Rare thought 'GoldenEye 007' game would be a 'disaster' at first

03-Sep-2010 • Gaming

Thirteen years after release, Rare has revealed that they didn't actually want to make classic N64 shooter GoldenEye when they were first approached by Nintendo, admitting that the team thought the game was "going to be a disaster", reports GamerZines.

In a candid interview with EDGE, Rare's Mark Betteridge said that when Nintendo first asked the team if they wanted to develop GoldenEye, the team's response was "well, not really."

"It wasn't something we were really doing - we were trying to build our own IP, and film tie-ins meant a lot of ownership by the film company. But Nintendo was very keen."

However, following the game's lengthy delays, Betteridge said that Nintendo wrote to Rare suggesting they cancel it.

"We just never told the team," he says.

Gregg Mayles, meanwhile, added that the team thought GoldenEye was "going to be a disaster", following a poor showing at E3, saying "thank God we've got Banjo.

"Then, as it was, GoldenEye sold several times more."

"Internally, while GoldenEye was being produced, there wasn't an awful lot of faith in the game around the company apart from the core members of that team," added Rare's George Andreas.

"I saw the game at various stages during its development, and I think, about four months before release, I saw a build of it and I thought, 'Jesus Christ, it's a bit of a mess.'

"But then it all came together very close to the end."

That it did, and GoldenEye went on to be recognised as one of the best games of all time, winning multiple awards in the process.

A remake, currently in development at Eurocom, is due to be released on Wii later this year.