Boss Fight Books announced this week the publication of Alyse Knorr's book GOLDENEYE 007: THE MAKING OF AN N64 CLASSIC, a 256-page study that will focus on the making and legacy of the 1997 video game based on the 1995 James Bond film of the same name. The official blurb reads as follows:
Bond—James Bond. In the 80s and 90s, the debonair superspy’s 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 and become the most badass party game of its generation.
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. As development lagged far behind the debut of the tie-in film GoldenEye, the game nearly came out an entire Bond movie too late.
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. 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.
Knorr, an associate professor of English at Regis University and author of another Boss Fight Book assessing SUPER MARIO BROS 3 in 2016, has interviewed developers of GOLDENEYE 007 such as David Doak, Karl Hilton, Martin Hollis and Duncan Botwood along with a number of avid players of this game and fellow authors such as Nicolás Suszczyk, Brian Hamaker, John Romero, Jeremy Strong and Stefan Hall.
Boss Fight Books has set a Kickstarter campaign to finance the publication of the book, which has already surpassed the initial $2500 goal, making it a reality. In order to obtain it, donations range from $6 to $30 depending of which of the three editions you want to own: eBook, Paperback or Deluxe Hardcover.
The book will be sent to backers of Boss Fight Book's Kickstarter campaign on digital format from July, prior to the shipping of paperback edition in September and the Deluxe hardback edition in December. The Deluxe edition will contain a couple of extras such as drawings, photos and design documents from the game's development and an additional chapter titled "The Shots Heard Round the World", focusing on the game's soundtrack and sound effects.