Goldeneye 007

In the 80s and 90s, James Bond's video games failed to live up to the giddy thrills of his films. That all changed when British studio Rare unleashed GoldenEye 007 in 1997. In basements and college dorms across the world, friends bumped shoulders while shooting, knifing, exploding, and slapping each other's digital faces in the Nintendo 64 game that would redefine the modern first-person shooter genre.

But GoldenEye's success was far from a sure thing. For years of development, GoldenEye's team of rookie developers were shooting in the dark with no sense of what the N64 or its controller would be like, and the game's relentless violence horrified higher-ups at squeaky clean Nintendo. Through extensive interviews with GoldenEye's creators, writer and scholar Alyse Knorr traces the story of how this unlikely licensed game reinvigorated a franchise and a genre.

This deluxe hardcover edition contains drawings, photos, and design docs that take you behind the scenes of the game's development, as well as an additional chapter that goes deep into the story of how Graeme Norgate and Grant Kirkhope created GoldenEye's iconic soundtrack. Learn all the stories behind how this iconic title was developed, and why GoldenEye 007 has continued to kick the living daylights out of every other Bond game since.