GoldenEye(Era) 007 & Speedrunning - Part 1

 

When I first heard of the concept of speedrunning, I thought it was a bit of a dumb idea. I almost always try to get through a game as quickly as possible. Once I saw a few speedrunning clips, however, my attitude towards the concept changed. These people who do speedrunning are amazing, especially the people who are doing world record breaking runs. The first time I watched a clip of a speedrun was when a long standing record was broken on Super Mario Bros. after a glitch was found in one of the stages, where if you timed your jump perfectly you could traverse through bricks, markedly shortening the amount of time it took to complete the stage. After seeing this clip, my attitude went from speedrunning being kind of silly to it actually being pretty neat. I don't spend a lot of time watching clips or anything, but whenever I see headlines about a record being broken or a new approach being discovered on a game that I've played, I pay attention.

Amazon has a documentary on speedrunning called Running With Speed. The show discusses several famous speedrunners, as well as popular games in the speedrunning genre. One of the aspects of speedrunning that is particularly interesting to me is the fact that older games are some of the most popular for speedrunning. I think this is mostly because they tend to contain more bugs for the players to exploit to beat previous times compared to newer games. It is amazing to watch these players find new ways to beat a game more quickly years (or decades) after a game has been released. The other thing the show displayed was how much money the community is able to raise due to the popularity of speedrunning, which is pretty cool too. 

GoldenEye is featured above because it was briefly discussed on Running With Speed. GoldenEye is obviously a hugely popular and nostalgic game, one that I spent countless hours playing with my friends when I was younger. The game is so popular, in fact, that it has its own documentary on Prime called GoldenEra. The show focuses on the development of the game, its success, and subsequent games that tried to recreate the success of GoldenEye. GoldenEye was a game that was created by the right people at the right time under the right circumstances. There were a number of things that occurred, mostly by chance, to make that game successful. These circumstances were difficult to recreate, which is why subsequent games did not enjoy the same success. For me, Pierce Brosnan in GoldenEye is quintessential James Bond, the Bond that I grew up with (more to come on this in a future post). Seeing GoldenEye in Running With Speed and subsequently in GoldenEra got me motivated to play the game again. I haven't played it in 25+ years, but have access to it for the first time since the N64 days on the Switch 2. I actually have low expectations for the game, as a lot of games from this era have not aged well, but I may be surprised. More to come on my thoughts on the game in Part 2.