GoldenEye 007 Nintendo 64 Community, GoldenEye X, Nintendo 64 Games Discussion

[NapalmNero]

Dragonsbrethren wrote:

The mission select part really makes it look like they had a test copy. As many rumors about there being "beta carts" out there, this is the first time I've seen any footage that didn't look like it came straight from Rare. The other parts are definitely from that other trailer that was posted a while back.

Speaking of test copies, you know the screen-shots used in the Mundo Rare interview with the two developers(their names escape me at the moment). Were those screen-shots given over to MR or where those taken when the interview was done?

If they were taken when the interview was done, that means the Test carts still exist.
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Who?

[PacmanPlush]

Dragonsbrethren wrote:

The mission select part really makes it look like they had a test copy. As many rumors about there being "beta carts" out there, this is the first time I've seen any footage that didn't look like it came straight from Rare. The other parts are definitely from that other trailer that was posted a while back.

I'm not sure... I think all the footage did come from Rare, and it's most likely all from the same video.

Why do I think this? Put it this way- in that same video, they show footage of a deleted level from Banjo-Kazooie, known as Mount Fire Eyes. There are only a very few known shots of Mount Fire Eyes, and most (all?) of them come from this video clip. The footage itself first appeared in a promotional "Coming Soon" video put together by Nintendo, but was used in many magazines and in videos like this one.

If the guys at Escape had access to a prototype version of GoldenEye, it seems likely Rare would have supplied them with Banjo-Kazooie as well, as they were apparently in development at the same time. However, as there is no "new" BK footage, this does not seem to be the case.

NapalNero wrote:

Speaking of test copies, you know the screen-shots used in the Mundo Rare interview with the two developers(their names escape me at the moment). Were those screen-shots given over to MR or where those taken when the interview was done? If they were taken when the interview was done, that means the Test carts still exist.

Several of the shots were at one time featured on Rare's site, or appeared in magazines. It looks to me like Rare simply gave all of their promotional material to MundoRare. For example, the fourth shot on this page:
http://www.mundorare.com/games/goldeneye-007/screenshots-beta?page=2

...can also be seen on Detstar, and was taken from Rare's site years before the MR retrospective.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080602131323/goldeneye.detstar.com/beta/betastatue.asp

Of course, a good deal of MundoRare's screens had never before been seen, like those shots of Connery in the Bunker. A few of the Silo shots are also new to me. So did the guys at Mundo take these? I don't think so. When advertising GE in 1997, Rare certainly didn't use every promotional shot they took. So, ten years later, they still had some "new" prototype shots that they gave to MundoRare. There are likely many more where they came from.

As far as any lingering test carts go- it's possible. But we must remember that developer cartridges for the N64- really, any cart-based console- were very expensive, as developers had to buy them through the console's manufacturer. I'd guess Rare had a handful of dev carts, and would have kept rewriting them for testing purposes.

That said, they almost certainly have weekly backups of the game's source code- or even compiled ROM files- stored on cheaper mediums. In '97, this probably would have been hard drives and ZIP disks.

Chances are they still have these stored safely away, along with the very last versions of Project Dream and Conker's Twelve Tales.
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[connery as bond]

Is that version of the Bond Theme still on the cart? It sounds like a remixed version of the one in GoldenEye's intro and would love to get my hands on it.
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Missions:
- Return to Arkhangelsk
- Q-Lab VR
- Mt. Hochkonig
- TBA

[Yurei]

Kode-Z wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttZmyB0xu2s

Man seriously these sounds me of Syphon Filter.
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