That damn Z-trigger on the N64 controller was starting to stick again. I’d been gripping it too tight during another marathon session of The World Is Not Enough, trying to line up the perfect headshot in the multiplayer mode that had basically consumed my evenings for the past month. My daughter was visiting from college, probably 2011 or so, and she’d found my old N64 collection while I was at work. “Dad, you have to try this Bond game,” she said when I got home. “It’s actually better than GoldenEye.”
Better than GoldenEye? That seemed like fighting words to someone who’d discovered that legendary game only a couple years earlier as part of my crash course in gaming history I’d missed. But she was insistent, had already set up the system on my TV, controller ready to go. I figured I’d humor her for twenty minutes, then get back to whatever construction paperwork was waiting for me.
Three hours later, I was still playing. The boat chase that opens the game had me hooked immediately – felt like directing my own action movie, which is something I never experienced with the older games I’d been catching up on. Most retro games from this era feel clunky when you come to them fresh, without nostalgia smoothing over the rough edges. This one didn’t. It felt smooth, intentional, like the developers actually knew what they were doing instead of just throwing technology at a movie license and hoping something good would happen.
See, when you’re discovering these games as an adult, you can tell pretty quickly when something’s been built on solid foundations versus when it’s held together with duct tape and good intentions. I work construction – I know the difference between structures that’ll last and ones that look impressive but won’t survive the first strong wind. The World Is Not Enough felt properly engineered in ways that a lot of movie tie-in games from that era definitely didn’t.
The single-player campaign follows Pierce Brosnan’s film pretty closely, but adds these brilliant touches that make you feel more involved in Bond’s world than just watching it. There’s this infiltration level at a nuclear facility where you actually have to think like a spy. Can’t just run in shooting everything that moves – tried that approach first, naturally, got massacred within thirty seconds. Instead, you’re crawling through ventilation shafts, using gadgets that feel purposeful rather than gimmicky, feeling genuinely clever when you disable security systems without alerting half the facility.
The gadgets were what really sold me on this game’s approach. Q’s workshop had clearly been busy – the decryptor looked like someone had taken a Game Boy and sent it to spy school, chunky and purposeful. The grappling watch wasn’t just there for show either. It opened up actual vertical gameplay, made levels feel three-dimensional in ways I hadn’t experienced in the other N64 games I’d been working through. And those X-ray specs… look, they were a bit ridiculous, but being able to see through walls to plan your approach? That was genuinely revolutionary stuff for a console shooter in 2000.
My daughter and I ended up in this epic multiplayer battle that lasted until probably 2 AM. Four-player split-screen on my 32-inch TV, quarters so small you’d practically need a magnifying glass to spot enemy players. We developed these elaborate rules on the spot – no camping in corners, no using certain characters because their hitboxes were basically cheating, and absolutely no screen-looking, though enforcing that rule when you’re sitting three feet apart proved basically impossible.
The weapon selection felt more varied and interesting than what I’d experienced in GoldenEye. The Wolfram P2K became my go-to – felt substantial in your hands, sounded proper through the N64’s audio system, packed enough punch to end arguments quickly. There was this Q-Laser that worked like a sci-fi sniper rifle, could cut through multiple enemies with one shot, which led to some pretty cinematic moments when you managed to line up three kills in a row.
Level design in multiplayer was genuinely brilliant. They’d learned from GoldenEye’s best maps while creating new spaces that encouraged different play styles. Underground felt like sneaking around an actual secret base – concrete corridors and industrial machinery where sound became tactical information. You’d hear footsteps echoing, know someone was approaching, and the tension would build perfectly. Masquerade was pure eye candy – this gorgeous ballroom setting where firefights felt like they belonged in an actual Bond film. Running gunfights between marble columns while classical music played through damaged speakers was about as close to directing your own action movie as you could get.
The graphics still hold up surprisingly well, at least artistically. Sure, technically the N64 was showing its age by 2000, but the character models had this chunky charm that somehow made everyone look recognizably Bond-universe without falling into that creepy uncanny valley territory that plagued a lot of games from this period. Sophie Marceau’s Elektra King looked enough like her film counterpart that you believed you were playing through the actual story rather than some generic spy knockoff.
Audio design was spot-on too. The N64’s sound chip could be pretty harsh when developers got lazy with it, but whoever handled audio for this game knew their way around the hardware. Explosions had proper weight behind them, gunfire echoed convincingly in different environments depending on whether you were indoors or outside. And the music… they’d taken David Arnold’s film score and adapted it perfectly for game pacing. Tension would build during stealth sections, then explode into full orchestral chaos during firefights.
I ended up tracking down my own copy after that weekend with my daughter. Couldn’t not own a game that had generated that many heated arguments and 2 AM gaming sessions. We probably put another hundred hours into multiplayer over the next year whenever she visited, developing increasingly elaborate tournament structures that would’ve impressed professional gamers.
The single-player campaign kept pulling me back too. Each level felt like a proper Bond set-piece, complete with that particular rhythm of stealth, action, and gadget-based problem-solving that makes you feel genuinely clever rather than just lucky. The difficulty curve was pitched perfectly – challenging without being punishing, demanding skill improvements without making you want to throw the controller at the wall.
What struck me most about The World Is Not Enough was how it represented this perfect moment when movie tie-in games could be genuinely excellent. No rushing to meet arbitrary release dates, no half-hearted ports between platforms, just developers who understood the source material and had enough time to do it justice. We haven’t seen many Bond games since that captured this particular magic – this balance between faithful adaptation and brilliant original gameplay.
That Z-trigger’s tactile feedback when you locked onto targets, the satisfying click when you switched between weapons… muscle memory that’s probably still buried somewhere in my hands twenty years later. Coming to this game without childhood nostalgia, I could appreciate how well-engineered the control scheme was, how naturally aiming felt even on that weird three-pronged N64 controller that everyone loves to mock.
The World Is Not Enough proved that lightning could strike twice in the same franchise with the right approach. Different developer, different take on the formula, same fundamental understanding of what makes Bond games work when they’re done properly. Pure class from start to finish.
Timothy discovered retro gaming at forty and never looked back. A construction foreman by day and collector by night, he writes from a fresh, nostalgia-free angle—exploring classic games with adult curiosity, honest takes, and zero childhood bias.
