To develop GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64, Rare's development team kept in close contact with the movie studio, which was simultaneously working on the motion picture. In fact, the development team actually visited the sets several times to collect photos, blueprints and diagrams from the movie to make the game even more authentic.

Once the team had the materials they needed, the next step was to create wire-frame models of all the different locations. To do this, they used SGI computers and Nintendo's custom NINGEN development software for the Nintendo 64.

Photo from the set NINGEN wire-frame model

As you can see from the photos, some of these wire frames were quite complex. Once the wire frame models established the geometry of the structures, textures were added to fill everything in. Rare once again demonstrated their technical ability by creating some of the most gorgeous and realistic textures yet presented on the Nintendo 64.

NINGEN textured polygon model Screenshot from N64 version

Some of these textures were even taken from digital photos of items on the movie set, which added even further to their authenticity.

Once the locations were built the long process of tweaking them so that they were fun to play in, and adding enemies in strategic positions, began. As usual, Rare's insistence on quality meant that this process was not rushed. In addition to endless adjusting of the level design, Rare actually completely redid the motion capture for every enemy character several times in order to get it just right.

To illustrate the authenticity of the items and settings in GoldenEye 007, I've created a gallery of photographs that compare photos of the objects from the movie sets with how they appear in the game. Enjoy!