GoldenEye 007
Nintendo | N64

It doesn't look like much now, but for many N64 owners, GoldenEye was THE game, on the same level as classics like Mario 64 and The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Certainly, it still holds up as one of the most perfect movie-to-game adaptations ever, drawing players into the movie and its characters in ways that Pierce Brosnan's furrowed brow never could. Hell, for a lot of us, this is what made us start paying attention to James Bond movies in the first place.

GoldenEye was proof not only that consoles could do decent first-person shooters, but that they could do unbelievably badass shooters with varied objectives and innovative ways to deal death to unimportant Russian henchmen. And as cool as the single-player was, the intense multiplayer deathmatches were the stuff of legends, giving players more modes, levels, weapons and characters than they knew what to do with.

So, yeah, you could say GoldenEye was a success. It was so successful, in fact, that 007 owner MGM/UA almost immediately went "Uh! Mine!" and snatched the rights back from Nintendo, leading to a long series of Bond games that have ranged from acceptable to carcinogenic. C'est la vie.