The project is currently being spearheaded by two guys; Ben Colclough who’s a 3D artist and amateur game developer and Yannick “GoldenZen” Zenhäusern; a music composer.
Together, they’re working in Unreal 4 to bring the game to life. Titled GoldenEye 25, it’s an ambitious attempt to bring the single-player story missions to life with modern graphics, gameplay and AI.
It’s hard to believe, but the best N64 game of all time came out 21 years ago. Remember those days? Late nights creeping through the facility, looking to blow away some enemies. Or even better; that multiplayer? Man… nothing tops that game for sheer hours of playing time with my buddies. Since then, nothing’s come close and I can’t even find a decently priced copy of the game or even where my family tossed my old N64. But soon, that won’t be necessary.
A super-fan has got our backs and is remaking the game in Unreal. And it looks amazing.
This isn’t the first time that we’ve heard of a modern update/remake of GoldenEye. The original game was developed by Rare and came out in 1997. In 2002, Rare was purchased by Microsoft and there were plans to remaster the game for the Xbox 360.
That got cancelled and what we got instead, 9 years later, was GoldenEye 007: Reloaded, which was a different game based on the movie, and not the game we grew up with and loved. I mean, I love the Daniel Craig era, but I don’t want to play GoldenEye with him as the lead, when Pierce Brosnan was the OG.
The original plan for this Unreal remaster was just to port the N64 game into the software, but that didn’t work. So instead, Colclough is rebuilding the game from scratch, starting with the facility level. He’s also started to release videos of the levels on Youtube.
This video just gives me chills. I really hope that we can get our hands on this.
Here’s an original screenshot of the facility level from the game, in case it’s no longer burned onto your retinas from childhood.
And the updated one. A beauty, isn’t it?
In his remake, he’s been updating the lighting, the enemy AI and also the targeting system, as well as trying his hardest to retain the look and feel of the original game. As a working 3D artist, however, he doesn’t have a lot of time to devote to the game. At most, he and GoldenZen work a few hours a day, and at this rate, the game should be done by 2022; in time for the 25th anniversary of the title.
It’s gonna be worth the wait, I can tell.
There is a catch though; this is a fan-made game and Nintendo doesn’t have anything to do with it yet. Which means it’s not official and their legal team might have a thing or two to say about it. But given that it’s an absolutely legendary game, the third-best selling N64 game ever with 8 million copies sold, it also netted Nintendo $250 Million dollars worldwide in 1997 dollars. That’s almost $400 million in today’s dollars.
Nintendo, throw some money at these guys and let’s make this game happen.
Fingers crossed for karate chops.
