I bought Goldeneye when it first released back in the day for my N64 and played it nonstop. I remember spending forever on the first level trying to figure out how to get to that island, not knowing at the time you couldn’t.
At the time, I had a GameShark and ended up using the no clip code to fly out there, but if course, found nothing.
To this day, I’ve always wondered what it was supposed to be used for, or why they never bothered removing it and/or fully adding it in.
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Never knew this. Thanks OP
Backgrounds like this are used to this day, which are empty or 2d planes, to give the illusion of depth to the background, as well as filling it out so it isn’t just sky and sea/land.
Just content that didn’t make the cut, happens all the time. No reason to remove it since it didn’t affect the game and added ambience. IIRC there was an intended boat to take you over, not sure if they ran out of time or if it just didn’t work gameplay wise.
Really speaks to how far games have come. That wouldn’t even be noticed in a modern game since richer set-pieces are the norm and you expect to see lots of distant buildings you don’t access. But back in the day it definitely stood out as a curiosity.
You’re supposed to shoot the hats off of every guard in the level and it gives you a jetpack to fly over.
If you just clip over it doesn’t unlock anything. /s
This is the first game I played for 10 hours straight until 4:30am. Fond memories of the amazing, enveloping soundtrack as well as the responsive controls and game system.
Sure there was nothing there? I remember no clipping there but remember at least having 2 enemy guards there though I might be misremembering
Legend says the Lara Croft nude cheat code was on that island
If you surf over there and use strength on the truck you can find mew
Years ago, GameTrailers did a video on that island. I suggest you check it out! It’s from their old show Pop Fiction
https://youtu.be/wKj9S1XDdcY?si=FLI6akgyQ7HMX4Lz
It used to be “common knowledge” that the devs planned a boat to take you out there, but decided the level was too long.
The truth is slightly more complicated but that’s basically right based on interviews.
https://goldeneye.fandom.com/wiki/Dam_Island
Cut content from games can be so tantalizing — like the ruins of a past version of the city you live in.
Something that I miss about this era of gaming and growing up is the amount of exploring we used to do. I spent countless hours with friends just exploring maps and trying out cheats. Just because.
These days I feel like I don’t have that time, which is only a half truth but the reality is I need a payoff, and with the internet you can just watch someone else do it.
So many games have this kind of stuff, they often just hide out outside of the players view, like under the map, beyond some mountains, etc. You’d never know it’s there.
Maybe Rare was just getting ahead of the game and adding some details to that cliff for some lite-immersion.
Off topic but my friends and I play Mario Golf on my old 64 regularly only we disable the golf music and play the Goldeneye soundtrack instead off of YouTube. It makes putting *wayyyyyy* more dramatic!
Man, that island was the biggest gaming mystery of my childhood! Bet the secret golden gun cheat was hidden there. /s
Anyone else call that gun the pencil gun?
That’s Shadow Moses
Here you go
https://youtu.be/b1J3o4Xz17I?si=tcz0QMkGwuH2-Zk6
Man I remember using my N64 GameShark to clip over to it and explore. My friends didn’t believe me at school. Ten year old me thought I was a real Hackerman.
It could just be nostalgia but there’s something I love about the skyboxes/distant objects in older games. Like in Spyro when you’d fly out into an endless void in between levels
Wasn’t Goldeneye famous for the devs designing the level first and then adding mission objectives afterwards?
Goldeneye 64 was one of those games that had a ton of cut content that could be accessed using gameshark.
The secret island mentioned in this topic
The extra bonds based on previous actors
Additional multiplayer stages like the citadel, etc
There’s a Mew over there. It’s under a truck.
That’s Sen’s Fortress
When I was a kid and really into this game I read somewhere online (AOL back then) that if you kill every enemy and destroy every destroyable object in this level, you could then go to this area and shoot at the water a certain number of times. If done right, a sea snake would come out of the water and you could ride it over to the island. I bought it hook, line, and sinker. Not sure how many times I tried it, but once was too many. And that’s how I learned that some people lie on the internet.
I remember reading somewhere that it was supposed to be part of the mission, involving taking a little boat over there to do something, but it was cut because the map had enough objectives already.
I guess they just left it in because it wasn’t in the way or anything, not realizing that 27 years later, people would still be fascinated by it.
Man you hit the nail on the head with this one. In an era when everything was built with a purpose we all thought there was something there. Now games have entire cities modeled in the background and none of us think that anything is there.
[Skip to 2:50](https://youtu.be/Reaz4aKYci8?si=J2Ub3I4pM0ngvyFi)
It was such a good game. I unlocked all cheat codes and it felt I needed 1000 tries to master the facility cheat in time.
isnt that the one that the non functional turret tower that you were supposed to take a boat too but they thought it was too much for level 1
Another fun fact: there used to be fully built character models of the other bond actors available in multiplayer, but they had to take them out since they didn’t have the rights to their likenesses. There was a screenshot floating around that showed them.
The AK always reminded me of a Duracell battery. And the sniper rifle looked like a super soaker
Thats where all the Bonds are located and unlocked for playable multiplayer characters. I know a kid when I was in grade school who said he found them the first time ever playing the level on super hard mode. Its a shame he lost the game cartridge in a house fire and was never able to show me how to do it.
That’s where you unlock Luigi as a playable character
Stop ‘n’ Swop™ plans with Perfect Dark and the greater Rare-verse of N64 games.
I used to think that gun was a pencil crayon
Golden eye and hello pikachu were my very first video games when I was very young
I bet there’s a truck there with a Mew under it
how much comment i need to do to can post something
Same. When I was a kid I saw that island and thought surely there was a way to get there.
I feel like this is something we should ask Karl Jobst about lol
Isn’t there a boundary break episode on YT ?
I have a modded N64 w/ the PixelFX chip and the Everdrive, it’s really fun playing Goldeneye with Mario characters/maps in full 1080.
You were originally going to go over there via boat to get the grappling hook and pitons to repel down the dam, but they decided that was too complicated for the first level and it was cut.
Remember the rumor about the ‘Spyder’ gun ??