“Pistols on Licence to Kill! No Oddjob! Isn’t there an option to disable the body armour?”

 
Hear that? That’s the sound of gamers talking. And not through a headset which sounds like they’re holding an angry bee in their mouth as they do so. About which game? Goldeneye 007. Granted, Rare’s masterpiece/fluke is now a jerky and unplayable mess, but at its time of release, it laid down both the technical and social foundations of split-screen multiplayer gaming. So why have these foundations been abandoned, and why has nobody returned to build a party house upon them?

 
Partly, it’s obvious. Consoles this generation have been adopting PC-like architecture. Online functionality, hard drives, and USB peripheral support defines what type of games can (and for the sake of competition with their PC relatives), shall be developed for them. Unlike Goldeneye 007, a representative of when console multiplayer was in its infant and experimental stage, this new type of multiplayer game is bold and self-assured of its now-familiar technological surroundings. Goldeneye 007 was tentative and sometimes damn lucky in its presentation of genius multiplayer moments: arenas accepted as masterpieces of minimalism actually arose because Rare were unsure of what the N64 could and couldn’t handle technically at such an early stage in its life; a peerless analogue stick aiming system was added merely to disguise the game’s last minute change from an on-rails shooter to a fully controllable one. Despite its hit-and-miss approach to multiplayer however, everything seemed fresh and exciting. But now, with multiplayer being an entirely conventional, generic and occasionally freestanding aspect of console gaming, this freshness has evaporated. The split-screen influence defined by Goldeneye 007 is being drowned out, on the one hand, by its increasingly generic online successors, and on the other, by family-orientated casual gaming.

 
But what about the second aspect of split-screen: the social aspect? Has that too been left by the wayside? The way in which games are structured helps to define how their players react to them. While the most po-faced of shooters, by their very nature, cannot fail to raise a snigger, Goldeneye 007 was often purposefully self-depreciating. It comedically tarnished Bond’s trademark soave sophistication with its optional giant bobble heads, super speed and rainbow-coloured paintball splatterings. The game’s ambition and resulting high quality may have been restrained by its technical limitations, but its deliberate comedy transcends the incidental laughing at graphical drawbacks such as stilted character movement, non-animated hand-slappery and face-mapped gurning guards. This has allowed Goldeneye 007 to stand the test of time, and grow old gracefully (or perhaps disgracefully, given its wacky antics!) Compared to the ultra-serious antiterrorism of the Tom Clancy series, this Bond can still hold onto its individuality.

 
All this adds up to one thing, essential for any multiplayer game. It’s fun. Online clans may have their own humour, forged by countless incidents and in-jokes, but they’re mostly self-created laughs. Goldeneye 007 invited you to have a laugh at itself, and in playing it, each other. In today’s very serious business of big budgets, guaranteed returns and ultra-realism, that’s something that’s sorely missed. One last time:

 
“Oh, doesn’t civilian number 2 look exactly like Victor Meldrew?”
 
All this, and not a single scream of a foul bee-mouthed teen bugger.