[I've posted this on the official Everdrive 64 forum (http://krikzz.com/forum/index.php?board=4.0) and I thought I'd post it here, for anyone who is interested in the game. If that's not you, then fair enough, but for anyone else, I think the information is interesting] One of the most under-rated games on the N64, I think, is The World is Not Enough. It's a great first person shooter, that sadly most people overlooked as they were caught up in the hype surrounding the (admittedly much better) Perfect Dark. TWINE (which is quicker than typing 'The World is Not Enough' ) is very enjoyable, and has lots of plus points, including the fact that it's locations mirror the locations of the film very well, much better than in an other FPS that I can remember. Anyway, two of the people who worked on the game, a programmer and a level designer (one was called Skellington, the other was Doctor Zhivago, I can't remember who was who) used to post on the Gamefaqs forums, and I thought it would interest others to learn what those two had said. Note, this information applies to the N64 version, I don't know if those two people (or even the same company) worked on the Playstation version, so it might not apply to that version of the game. I've not played the Playstation version of the game, but I've heard it's not much good, so it's possible it was by a different company. Note: This is from memory, so don't take any of it as absolute fact, as I might be mis-remembering any of it, though I think it's all correct. But if any of it is wrong, then it's my mistake, Doctor Zhivago and Skellington aren't to blame. * minor spoilers for The World is Not Enough, the game * This game has so many facets of the game Goldeneye, but conspicuously lacks others; such as the unlockable cheats, the ability to play as a good character and fight another good character in the multiplayer mode (this restriction is *so* annoying) and so on, plus there is no traditional Bond tune (although the specially written music is very atmospheric), and TWINE lacks the traditional Bond opening, where Bond walks on, and shoots the camera (well, a gun barrel, I suppose), and the screen fills with blood. Goldeneye (the game) had this opening, but not TWINE (the game). Anyway, it was MGM (who owned the Goldeneye film license) who imposed such firm limitations on what could and couldn't be included in TWINE. For example, MGM didn't want cheats in TWINE as they didn't want Bond (or MGM, presumably) to be associated with cheating. Rather stupid if you ask me, but that's businessmen for you. And as a result, you can't play with infinite ammunition, you can't play the whole game through using just your favourite weapon, you can't be invincible when you play, and so on. A real shame, as playing through Goldeneye or Perfect Dark using just a shotgun (or whatever weapon you prefer) is great fun, and TWINE would have benefitted from the feature too. And, since there could be no unlockable cheats, TWINE's programmers (who no doubt knew how popular GE's unlockables were, and wanted to add a similar depth to TWINE, an attitude that is very rare nowadays as most companies don't care about replay value) had to look elsewhere for things to unlock, and chose the multiplayer game to house the unlockables. This isn't too bad if you own the game and are good at it, but for people who rented TWINE, or just weren't too good at it, they could never unlock many of the multiplayer modes best features, including some of the best maps. And it was entirely MGM's decision that good cannot fight good in multiplayer. An extremely bad decision, given the way that it adversely affects gameplay, but the programmers of TWINE had no say in the matter. The contract Rare had with MGM over the Goldeneye license was much less controlling, since at that point the Bond games license was worth much less, as up until that point most Bond games had been rubbish, and the few that weren't were at best average. Also none of those games did things that MGM would have considered to be detrimental to their (MGM's or Bond's) images, so MGM didn't specify anything like no blood or no shooting friendly characters. Rare were given the rights to use Bond, and all associated characters and so on, including the name Goldeneye and it's associated story, for one game (the contract only covered one game, of course). If I remember rightly, the only thing Rare weren't allowed to use was the character Jack Wade, as he was copyrighted elsewhere (he was a character from a different book, or a non-Bond film or something), which is why he doesn't appear in the game Goldeneye. And so Rare wrote and released Goldeneye (the game), and it shot up the charts, sold millions, really helped to sell the N64 (I bought my N64 for Goldeneye, as did *many* others) and gave the James Bond name a massive boost by associating it with arguably the best first person shooter of all time. And, since the game sold so well, and had such a superb reputation, MGM could now charge far more the next time that someone wanted to license the Bond name for a game. Rare said that they were offered the license to do the next Bond game (whether by MGM, or Nintendo, I don't know - Nintendo might have offered to secure (buy) the license on Rare's behalf), but considered the Bond universe too constricting for their plans for their next first person shooter they were planning. There are two ways of interpreting this; possibly Rare just meant that they wanted to get away from Bond, M, and so on, and explore science-fiction style weapons and alien driven storylines instead. That's possible, certainly (look at how Perfect Dark turned out). But it also seems possible that MGM had by then decided that much of what was in Goldeneye (the game) was not to their liking, such as the blood, the ability to kill friendly characters, Bond's death scene when he dies in the single player mode, and so on. They certainly told TWINE's programmers not to use these features, so perhaps they also told Rare the same, when the possibility of Rare doing a second Bond game was discussed. If so, perhaps Rare decided that they didn't like having limitations place upon their designers, and so they said "No" to the contract to produce the next Bond game, and instead created from scratch a new fictional character and setting (Perfect Dark), in which no-one could dictate to them how they had to shape things. Also, when Goldeneye became such a massive hit, MGM apparently became more thorough with the licensing agreements regarding new games. That's why TWINE doesn't have the traditional opening scene where Bond walks on and shoots the camera (well, gun barrel), or why TWINE (the game) doesn't have the traditional Bond music. Rare got the rights for everything when they agreed to make Goldeneye, but after that MGM wised up and started charging seperately for different parts of the Bond universe, and TWINE (the game)'s creators couldn't use the Bond music or the opening Bond scene as they weren't paid for. On the plus side, though, TWINE has some extremely atmospheric levels, such as levels 2, 3 and 4, plus it has full speech (on of the few things GE was missing), bots in multiplayer (rather stupid bots, admittedly, but at least TWINE has them, most games, GE included, don't), is really enjoyable, and is loaded with replayability. It's not as good as GE, if you ask me, and doesn't even approach Perfect Dark but is still a superb game. You do need a memory pak (controller pak) to save your game, though. And the game has a proper James Bond style watch, too! You can fire knockout darts with it, use it to fire a grappling hook, fire a laser and everything! Plus it is more of a Bond game that Goldeneye, really, in that you get to swim, ski, rappel, and even use a guided missile to destroy a helicopter. By the way, in the multiplayer game, you cannot play as the character "Q". This is because Desmond LLewelyn, the actor who played Q, died whilst the game was still in production, and out of respect for him, they disabled the ability to control him, though if you have a Gameshark (a hardware addon for cheating) you can modify the game so you can play as Q. One thing I've always wondered about is how, in level two of TWINE, you are in the MI6 building when it is attacked by terrorists, and you end up having to kill a terorist who has a gun to M's head, inside M's office. This game came out in the year 2000, and was, of course, based on the film The World is Not Enough. And in the later (2002) film Die Another Day, Bond is in the MI6 building when it is attacked by terrorists, one of whom holds a gun to M's head, inside M's office. I've never found out that explanation for that co-incidence, as by the time I noticed this, Doctor Zhivago and Skellington had stopped visiting the Gamefaqs TWINE page (or at least I never saw them there again).
Interesting read, thanks for sharing! I really enjoyed TWINE when it came out -- of course it was no GoldenEye, but it was still one of my favorite FPS games for the platform. Would be awesome to see a mod similar to GoldenEye X for TWINE.
Agreed. It's a shame that there's so little homebrew and game modding on the N64. BTW, mods, I realise that this is in the wrong forum, sorry, please move it to the General Gaming forum, or wherever it should be, thanks.
I've heard this mentioned before, but as far as I know it's not true. Jack Wade seems to be an original character created by GoldenEye's writers, and he also has a brief appearance in Tomorrow Never Dies. While Wade doesn't appear on-screen in GoldenEye 007 (the game, that is), he is mentioned a couple times in the pre-mission briefings and even has some dialogue in the Caverns mission, where objective D on 00 Agent is to "Use radio to contact Jack Wade." Excuse the quality of this image, I grabbed it from the first YouTube video I could find: You know, I never really thought about this before--partially because I really can't stand Die Another Day. While I can't exactly say for certain, I do have my own idea as to how this came about--first, a little backstory. One of the biggest issues I have with Die Another Day is that the filmmakers seemed determined to one-up the previous film, The World is Not Enough. There's more action, the stakes are higher, the villains were ripped from the headlines, and the gadgets were far more outlandish. None of this made for a better film. There are a number of scenes in Die Another Day that seem to directly build upon similar sequences from TWINE. TWINE's pre-title sequence ends with Bond getting injured after falling from a hot-air balloon. In Die Another Day, the pre-title sequence ends with Bond getting captured and brutally tortured by the North Koreans over a fourteen-month period. In TWINE, the "attack" on MI6 was actually just a means of assassinating Sir Robert King. In Die Another Day, MI6 is attacked by terrorists, Moneypenny and Robinson are killed, and M is held at gunpoint. This is later revealed to be a virtual reality training scenario--essentially a copout, since the writers clearly wanted to include this scene but couldn't work it into the plot. TWINE--and GoldenEye 007, for that matter--are guilty of doing the same thing Die Another Day did by reinterpreting existing scenes to make them more exciting. In the context of a video game, this makes sense. Think of the Frigate level in GE. In the film, Bond spent about thirty seconds of screen time at this location and didn't fight anybody. In the game, Bond kills dozens of people, saves a bunch of hostages, disarms a few bombs and plants a tracker on a helicopter. While it isn't faithful to the original film, it's a lot more fun to play. TWINE does something similar with the MI6 level. In the movie, Bond stands around talking to M for a bit, a bomb goes off, Sir Robert King dies, and Bond takes off after the assassin. The game expands this into a full-on assault against an army of masked terrorists, complete with hostages, frequent explosions, and corridors full of fire. With this in mind, it's certainly possible that Die Another Day's writers inadvertently recreated the scenario presented in the TWINE video game by following the same "raise the stakes" principle. By the way, you (and anyone else reading this) might find this thread over at ShootersForever interesting: http://www.shootersforever.com/forums_message_boards/viewtopic.php?t=5921 Much of what you relayed from the devs on GameFAQs can be found here, but Zoinkity's posts are of particular interest to anyone interested in the technical aspects of TWINE. To summarize: it looks worse than it should have due to poor programming. The game has no anti-aliasing, despite the fact that the N64 offers a built in anti-aliaser that would not have impacted the game's performance at all. Additionally, due to poor mipmapping, the game only displays the 16x16 versions of its textures, rather than the intended 64x64. As Zoinkity notes, older emulators that do not correctly implement this feature will unintentionally make the game look better than it does on console.
I thought minimal usage like that was allowed by copyright law, as you never see him directly? Like how (for example) you can't put Mickey Mouse into a cartoon you make yourself, but you can have one of the characters in your cartoon mention him (i.e. "I used to be a big fan of Mickey Mouse, but then I grew up") or even have a sample of Mickey Mouse's spoken words (i.e. one character enters a living room, so the already there character turns off the TV, and just before the TV is turned off, we hear Mickey's voice coming from the TV screen). Anyway, a quick Google backs up what you say, Jack Wade does appear to have been created especially for Goldeneye, but perhaps (part) of his creation was down to someone else, and so copyright restricted his off-screen usage? Sort of how Blofeld's usage was limited by copyright; "Famous Bond villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld could appear in future 007 films now that a long-running legal dispute has been settled. Kevin McClory, who came up with the story for Thunderball with Ian Fleming, had been locked in a battle over Bond rights since 1959. McClory, and later his estate, asserted he had created the Blofeld character. Now film studio MGM and Bond film company Danjaq have acquired all the rights from McClory's estate. A joint statement from the three parties involved said the deal brought "to an amicable conclusion the legal and business disputes that have arisen periodically over 50 years". The agreement means that Bond producers are clear to use the Blofeld character again if they wish." Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24999407 (19th November 2013) Then again, maybe I'm just remembering the Jack Wade situation wrong, or it's just a common but utterly wrong urban myth - there's a million of those around. Join the club. I'm a big Bond fan, and I think Brosnan is great, but DAD lacks the Bond feel, for much of the film, and is much too science-fiction-ish (I love (good) science-fiction, but Bond is not science-fiction). Also, although I almost never criticise a film's director (I know nothing about making films, and don't care about it either), I have to say that DAD has some badly judged direction. On the plus side, the film starts out very well, until after the credits... But the beginning, with Bond being captured and interrogated, sets you up for a fantastic film. Also, the bloke who played the English version of the enemy (can't remember the enemy's name, and don't care enough to look it up!) was great, and there were some good bits, such as the fencing scene. But overall the good really drowned in the bad, and it's one of the worst Bond films. I don't know which is my least favourite, offhand, but DAD is definitely in the worst few. Maybe, yes. But as you imply, building upon something is one thing (all great works do it, nothing is entirely original), but taking something as a foundation and trying to improve on it but spoiling it with overkill (or just producing a bad result) is something very different, and those mistakes should have been spotted and dealt with at the script-writing stage. BTW, if you subscribe to the theory that 'James Bond' is a code name, and so every actor who played him really played a different agent who was known by the one codename James Bond, then DAD does sort of make a bit (a tiny bit) of sense, albeit quite horrible. In that case, James Bond, who was really the human being currently using that codename (and played in the film by Brosnan) does get captured and tortured, but everthing after the film credits only takes place in Bond's mind, as he dreams about escaping and, due to his mental state, his fantasies are less than sane and realistic. And presumably he either dies or spends his life as a prisoner, as a new agent is given the name James Bond, this time the agent played in the films by Daniel Craig. I don't follow that theory myself - to me, Bond was just one man, but it is interesting to speculate about it. I wonder if this was a consequence of the game having been rushed out to meet the film's release? As is the case with *so* many other film tie-ins. Incidentally, I don't mind the lack of anti-aliasing, or the texture mistake, what I don't like are the lack of cheats - I don't mean cheats like infinite health, I've never understood the appeal of cheats like that, as they remove all challenge. But I like cheats like All Weapons and Infinite Ammuntion, as then you can play through the game using just your favourite weapon, which, when you're replaying a familiar game, can really add to the fun and replayability. In Perfect Dark and Goldeneye, they also have cheats to make the game harder (enemy shields, increase the enemies attributes (more health, they do more damage to you when shot, they are more accurate), give the enemies portable rocket launchers(!), etc. Sounds insane, I know, but when you've played the game enough to be really good at it, then upping the difficulty can add interest to the game. What's really amazing is that PD and GE, with the difficulty upped to insane levels, still get people not only completing the games, but actually speed-running them! It's staggering how good some people are at gaming. Or just playing through Perfect Dark, for example, with the enemy rocket cheat changes the game. Since all of the enemies now use rockets instead of their original weapon (be it a pistol, a rifle, a shotgun, a sniper rifle, etc) you have to change your approach to the game. Not only can you now not allow even one hit (as any hit with a rocket is fatal) you have to be extremely careful of splash damage, so you have to move very quickly (otherwise a rocket that misses might still kill you when you get caught in the explosion as the rocket hits the wall behind you). Or if you play the game normally, with only the All Guns and Infinite Ammunition cheats, and play using only the shotgun, then again the game changes, as the shotgun (unlike in, say, Doom) is ineffective at more than a few feet between you and an enemy, so you have to get up close to use it properly, but since the shotgun is so loud (in PD the enemies' 'hearing' distance is dependant on the volume of the weapon's sounds, nearby enemies will be alerted whereas with most other weapons the lower sound wouldn't alert those same enemies. Plus the shotgun is slow to reload, which is another point to consider. It's great the lengths Rare went to to add replayability to Perfect Dark and Goldeneye, and it's such a shame that TWINE's makers didn't (or couldn't) make similar attempts.
TWINE on N64 was a big disappoint for many game players. Maybe it was too ambitious for Eurocom, I don't know. The single player mode was pretty good, though sometimes a bit too difficult. I think I unlocked everything in the game, much like I did on GE, after a time. The multiplayer mode stunk, flat out. They left out a lot of the mini-games and modes from GE, and frankly all of the maps sucked. The control on the game was also not as good as GE, plus the enhanced graphics often caused slowdown in multiplayer. EA did a really stellar job on the eventual follow up Agent Under Fire, and Night Fire/Everything or nothing were sensational games. PS: When I saw Die Another Day in the theater, I immediately thought of that level in TWINE, too!
I didn't think AUF or NF were anywhere near as good as TWINE. AUF in particular I thought was bad. NF had some good first person shooters in both single and multi-player, and could be a lot of fun, though I thought the single player levels felt too linear. The one thing I really disliked about NF were some of the vehicle levels, which were no fun at all. Ironically, vehicle levels were the only thing I thought AUF did better than NF. Everything or Nothing is a good game, though I think the unhelpful (well, at times hostile!) camera, and a couple of horrible levels (including the one where you are falling and have to save the woman) lessen it's overall quality. With an intelligently handled camera and some work doing on the game's weaker levels, I think Everything or Nothing could have been a classic. I've not played Quantum of Solace much, though what I did didn't grab me, and I haven't played Blood Stone (or whatever it's called) or 007 Legends (or whatever that game is called) as from what I hear they are mediocre at best, and my games backlog is long enough as it is. Are these games worth playing, or are there any other post-Goldeneye Bond games that are worth playing? Oh, I forgot, I have the XBox 360 version of Goldeneye: Reloaded, and it's (as everyone else has said) basically Call of Duty in a James Bond skin. It's professionally made, but vapid and forgettable, and a real waste of time I think. It does have fantastic weather effects, and in all honesty, that single thing is all I liked in it, though I don't think I played the multiplayer, so I'm only judging it on the single player campaign. Oh, and Goldeneye: Rogue Agent was a cheap cash-in on the name, it wasn't actually bad, just nothing special from what I remember - I'm sure it was one of the few FPS I've ever abandoned without finishing it, as it didn't hold my attention at all.
I always thought it was strange that just as Goldeneye - potentially the best Bond film at the time - was released, a game was released that was (and still is..) the best game with Bond in it. It's a shame the same didn't happen when the fantastic Casino Royale film was released... For me, all Bond games following Goldeneye simply weren't up to it, and since I'm not big FPS fan, I didn't bother investing much time into them - though as a Bond fan, I played them, up to Nightfire anyway. GE was also much better than PD imo too. I suppose the real strange thing is that a licenced game was really THAT good. The licence of course usually being used to allow a publisher to cash in on the name
I think we'd have heard about something like that. Blofeld was purely because Ian Fleming basically stole credit for the screen play and locked out the original writer. I don't know whether it was greed, delusion or he couldn't cope with other people having better ideas. He probably wasn't used because it would have cost more to use him and he wasn't considered worth spending the money on.
