Top 50 Video Games: Number 44

Stats of Import
Platform: Nintendo 64
Absurdly Specific Genre: Movie Tie-In Game That Doesn't Suck (Maybe the rarest genre out there)
Difficulty: 5
Beaten: No, though I won my fair share of multiplayer matches.

Though the list thus far doesn't look it, it will eventually be dominated by games known for their single player experiences. This is not that game. Though the game does a pretty good job of giving the player a runthrough of the James Bond movie that it shares its name with, it is cherished for being a wholly multiplayer experience. I cannot count the numbe of times that my friends and I packed around a TV and played this game.

Usually on a TV with a screen not much bigger than this image

Doom and Wolfenstein never grabbed me. This was the first proper FPS that I actually get into, and while the single-player was actually pretty fun (though I never quite got all the way through it - I didn't own a N64 until 5 or 6 years ago), the multiplayer is what set it apart. I didn't acquire any 'leet skeelz' for a few years, and one or two of my friends were absurdly good at it, but it didn't matter. I always felt as though I could get the best of anyone if only they could get my hand/eye coordination to cooperate (funny, I still feel that way today, even as hundreds of 14 year olds on XBL prove me wrong in Halo and Modern Warfare).

There's no way to beat prox mine spawn campers, though. Screw those guys.

A couple of Halo parties came close, but nothing ever topped the old Goldeneye gatherings in the Church attic. I don't think I'm being particularly melodramatic, nor unrealistic, when I say that I doubt anything ever will.


Other games of note: Perfect Dark was actually set to appear on this list, itself being a near clone of Goldeneye (but with cooler guns!). Then I replayed it - holy chop, Batman! Any explosions or simulants, and the game would slow its framerate to a dead crawl. That, combined with the fact that the single-player campaign wasn't anywhere near as cool as Goldeneye's, and I think I made the proper choice. If I had to say where Perfect Dark would end up, I'd say somewhere just outside the top 50.