If Miyamoto had been listened to during the development GoldenEye 007 on N64, the shooter would have had a very different take on death, with all enemies actually appearing alive and well at the end of the game.
The revelation came during a GameCity talk from GoldenEye co-designer Martin Hollis, who also revealed that the the ground-breaking FPS was originally designed to feature graphic violence.
“Bond is a violent franchise and making that fit with Nintendo, which is very much family-friendly, was a challenge,” Hollis said. “For a while we had some gore, it was just a flipbook of about 40 textures, beautifully rendered gore that would explode out. When I saw it the first time, I thought it was awesome, it was a fountain of blood, like that moment in the Shining when the lift doors open. Then I thought, hmm, this might be a bit too much red.”
Although the gore was cut from the game, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamto sent a fax to Rare towards the final stages of GoldenEye’s development suggesting the violence be toned down even further.
“One point was that there was too much close-up killing – he found it a bit too horrible. I don’t think I did anything with that input,” said Hollis. “The second point was, he felt the game was too tragic, with all the killing. He suggested that it might be nice if, at the end of the game, you got to shake hands with all your enemies in the hospital.”
Whilst the hospital scene wasn’t included, Hollis said the credits sequence which introduced all the characters as actors was implemented to show “people that this was not real killing”.
Source: The Guardian
