Review: Boss Fight Books Goldeneye 077 Deluxe Edition

I was a kickstarter backer for this book.

Back when Goldeneye first came out, the only first person shooter I’d played was a few short sessions of Wolfenstein 3D that my dad had introduced me to a few years before. I found it hard and boring and didn’t try to play all that much. When we rented Goldeneye, it was the first time I found myself enjoying the genre. A great deal of that came from the great mix of humor and seriousness in the game. We had a ton of fun playing “slappers only”.

This book, from the Boss Fight Books series, covers the development of the game, its place in the history of video games, and the reverberations its success had throughout the industry. Each book in the BFB series is about the personal connection the author has to the game. Sometimes it’s a stronger connection and sometimes weaker. This one is a little bit of a weaker connection, but it makes up for it with incredible access to the developers of the game. Additionally, the special edition has many artifacts from the game’s development and it’s quite neat to see the notes from the developers about their plans and how it changed.

The book also chronicles many of the interesting technical challenges that came from developing for a system that wasn’t even out yet. And, when they finally got the real N64 it wasn’t quite exactly the same as developing for a regular Silicon Graphics system. I had no idea that the game was so many years late, either.

If you are an elder millennial or younger Gen X who spent many hours with siblings, roommates, or others killing each other in Goldeneye, you MUST read this book to see what went into this incredible game.

Read this review On Goodreads or On StoryGraph

• Nintendo-64
• Video-Games