April A - Z Challenge: Villian A

Alec Trevelyan (006)

(From the N64 game Goldeneye)

GoldenEye 007 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Rare and based on the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. It was exclusively released for the Nintendo 64 video game console on 25 August 1997. The game features a single-player campaign in which players assume the role of British Secret Intelligence Service agent James Bond as he fights to prevent a criminal syndicate from using a satellite weapon against London to cause a global financial meltdown. The game also includes a split-screen multiplayer mode in which two, three, or four players can compete in different types of deathmatch games.

GoldenEye 007 was originally conceived as an on-rails shooter inspired by Sega's Virtua Cop, before being redesigned as a free-roaming shooter. The game received highly positive reviews from the gaming media and sold over eight million copies worldwide, making it the third-best-selling Nintendo 64 game. GoldenEye 007 is considered an important game in the history of first-person shooters for demonstrating the viability of game consoles as platforms for the genre, and for signaling a transition from the then-standard Doom-like approach to a more realistic style. It pioneered features such as atmospheric single-player missions, stealth elements, and the incorporation of a console multiplayer deathmatch mode.

GoldenEye 007 was followed by a spiritual successor, Perfect Dark, also developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64. A reimagining of the game, also titled GoldenEye 007, was published by Activision and released for the Wii and Nintendo DS in 2010, and later re-released as GoldenEye 007: Reloaded for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 the following year.