How ten people at Rare built a shooter the industry said was impossible
Rare was a studio in Twycross, Leicestershire, with a reputation for competent licensed work and no history at all in first-person shooters. When Nintendo handed it the GoldenEye film licence, director Martin Hollis first sketched a side-scrolling shooter for the Super Nintendo. The Nintendo 64 changed the plan.
Hollis pushed for a 3D first-person game at a moment when the industry treated a mouse and keyboard as the only workable controls for the genre. The team that took it on was about ten people, and for all but two of them GoldenEye 007 was the first game they had ever shipped. Development ran more than two and a half years on a budget of roughly 2 million US dollars, which was small even by 1990s standards.
They wrote the engine themselves and learned 3D graphics as they went. Two games shaped the result: the Doom engine id Software released in 1993, which set the pace of the genre, and Virtua Cop, Sega's 1994 arcade shooter, which supplied the hit reactions that made every shot land with weight. GoldenEye 007 reached North American shelves on August 25, 1997, two years after the film it was named for had left theaters.
Why the multiplayer nobody approved became the whole point
The split-screen deathmatch that defined the game was not in the plan, the schedule or the design document. Programmer Steve Ellis built it near the end of development, and the team had nothing playable in multiplayer until roughly March or April 1997, four or five months before release.
Speaking at a GDC Europe postmortem in 2012, Ellis said "it was done without the knowledge or permission of the management at Rare and Nintendo", and added, "The first they knew about it was when we showed it to them working." Engadget reported the session the same week.
What shipped was four players on one television, characters pulled from the campaign, maps cut down from single-player levels, and a weapon list that made every match different. Proximity mines in the Facility bathrooms. Slappers Only. The short character nobody could hit. None of it needed a network setting or a second screen, which is exactly why it spread: you plugged in four controllers and started. Console gaming would not get a comparable social moment until the LAN party era pushed the same idea onto PCs.
What Shigeru Miyamoto asked Rare to change
Late in development, Shigeru Miyamoto sent Rare a fax with notes on the game. Hollis described them at the GameCity festival in Nottingham in 2015, in remarks GameSpot and Kotaku both reported that October.
Miyamoto's first objection was tone. Hollis recalled that "there was too much close-up killing" for the Nintendo designer's taste, and the suggested fix was stranger than the complaint: "He suggested that it might be nice if, at the end of the game, you got to shake hands with all your enemies in the hospital."
Rare did not remove the violence and did not add a hospital. It took the spirit of the note instead and built a film-style curtain call into the end credits, where every character in the game, villains included, walks out and takes a bow like an actor at the end of a play. The point was to frame the whole thing as a performance rather than a body count. It became one of the most quoted touches in the game, and it exists because the most famous designer at Nintendo was uncomfortable with what Rare had made.
Why the game vanished for almost twenty years
The licence that made GoldenEye 007 sell is the same licence that took it off the market. Nintendo published the cartridge. Rare developed it, then Microsoft bought Rare in 2002 and took the code without the publishing rights. MGM and Eon Productions own James Bond, and the Bond video game licence moved to other publishers after 1997. No single party could re-release the game alone.
Rare got close anyway. Around 2008 the studio built a remaster for Xbox Live Arcade with a toggle between HD and original N64 visuals and online multiplayer alongside split screen. Reporting on the project puts it roughly two months from completion when the approvals collapsed under the number of parties who had to sign. A playable build leaked publicly in 2021, which is how most people have seen it.
For the two decades in between, the only legal way to play was an original cartridge and original hardware. The game that taught consoles how to do first-person shooters was less available than the PC shooters it grew up alongside, which stayed on sale digitally the whole time.
Is GoldenEye 007 still playable in 2026, and who owns it?
Yes, on two subscriptions, and it has been since January 27, 2023, when both versions launched on the same day.
On Nintendo Switch, GoldenEye 007 sits in the Nintendo 64 library that comes with Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack, the paid upper tier. That version adds online multiplayer, so four players no longer have to sit on the same couch, and it offers a widescreen option alongside the original 4:3 framing.
On Xbox, the game runs on Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S through Xbox Game Pass, with up to 4K output, local split screen and achievements. Anyone who owns a digital copy of Rare Replay gets it at no extra cost, with or without a Game Pass subscription. Physical Rare Replay discs do not qualify, and there is still no standalone purchase on either platform.
Ownership has not actually been untangled, only negotiated around. Microsoft still owns Rare and the game code. Nintendo published the 1997 original and runs the Switch version. MGM and Eon Productions still own James Bond. The 2023 release is an agreement between those parties, not a transfer, which is why the game arrived on two rival services at once and on nothing else.
Where to find an original N64 cartridge today
A subscription is the cheap route, so buying the cartridge is a collecting decision rather than a practical one. The good news for collectors is supply: about 8.09 million copies were sold, which makes GoldenEye 007 one of the most common Nintendo 64 cartridges in circulation and keeps loose copies far below the prices commanded by scarce N64 releases. You also need a working console and at least one controller, and four controllers if you want the version people remember. Tested Nintendo 64 hardware, controllers and cartridges are sold by Stone Age Gamer, which cleans and warranties what it ships.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GoldenEye 007 on Xbox Game Pass?
Yes. GoldenEye 007 has been on Xbox Game Pass since January 27, 2023, running on Xbox One and Xbox Series X and S with up to 4K output, local split-screen multiplayer and achievements. Owners of a digital copy of Rare Replay can download it free without a Game Pass subscription, but owners of the physical Rare Replay disc cannot, and the game is not sold on its own.
Who owns GoldenEye 007 now?
No single company owns GoldenEye 007 outright. Microsoft has owned Rare, the studio that developed the 1997 game, since 2002. Nintendo published the Nintendo 64 original and runs the Nintendo Switch version. MGM and Eon Productions own the James Bond property the game is licensed from. The 2023 re-release on Switch and Xbox was an agreement between those parties rather than a sale.
Why was GoldenEye 007 unavailable for so long?
GoldenEye 007 was off sale from the end of the Nintendo 64 era until January 2023 because its rights were split between Nintendo, Microsoft-owned Rare and the James Bond licence holders, and no one party could re-release it alone. A finished Xbox Live Arcade remaster from around 2008 was reportedly about two months from completion when the approvals fell through, and a build of it leaked publicly in 2021.