Top 10 Games Based On Movies

GoldenEye 007

Developer: Rare
Platform: Nintendo 64 exclusive
Year: 1997

GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 really is the only game that can sit at the top of this list, claiming the title of the best film-to-game conversion ever. Not only are there few movie inspired games that can match it in quality, but there are few games which can match it at all!

The spiritual predecessor to Perfect Dark, GoldenEye was possibly the biggest single reason to own a Nintendo 64 if you were a youngster at the time. Nowhere else was it possible to feel that much like James Bond in both an expansive singleplayer and thrilling multiplayer mode. In fact, it’s not been possible since then either, with both Activision and Electronic Arts struggling to do the franchise justice after Rare lost the rights.

The singleplayer portion of the game is a fairly faithful to the film, taking full advantage of the fast pace and capturing all of the most memorable scenes perfectly, from the bunker infiltration at the start to the fight above the radar dish at the climax.


What distinguishes GoldenEye from any other James Bond game before or since though is that it was faithful to the mood of the film as well as the set pieces. Players weren’t always forced to just run and gun through hordes of indenti-kit enemies, but were encouraged (nay, forced) to use stealth tactics to defeat the game.

The multiplayer portion of GoldenEye is where the lasting appeal of the game is though, with some fans still going to extraordinary efforts in order to unlock hidden and unfinished content included in the retail release. As recently as 2004 new beta levels were being unlocked, provided you were willing and able to link your Nintendo 64 to a PC and run the 10,000 lines of code that assembled the required file fragments. Few other games have inspired such fanatical loyalty.

Strangely though, the multiplayer game doesn’t sound all that great when you try to explain it. The selection of available modes and tweaks, while incredibly innovative at the time, are fairly commonplace nowadays. Likewise, the way that Rare designed the interface and control system to make the FPS genre accessible on the Nintendo 64 may not sound like much now, but actually laid the foundations for modern console shooters.


That’s just the start too – GoldenEye 007 introduced so many things to computer games that it’s really hard to overestimate its legacy. It’s often credited as being one of the first games to introduce the concept of a zoomable sniper rifle, for example. It was one of the first games to feature a hit-sensitive damage model for enemies too, with enemies being more vulnerable to head or torso shots. Rudimentary material physics were worked into the game as well, with some weapons capable of penetrating doors and walls – yet there are some games nowadays which don’t have that feature!

GoldenEye’s legacy has caused a number of spiritual successors too, such as Perfect Dark and the Timesplitters franchise, which was developed by a group that separated from Rare to form the ill-fated Free Radical Design. It’s just a shame that the most recent of these doesn’t really have the lasting appeal of GoldenEye. Likewise, it’s a shame that a remake or retro re-release of the game is unlikely to arrive any time soon as the rights are currently shared between original publisher Nintendo and the now Microsoft-owned Rare – each of whom want a release for their own platform.

Still, until Nintendo and Microsoft work out their differences, there’s always the Source Engine-powered GoldenEye: Source to give you a taste of why GoldenEye 007 was such a classic.