GoldenEye Hackers Find Hidden FPS Level

Thanks to Spong for its news story revealing cart hackers have found a secret test level in classic N64 first-person shooter GoldenEye, more than 6 years after the seminal FPS was released. The developers, Rare, had previously claimed that the secret level, Citadel, "...was a very rough test level designed during the early stages of multiplayer mode. It's not in the finished game in any shape or form." However, although "rough and loosely textured", the Detstar GoldenEye Project has found the level hidden in the production version of the game, and notes that "it's possible to visit this rumored arena with Gameshark codes."

Holy crap

[Mukaikubo]

I wonder if it's on my ROM, too... gah! Don't look at me like that, I can't go two hundred miles just to get back to my N64!

bad website

[capoccia]

either slashdotting or poorly written asp. either way, all i get from the link [spong.com] is:

Microsoft VBScript compilation error '800a03ee'

Expected ')'

/ncld/styleGuide.inc, line 98

inStr( hostIPs, ", 82.43.116.78" ) > 0 _
^

Re:Looks like Perfect Dark

[hambonewilkins]

Agreed, it does like the "villa" multi-player level from Perfect Dark a little bit. I do find it weird that in the tight confines of an N64 cartridge they would have left in this unused level. Apparently, however, they thought they had removed it, according to quotes on that page. So, how does a whole level (albeit incomplete) slip through? I understand it's not loadable and is missing huge chunks but its still there. It reminds me of the hidden military secrets from the film "Cloak and Dagger"...

There's nothing cooler

[IshanCaspian]

than finding some uber-secret in an old videogame. I often wonder why we don't see more developers putting uber-secrets in their games...the search for stuff can keep people interested in a game for years. Look at that little room in echo base in Shadows of the Empire...I must've spent days running around, looking for some kind of clue as to how to get up there...

Other hidden levels from Rare?

[CyberVenom]

I played Diddy King Racing by Rare when it came out and finished all the levels I could find. (all the areas, plus space, plus everything again in mirror.)
During the ending credits it lists the best times from the guys at Rare on each of the tracks, so in time-trial mode, I wenth through and beat EVERY SINGLE ONE in the hopes that I would unlock an ubersecret.
Well, nothing new unlocked. But on the track select screen something that has always caught my eye my is that at the bottom-right, there is space for one more track, and if you move the view around fast enough close to it, you can see the corner of a frame around what appears to be another level. I always wondered if maybe there was a secret there. I never saw any mention of it online though.
Maybe GoldenEye wasn't the only Rare game with an ubersecret?

-CyberVenom

this is interesting

[sbma44]

But it brings back my conflicted position on Goldeneye. On the one hand, it introduced a lot of my friends to the FPS genre, and I'm glad I can play games against them now.

On the other hand, it's one of the worst multiplayer FPS's ever made. Unbearably slow, with ugly, undifferentiated levels, unbalanced weapons and impossible-to-see powerups, it was a miserable pain to play after having played quake 1 or even doom deathmatch. Try as I might I couldn't get my roommates in college to put down the N64 controller and play a real FPS.

In general, deathmatch in any FPS is incredibly fun -- so I guess to the uninitiated, deathmatch in 007 seemed like the greatest thing ever. I just wish I could've convinced them that it could be even better.

Re:not surprising...

[hambonewilkins]

After looking around it seems as though after someone cracked Goldeneye and found the push button codes they removed them from Perfect Dark. To this day, no one has found the push-button codes for Perfect Dark so it may be safe to assume they aren't there.

Re:bad website

[sabNetwork]

Man, what stupid developers. Look at the included file that the error reported. It's world-readable. And it has some pretty revealing information about how their "security" system works.

I'm not going to post specific details, but anyone with more than 30 seconds on their hands can figure it out.
--

back in my cheating days...

[ooby]

I was trying to crack the passwords on Rock 'n Roll racing. I was unable to start myself off with loads o' cash, but I did figure out what password locations defined the characters. I was able to then start with Olaf (before I found out there was an easier way). I also uncovered a viable password that gave you an unidentified character. Its face was the shadow of the planet's boss, and when the announcer ever said anything about me (i.e. Olaf light's him up), it just skipped the name. I'm not quite sure what this bug-character's attributes were. The major downfall with this discovery was that all of my friends were buying Playstations because the price had dropped to $200.

Re:There's nothing cooler

[Anonymous Coward]

Use the debug cheat in Shadows of the Empire to give yourself the jetpack in that level. There's nothing in that room, though. It's just there so it looks like there's a control room over the hangar most likely. You can do a lot of crazy stuff with that code, like fly over the mountains in the Battle of Hoth, or take out AT-ATs Sun Crusher style (Jedi Academy reference for the fans there).

The Rogue Squadron games tend to have well hidden stuff in them. The original Rogue Squadron for N64 had the Naboo Starfighter in it. The ship had never been seen before when the game was released, and it stayed hidden until The Phantom Menace was released (or thereabouts). Then the two-part code was unleashed and fanboys like me played through the game again using it. It was cool. :)

Rogue Leader had some well-kept secret codes, too. The Buick, for example, which was an unlockable vehicle in the first game (with a passcode), was said to only exist in Rogue Leader as a piece of debris in the Ison Corridor level. Well, fairly recently a code was discovered that replaced one of the A-Wings with the Buick. Very cool.

I'm looking forward to the treats in Rebel Strike that will probably become public knowledge sometime next year. Maybe you can replace Luke or Han in the on-foot missions with members of the staff or something. I'm sure the Buick is in there somewhere, too.

You're insane

[caitsith01]

Let me preface this by saying that I am an avid FPSer and I have played Quake 1, UT (the original) and QIII very extensively, and more recently Counter Strike, MOHAA and similar on-line games. I spend a lot of time playing QIII on a LAN.

Let me also say that Goldeneye is, along with Quake III, the game I have had the most fun playing in a multiplayer FPS environment. With all due respect I must suggest that if you felt that it wasn't a serious FPS, it may have been due to the company you kept. I played Goldeneye obsessively for about 4 years with three other guys who were all big FPS players too. We knew every nook, every cranny, every angle to bounce a grenade, the sound of every door, the likelihood of scoring a kill with every weapon. It became too impossibly tense to play with just two people, because we were all within such a narrow band of skill and knowledge that the score would invariably end up at 9-10 or in many cases 10-10 in deathmatches. We played so many tense games with prox mines, so many crazy grenade launcher shootouts, so many RCP-90 bullet-fests that it's actually kinda disturbing.

Granted, the single player levels were at times completely impossibly hard. Granted, some of the multiplayer levels weren't great. Granted, the graphics are poor by PC standards. But some of the levels were simply glorious - stack, archives, temple, facility - wonderful, wonderful levels with just the right distribution of weapons and spawn points. In a level like the stack, the simple graphics were actually important to the gameplay as they let you see your opponent even in blocky Nintendovision. I'll never forget the enraged screams of newbies playing with us in hideous 20-19-0-0 slaughters of the innocents; the glory of a perfect grenade lob in the temple, dropping on the victim from seemingly out of nowhere (id should learn from the Goldeneye grenade launcher, what a weapon); the joys of rampant screen cheating or shooting blind using the radar.

I must also ask - did you play the standard deathmatch, or one-hit kills? We decided to try the latter early on, and from that day forth there was never any question of which we would play. With one hit deaths the interesting variations of the different weapons really becomes a factor; grenades and rockets become altogether more tricky; and the weapons capable of shooting through walls and doors vastly more important. In this mode the game also showed what a great controller the N64 controller really is: in facility we were able to hit specific letters in the warning signs at the other end of the corridoor using the magnum.

As time has passed (and the original gang of Goldeneye or 'bond-age' freaks has dispersed) I play it less and less; nonetheless, I would trade Far Cry, UT2K3, MOHAA, Counterstrike, all of them, for Goldeneye. Ah, memories.

Thus endeth the rantings.

OT VideoGame Secrets!

[Anonymous Coward]

...for the serious geek that delights in these sorts of novelties: If you haven't already, grab a copy of MetEdit. (It's a decent Metroid{NES} editor. Zophar's Domain [zophar.net] should have it.) Read through the guy's help/faq file or just look at the map... There are actually some rooms in the game that you can't get to! (I think the devs forgot to add connecting hallways and later forgot about the rooms altogether?) It's seriously such a strange thing to discover like 15 years later! The author also solves a few other mysteries, like the wacky alternate worlds you can get to using that wacky up & down door method.

Re:OT VideoGame Secrets!

[Anonymous Coward]

The "hidden rooms" in Metroid were actually not rooms at all, but other things stored on the cartridge. Due to the way they stored data, you could wander into, for example, a music file, and the game engine would actually interpret that data as part of the map and draw it on the screen. It's been a while since I read about it, so the details are kind of fuzzy, but that's the general idea.

Lots of games have undiscovered secrets....

[Fluff the Tiger]

Most games have cheats and hidden levels that are probably never discovered... my own personal experience of this was about 10 years ago, when for my birthday as a little boy I got spiderman for the Sega Master System. I had a game gear, so I had to play the game through a third party sms to gg convertor( remember those?) . Unfortunately for me, the power cable into my game gear was the wrong size, so any big movement would make the gg short out, sort of like that way when you hold the light switch half-way between on and off. Anyways...while on one of the last levels of spiderman i accidently moved the power cable, the light of the GG fli ckered on and off, until I was presented with a level select screen ( i have no idea how this happened, and have been unable to replicate it) - i chose the last level and completed the game :) Note that on Gamefaqs there has never been any mention of this level select - but by sheer chance , I have seen it - if this one game has it then im sure many , many others have cheats that have never been discovered too :)