Spectrum home computer, selling 300,000 copies. Considering about one million people owned a Spectrum at the time, this was, in Chris's words, 'incredible penetration for a single product.' The Stampers worked insane hours to make this happen—eighteen-hour days, seven days per week. In fact, they only took off two days from work over the course of three years—both Christmas mornings."
2) "Brosnan's Bond was more technological than Dalton's or Craig's Bonds, and in GoldenEye, the bad guys weaponize information and surveillance technology, like Trevelyan's satellite or his security cameras in the bunker. It's no accident that you spend so much time in the game blowing up cameras and computers, the new enemies of the era.
On the flipside, technical knowledge—like Natalya's computer expertise and the datathiefs and covert modems Bond uses to steal information in the game—proved particularly powerful in 1995. In this way, GoldenEye addressed concerns like, according to academic Martin Willis: 'What place is there for the human in an increasingly technological world? What power will technology wield in the future? What impact will global information and communication networks have on the continued prosperity of the nation-state?' Bond's bungee leap off the dam at the start of the film and game might as well be him diving into the unknown modern world. This tech dive persists until, in the final Brosnan film, Bond drives an invisible car like a superhero."
3) "Hollis told me that he based the delayed watch pause on the same four principles he always uses when making games: Is it fun? Is it funny? Is it self-consistent in the world of the game? and Is it fair?, meaning: 'When you die does it feel like it was your fault?' 'It doesn't have to seem fair straight away,' he told me. 'Sometimes I think it is okay if the player has to spend time and come to a realization that the game rule is fair. As one example, the random placement of the scientists in the gas plant push this rule a lot, but it is okay to play with the rules a little bit I think, and to worry the player on the hardest difficulty. The pause menu delay is highly unconventional, and is definitely pushing the issue of fairness. But once you know the rule, it does always feel like your fault when you die in that moment. You can imagine the game speaking to you softly, saying, 'You should not have paused then.'"
4) "The game's most controversial weapons weren't any of the powerful guns or the massive grenade launcher but rather the knives. The game's throwing knives inflicted a huge amount of damage in total silence and could be picked up and used again. 'We have throwing knives in the game because they're hilarious,' Doak told me, even though they aren't very Bondian per se. 'They were very nearly cut at the last moment because there was a tragic murder in Japan' involving a hunting knife, Doak added. The team received a fax from Nintendo asking them to take out the knives, arguing that a knife felt more offensive than a gun because it meant 'too much murder in the close distance'—an explanation that tickled the team. 'We just loved that phrase,' Doak told me, laughing. 'It became a phrase we would use. Murder in the far distance is great—knock yourself out all day long, but not murder in the close distance.'"
5) "The most famous of GoldenEye's scrapped design elements remains visible to players. The Dam mission is home to one of the game's most tantalizing mysteries—a distant island viewable through the sniper rifle's scope, impossible to get to but so seemingly intentional that it left a generation of gamers wondering. Botwood and Edmonds said they had originally been planning to add a boat that would allow you to get to the island to complete a mission objective.
'If I did it today I'd probably have a control for an open water outlet pipe that was blocking Bond's [bungee] jump there, so you'd have to go there to turn off the water,' Botwood speculated later. 'I think the original plan was to have a building over there to go and investigate, with armour as a reward. That would have meant a boat ride needed to be coded in, and some of the scenery had gaps when viewed from the island, so it was too much work.' Late in development, it was way more difficult to take something like the island out than to just leave it in, Hilton told me.
Looking back on it now, Botwood considers the island a mistake. 'I should have never put it there,' he told me. 'It's a visual annoyance.' But messy things like the island add to GoldenEye's mythology—they add life to the world and give players something to theorize about, and are some of the best examples of the handcrafted quality of the game."
6) "The best example of how the team's inexperience benefited the final product is in their 'backwards' or 'anti' game design process. Today, much of the advice on FPS design says to start with objectives and work backward from there—tailor your level spaces to your objectives instead of building level architecture with no idea what will happen within that architecture.
Instead, the team designed GoldenEye backwards—levels first and objectives second. When Hilton created the level spaces, he paid little to no attention to the player's starting place, exit point, mission objectives, or enemy location. All of that came later, with Doak and Botwood's work.
'The benefit of this sloppy, unplanned approach was that many of the levels in the game have a realistic and non-linear feel,' Hollis has said. 'There are rooms with no direct relevance to the level. There are multiple routes across the level. This is an anti-game design approach, frankly. It is inefficient because much of the level is unnecessary to the gameplay. But it contributes to a greater sense of freedom, and also realism. And in turn this sense of freedom and realism contributed enormously to the success of the game.'"
7) "After the cheats and bonus levels were added and GoldenEye was tested and scoured for bugs, it went through 'lot check,' a two-week process of playing the game to death on various types of televisions. In these final days, testers reported back a fairly serious problem: on one of the levels, (probably Frigate), if you played it in a certain order, the characters would appear with awful-looking textures due to a glitch in the game's dynamic memory system. In a single day, Hollis had to make a few particularly clever last-minute hacks to the ROM that would get it working with as minimal a touch as possible to the game's code. With that final eleventh-hour adjustment made, and without recompiling anything, Hollis sent the ROM back to Nintendo. GoldenEye was finally finished."
8) "In the end, the reimagining's updates only reveal what made the original so special. The 2010 game's shift from 'slappers only' to 'melee only' 'is almost the same [as the original],' one reviewer noted, 'but perhaps not as hilarious at three in the morning with three other slightly inebriated chums.' GoldenEye's goofiness—its messiness, even—is lost in a game as slick as the 2010 GoldenEye.
The Daniel Craig stunt double and martial arts expert who did all the 2010 game's motion-capture acting contrasted sharply with Duncan Botwood in a smelly suit getting beat up by sweet British nerds. But 'bigger' isn't always better. You can feel it as you play the two: the 2010 GoldenEye was created by a corporation, and GoldenEye by human beings."
In May 1983, Ultimate's very first release—a 2D shooting platformer called Jetpac—hit it big on the ZX Spectrum home computer, selling 300,000 copies. Considering about one million people owned a Spectrum at the time, this was, in Chris's words, 'incredible penetration for a single product.' The Stampers worked insane hours to make this happen—eighteen-hour days, seven days per week. In fact, they only took off two days from work over the course of three years—both Christmas mornings."
2) "Brosnan's Bond was more technological than Dalton's or Craig's Bonds, and in GoldenEye, the bad guys weaponize information and surveillance technology, like Trevelyan's satellite or his security cameras in the bunker. It's no accident that you spend so much time in the game blowing up cameras and computers, the new enemies of the era.
On the flipside, technical knowledge—like Natalya's computer expertise and the datathiefs and covert modems Bond uses to steal information in the game—proved particularly powerful in 1995. In this way, GoldenEye addressed concerns like, according to academic Martin Willis: 'What place is there for the human in an increasingly technological world? What power will technology wield in the future? What impact will global information and communication networks have on the continued prosperity of the nation-state?' Bond's bungee leap off the dam at the start of the film and game might as well be him diving into the unknown modern world. This tech dive persists until, in the final Brosnan film, Bond drives an invisible car like a superhero."
3) "Hollis told me that he based the delayed watch pause on the same four principles he always uses when making games: Is it fun? Is it funny? Is it self-consistent in the world of the game? and Is it fair?, meaning: 'When you die does it feel like it was your fault?' 'It doesn't have to seem fair straight away,' he told me. 'Sometimes I think it is okay if the player has to spend time and come to a realization that the game rule is fair. As one example, the random placement of the scientists in the gas plant push this rule a lot, but it is okay to play with the rules a little bit I think, and to worry the player on the hardest difficulty. The pause menu delay is highly unconventional, and is definitely pushing the issue of fairness. But once you know the rule, it does always feel like your fault when you die in that moment. You can imagine the game speaking to you softly, saying, 'You should not have paused then.'"
4) "The game's most controversial weapons weren't any of the powerful guns or the massive grenade launcher but rather the knives. The game's throwing knives inflicted a huge amount of damage in total silence and could be picked up and used again. 'We have throwing knives in the game because they're hilarious,' Doak told me, even though they aren't very Bondian per se. 'They were very nearly cut at the last moment because there was a tragic murder in Japan' involving a hunting knife, Doak added. The team received a fax from Nintendo asking them to take out the knives, arguing that a knife felt more offensive than a gun because it meant 'too much murder in the close distance'—an explanation that tickled the team. 'We just loved that phrase,' Doak told me, laughing. 'It became a phrase we would use. Murder in the far distance is great—knock yourself out all day long, but not murder in the close distance.'"
5) "The most famous of GoldenEye's scrapped design elements remains visible to players. The Dam mission is home to one of the game's most tantalizing mysteries—a distant island viewable through the sniper rifle's scope, impossible to get to but so seemingly intentional that it left a generation of gamers wondering. Botwood and Edmonds said they had originally been planning to add a boat that would allow you to get to the island to complete a mission objective.
'If I did it today I'd probably have a control for an open water outlet pipe that was blocking Bond's [bungee] jump there, so you'd have to go there to turn off the water,' Botwood speculated later. 'I think the original plan was to have a building over there to go and investigate, with armour as a reward. That would have meant a boat ride needed to be coded in, and some of the scenery had gaps when viewed from the island, so it was too much work.' Late in development, it was way more difficult to take something like the island out than to just leave it in, Hilton told me.
Looking back on it now, Botwood considers the island a mistake. 'I should have never put it there,' he told me. 'It's a visual annoyance.' But messy things like the island add to GoldenEye's mythology—they add life to the world and give players something to theorize about, and are some of the best examples of the handcrafted quality of the game."
6) "The best example of how the team's inexperience benefited the final product is in their 'backwards' or 'anti' game design process. Today, much of the advice on FPS design says to start with objectives and work backward from there—tailor your level spaces to your objectives instead of building level architecture with no idea what will happen within that architecture.
Instead, the team designed GoldenEye backwards—levels first and objectives second. When Hilton created the level spaces, he paid little to no attention to the player's starting place, exit point, mission objectives, or enemy location. All of that came later, with Doak and Botwood's work.
'The benefit of this sloppy, unplanned approach was that many of the levels in the game have a realistic and non-linear feel,' Hollis has said. 'There are rooms with no direct relevance to the level. There are multiple routes across the level. This is an anti-game design approach, frankly. It is inefficient because much of the level is unnecessary to the gameplay. But it contributes to a greater sense of freedom, and also realism. And in turn this sense of freedom and realism contributed enormously to the success of the game.'"
7) "After the cheats and bonus levels were added and GoldenEye was tested and scoured for bugs, it went through 'lot check,' a two-week process of playing the game to death on various types of televisions. In these final days, testers reported back a fairly serious problem: on one of the levels, (probably Frigate), if you played it in a certain order, the characters would appear with awful-looking textures due to a glitch in the game's dynamic memory system. In a single day, Hollis had to make a few particularly clever last-minute hacks to the ROM that would get it working with as minimal a touch as possible to the game's code. With that final eleventh-hour adjustment made, and without recompiling anything, Hollis sent the ROM back to Nintendo. GoldenEye was finally finished."
8) "In the end, the reimagining's updates only reveal what made the original so special. The 2010 game's shift from 'slappers only' to 'melee only' 'is almost the same [as the original],' one reviewer noted, 'but perhaps not as hilarious at three in the morning with three other slightly inebriated chums.' GoldenEye's goofiness—its messiness, even—is lost in a game as slick as the 2010 GoldenEye.
The Daniel Craig stunt double and martial arts expert who did all the 2010 game's motion-capture acting contrasted sharply with Duncan Botwood in a smelly suit getting beat up by sweet British nerds. But 'bigger' isn't always better. You can feel it as you play the two: the 2010 GoldenEye was created by a corporation, and GoldenEye by human beings."
August 29, 2022
If you're going to write a book about the making of a single game in the shadow of Reyan Ali's masterful 2019 book NBA Jam, it better be up to snuff. Luckily, Alyse Knorr is up to the task with her in depth look at Goldeneye 007. This book, in the same vein as NBA Jam, presents a narrative history of the game, the developers and the circumstances surrounding it's creation and popularity. The exhaustive research here is evident even before you get to the 16 page bibliography. It's certainly a different direction for Knorr whose first Boss Fight Book (Super Mario Bros 3) felt more like a memoir combined with a collection of essays. Here, we get to know the scrappy team that, somewhat miraculously, put together one of the most important games ever made.
There are moments when Knorr loses sight of the distinct personalities of the Goldeneye team members and the book starts to feel more like straight history than storytelling. The insight here is so interesting that the book never feels like it hits a lull though. If you're a fan of Goldeneye, or even video games in general, this book is a must read.
There are moments when Knorr loses sight of the distinct personalities of the Goldeneye team members and the book starts to feel more like straight history than storytelling. The insight here is so interesting that the book never feels like it hits a lull though. If you're a fan of Goldeneye, or even video games in general, this book is a must read.
March 2, 2023
About the most in-depth document of the N64 game's development, from conception to release to aftermath, informed by an enormous amount of interview and archival research. Paints an intimate and messy picture of the programmers and artists who spent three years going above and beyond to make such an important and influential game. Unfortunately, as with Knorr's previous book in the series, her own editorialising is slim and has a lot of holes. Still, it's mostly good and engrossing as a retrospective and works well to contextualise this small part of the mid-1990s videogame industry.
November 4, 2022
Reviewer's Note: I backed this book on Kickstarter.
Bond. James Bond.
This book is a detailed dossier on the making of GoldenEye 007, one of the best video games ever made... that has no right being as good as it is. My jaw dropped more than once reading about the team of programmers and level designers who had almost no relevant experience, working their way through multiple revisions of the core game to create a genre-defining masterpiece, delivered only a couple of years late. The story here is incredible, and well told through new and old interviews pieced together with expert precision by Alyse Knorr. I only knew a few pieces of this story before this book.
As someone who turned 12 the year GoldenEye The Movie came out, and was 14 when Teen-rated GoldenEye The Game came out, I was the perfect age to love anything and everything Bond. Pierce Brosnan was my Bond until Daniel Craig took over, even as I worked my way through all the Bond films and novels, courtesy of my local library. I spent months playing the video game, ultimately unlocking all but one cheat, most of them repeatedly as I honed my skills as a 00 agent. (Dual RC-P90s by beating the Caverns in a stupid fast time, I'm looking at you.) The stories and review snippets that Knorr has gathered here brings back similar memories and experiences of afternoons and late nights having the most fun I could possibly have with friends.
This is an essential volume on the making of one of the most influential video games of all time.
Bond. James Bond.
This book is a detailed dossier on the making of GoldenEye 007, one of the best video games ever made... that has no right being as good as it is. My jaw dropped more than once reading about the team of programmers and level designers who had almost no relevant experience, working their way through multiple revisions of the core game to create a genre-defining masterpiece, delivered only a couple of years late. The story here is incredible, and well told through new and old interviews pieced together with expert precision by Alyse Knorr. I only knew a few pieces of this story before this book.
As someone who turned 12 the year GoldenEye The Movie came out, and was 14 when Teen-rated GoldenEye The Game came out, I was the perfect age to love anything and everything Bond. Pierce Brosnan was my Bond until Daniel Craig took over, even as I worked my way through all the Bond films and novels, courtesy of my local library. I spent months playing the video game, ultimately unlocking all but one cheat, most of them repeatedly as I honed my skills as a 00 agent. (Dual RC-P90s by beating the Caverns in a stupid fast time, I'm looking at you.) The stories and review snippets that Knorr has gathered here brings back similar memories and experiences of afternoons and late nights having the most fun I could possibly have with friends.
This is an essential volume on the making of one of the most influential video games of all time.
August 12, 2023
After reading a number of these Boss Fight books to this point, I've come to look for two things from the franchise. First are the great behind-the-scenes stories these types of books are made for. Second are the more philosophical musings on what the games mean in a cultural or nostalgic sense. Author Alyse Knorr deftly balances those two areas here with "Goldeneye".
In terms of game-creation stories, this one might be the best I've read thus far. By gaining access to many members of Goldeneye's development team, Knorr is able to produce engaging, informative tales about film licensing issues, Rare's working relationship with Nintendo, how the game progressed from "on-rails" shooter to much more open-world, and how the multiplayer was crammed in almost as an afterthought and proved to be the "killer app" that made the game iconic on the Nintendo '64.
Interspersed with that material is Knorr's musings on Goldeney's legacy--of which the author seems to have a great handle. Both in the realms of tying the content to a popular film property (Bond) and how gaming had not yet fractured to online multiplayer (so this was very much an "in the basement with your friends plus Mountain Dew and Doritos" experience), Knorr's prose made me smile and reflect back with nostalgia in equal amounts.
Overall, I very much enjoyed this Boss Fight installment--near the top of my list for the series. It helps of course to be covering such an iconic game, but Knorr does not succumb to that pressure and instead rises to the challenge of that legacy.
In terms of game-creation stories, this one might be the best I've read thus far. By gaining access to many members of Goldeneye's development team, Knorr is able to produce engaging, informative tales about film licensing issues, Rare's working relationship with Nintendo, how the game progressed from "on-rails" shooter to much more open-world, and how the multiplayer was crammed in almost as an afterthought and proved to be the "killer app" that made the game iconic on the Nintendo '64.
Interspersed with that material is Knorr's musings on Goldeney's legacy--of which the author seems to have a great handle. Both in the realms of tying the content to a popular film property (Bond) and how gaming had not yet fractured to online multiplayer (so this was very much an "in the basement with your friends plus Mountain Dew and Doritos" experience), Knorr's prose made me smile and reflect back with nostalgia in equal amounts.
Overall, I very much enjoyed this Boss Fight installment--near the top of my list for the series. It helps of course to be covering such an iconic game, but Knorr does not succumb to that pressure and instead rises to the challenge of that legacy.
January 29, 2026
A nostalgic and poignant account of the making of a classic. Truly one of the greatest video games ever made. The story behind its making is one of passion, ambition, determination, and innovation. We really didn’t know how good we had it in the late 90s era of gaming, and it likely will never be or feel that way again. It was a time and a place that you just had to be there to understand—and this game was such a huge part of that. Loved this book. Highly recommend it for anyone who has fond memories of the game.
May 14, 2023
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Ms Knorr as she researched this book. The material we talked about ended up not making it into the book but that doesn't bother me because the book was absolutely fantastic. I thoroughly enjoyed all the interviews and the history that she wove masterfully into the history of one of the most impactful game from my youth. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in game development, GoldenEye 007, or the history of video games.
September 5, 2022
I backed this on Kickstarter a few months ago, and the final product more than delivers—this is a phenomenal book that looks at the development and impact of Goldeneye on the N64, featuring lots of new interviews alongside an impressive marshaling of existing sources. I wish all my favorite games could get such fantastic deep-dives!
July 14, 2024
Goldeneye's filesize was 12mb and the entire game was made by seven people. 🤯
I have read several of the Boss Fight books and this is by far the strongest piece of writing. Thoroughly researched and skillfully assembled for maximum entertainment value. It's not quite at that Masters of Doom level, but it's a great time if you have any interest in game design.
I have read several of the Boss Fight books and this is by far the strongest piece of writing. Thoroughly researched and skillfully assembled for maximum entertainment value. It's not quite at that Masters of Doom level, but it's a great time if you have any interest in game design.
May 12, 2025
Great insights into game development in the 90s. Alyse knows her stuff.
I read the Deluxe Edition, which isn't included on Goodreads (it includes some additional photos and a chapter on the game's music design). If you can find the Deluxe Edition, i'd recommend it!
It was also fun seeing my name in the "Special Thanks" section!
I read the Deluxe Edition, which isn't included on Goodreads (it includes some additional photos and a chapter on the game's music design). If you can find the Deluxe Edition, i'd recommend it!
It was also fun seeing my name in the "Special Thanks" section!
October 1, 2022
What an excellent oral history of one of my favorite games growing up. I learned a lot about how the game was made and how it changed gaming. if you grew up playing goldeneye I highly recommend this book
November 7, 2025
Very well researched and written book about the creation of the video game. I liked it alot though the second half there were some structure issues where they leapt ahead in the narrative and then moved back again. Not sure why a more linear telling was not used.
March 31, 2024
One of, if not the best Boss Fight Books. In depth making of goldeneye. Brilliant stuff, must read for any players or game devs.
July 29, 2025
Another great entry in this series and a fun look into video game history and how some of these innovations came about.
December 9, 2022
Alyse Knorr tells the incredible history of how a small team, with almost no idea what they were doing, managed to create one of the most iconic video games of the 64 bit era. There is so much research put into this book that it makes me anxious thinking of how much time was spent, searching for, reading, listening, and watching media just to build this book. Not only do you hear the story of the team at Rare that made GoldenEye, but you also get the full picture of what was going on with Nintendo and the Bond franchise at the same time. If you had an N64 as a kid, chances are you loved playing this game with friends and yelled at the jerk that chose Oddjob. If that rings true, you'll enjoy this deep dive into the development of a video game that was a cornerstone of so many childhoods.
May 20, 2023
(read my full review at calebjross.substack.com)
Alyse Knorr doesn’t simply offer a rote development history of GoldenEye 007. So much time is given to the developers themselves to speak, seemingly untethered by NDAs. So often the development team comes across like antsy creatives ready to explode at the mere hint that someone like Knorr cares about all the stumbles, successes, and creative approaches they took during development, especially as a relatively small development team (about 12 people). This is a rag-tag group of geeks who are genuinely gleeful when reminiscing about their strange path toward video game superstardom.
For example, at one point the team considered leveraging the Nintendo 64’s Rumble Pak as a gun magazine analog. The player would slam the Rumble Pak in to reload the on-screen gun.
Or consider this: a bug during production caused the player’s gun to be swapped with the Depot level’s fence asset, so when trying to throw the gun, a fence would be thrown instead. The team played a few rounds of “fence deathmatch” before properly fixing the bug. In today’s world, where Goat Simulator and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom exist, I think a wacky sandbox approach to a James Bond game would work pretty well.
Oh, and you know that distant island in the Dam level, the one you can see just barely through the lens of a sniper rifle scope? Yes, that was originally meant to be a playable area, accessible by a (scrapped) boat mechanic.
Alyse Knorr’s GoldenEye 007 is not just well-researched, it’s not just well written, it’s a damn-fun read. The number of straight-from-the-dev factoids alone is enough to make this book a must-buy for creators of listicles about video games.
Alyse Knorr doesn’t simply offer a rote development history of GoldenEye 007. So much time is given to the developers themselves to speak, seemingly untethered by NDAs. So often the development team comes across like antsy creatives ready to explode at the mere hint that someone like Knorr cares about all the stumbles, successes, and creative approaches they took during development, especially as a relatively small development team (about 12 people). This is a rag-tag group of geeks who are genuinely gleeful when reminiscing about their strange path toward video game superstardom.
For example, at one point the team considered leveraging the Nintendo 64’s Rumble Pak as a gun magazine analog. The player would slam the Rumble Pak in to reload the on-screen gun.
Or consider this: a bug during production caused the player’s gun to be swapped with the Depot level’s fence asset, so when trying to throw the gun, a fence would be thrown instead. The team played a few rounds of “fence deathmatch” before properly fixing the bug. In today’s world, where Goat Simulator and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom exist, I think a wacky sandbox approach to a James Bond game would work pretty well.
Oh, and you know that distant island in the Dam level, the one you can see just barely through the lens of a sniper rifle scope? Yes, that was originally meant to be a playable area, accessible by a (scrapped) boat mechanic.
Alyse Knorr’s GoldenEye 007 is not just well-researched, it’s not just well written, it’s a damn-fun read. The number of straight-from-the-dev factoids alone is enough to make this book a must-buy for creators of listicles about video games.
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