Eurogamer Has A Fantastic Oral History Of N64 Cult Classic Perfect Dark
Here’s a great oral history of Perfect Dark featuring 10 of the game’s original designers.
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Here’s a great oral history of Perfect Dark featuring 10 of the game’s original designers.
Although GoldenEye is probably the most beloved first-person shooter to ever come out of the Nintendo 64 era (and maybe even the best shooter of the ‘90s overall), Perfect Dark holds a special place in the hearts of Nintendo fans. The spiritual sequel to GoldenEye, Perfect Dark was Rare’s last hurrah on the console and one where the British developer pulled out all the stops.
Perfect Dark was the most technically ambitious game on the N64. It had textures, graphics, and lighting that put GoldenEye to shame–so much so that it required the N64 Expansion Pak in order to even play the main campaign. But even with the Expansion Pak, critics noted that Perfect Dark’s frame rate was even worse than GoldenEye’s, and at times it was downright atrocious.
Still, Perfect Dark was critically acclaimed and sold well near the end of the N64’s lifespan. Ten years later, it got a remaster for the Xbox 360 that solved much of the game’s technical issues while improving on the original. Ten years after that, we get an oral history on Eurogamer that described Perfect Dark’s tumultuous birth.
Eurogamer spoke to 10 former Rare devs that worked on Perfect Dark as well as Nintendo of America producer Ken Lobb to get the true story of just how Rare created their N64 masterpiece. The only word that can describe it was “turmoil,” according to developer Duncan Botwood, not the least due to the entire GoldenEye team up and leaving halfway through development.
Then there were the technical issues, realizing that the game was so huge that a standard N64 simply couldn’t come close to running it at a reasonable framerate, and then the many many glitches that needed ironing out. The list goes on.
Read the full story over on Eurogamer, but make sure you’ve got some free time first.
Source: Eurogamer
Link Source : https://www.thegamer.com/eurogamer-oral-history-perfect-dark/