MundoRare

Mission 2: Severnaya

[Surface]

• We can find here the bike that could have been included on the previous level (Runway). Specifically it’s located above the table inside a house with a security cam on its door. The bike went from being a real vehicle to a mere toy on a desk. This way, Rare guys let us see what once was thought to be a playable vehicle in GoldenEye. Still, just like you don't go down the cliff with the tank, they never thought of letting the bike do the jump like in the movie.
• Inside the hut that keeps the safe, there’s a table with a red book and a military cap. We can also see a wooden box not too far from the table where those items are. If we destroy that box, various red books will appear.

[Bunker]

• Every briefing from MI6 is different from level to level. Everyone, except the ones in the first Severnaya mission: 'Surface I' and 'Bunker I'. Both share the same briefing as an exception. It’ll be a pity if this happened because the original document for 'Bunker I' was lost due to a misunderstanding at Twycross.
• One of the strangest bugs in GoldenEye can be found in this level, but it’s hard to discover. If you blow remote control mines above the televisions hanging in the control room, that can freeze every animation in the game indefinitely. Bond will be able to still move in the stage, but enemies and moving targets will freeze in the air. Even if we shoot we’ll find the bullet in the air without being able to reach its target. Just guess where the Wachowski Brothers took their idea of bullet time from.
• Another weird bug in this level makes various enemies having many face textures on their heads. This is another hardly-seen bug, but a really strange one. Both this and the freezing bugs can be activated on the two Bunker stages that can be found on the game.
• The camera that Bond has to use in this level is the same that George Lazenby uses in the film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Lazenby used this camera for the first time in 1969, and Roger Moore used it a second time in Moonraker (1979). The camera Moore used had the 007 logo that can be seen on the GoldenEye game.
• As inviting as it may look in many occasions, we should not kill Boris. After all, this noisy computer guy is still a civilian and Bond shouldn’t harm him. However once he has typed the secret password ‘KNOCKERS’ on the computer he’ll be useless and we can at last kill him without failing any mission objective. A slip-up or maybe unconfessed hate against that lousy character?

Mission 2: Kirghizstan

[Silo]

• In one of the missile silos we can find a platform which leads to a door watched by a soldier. Somehow it’s impossible to reach it. The guard is also ignoring everything that surrounds him, as he isn’t able to get to the normal path in the level. There’s no explanation for this, but maybe it could have been an objective that was finally dropped from the game.
• The door above the silo where the soldier and the unreachable platform are can be opened. To do so, we have to get to the silo and look at the ceiling so we can see the upper part of the rocket and the closed doors. Then we have to press ‘Start’ and select ‘Unarmed’, when we press ‘Start’ again those doors will open and close after a while. Don't ask why, they just do it. Although it's not that odd considering that the place is a damn launch silo, isn't it?
• Just at the beginning of this stage we can see a huge vent hidden behind one of the rocket’s propellants. We may think that reaching that point is impossible, but there’s a little ladder visible from our position that allow us to descend from the platform where we are to the missile supporting base. However, as much as we try, we won’t be able to go down that ladder, as Bond won’t recognise it even being there. This is maybe another little change that was made by the programmers. Now only they know what purpose did the ladder have in the beginning.
• On N64’s early life, seeing images of the games on magazines or advertisement while they were being developed was a habitual strange routine. There’s an advertisement for GoldenEye that shows an image of the silo that has a little detail that can’t be found in the final version of the game. On the left side of the photograph we can see a metal structure that could have possibly been used to carry a lift or supporting a ladder. Maybe that was the route to get to the unreachable platform hidden in this level.
• General Ourumov (when he was still a Colonel) is waiting at the end of this level to ambush us. Theoretically, the only thing we can do is taking cover and shot his guards until he decides to flee. However, if we hit several targets, Ourumov will lose his briefcase while leaving. And something else, if we kill him (something possible using the Golden Gun, for example), he’ll give us the briefcase and a card-shaped key. These items were part of a former objective that couldn’t make it to the final game, but somehow they weren’t erased and we can still get them nowadays (even if they don’t do anything else but feeding conspiracy theories on the Net). The briefcase could possibly make reference to one of James Bond’s most famous gadgets, the multi-task briefcase from From Russia with Love (1963). And, as in the film, it should be opened on a very particular way, that we will never know in the game.

Mission 4: Monte Carlo

[Frigate]

• On the briefing Moneypenny gives us before starting the mission, she says that Xenia Onatopp may be on the frigate. This makes sense if we remember the original scene in GoldenEye, where Xenia gets into the Frigate to impersonate the pilot and steal the helicopter. However, in the end we discover that there’s no trace of the steel thighs girl in the ship. This makes us think that probably, Moneypenny’s commentary makes reference to a dropped objective from an early version of the game. We also can’t forget the fact that one of the secret characters on the multiplayer mode is precisely the helicopter’s pilot wearing the same clothes he wears in the film. Although it’s not confirmed, it seems that the pilot is another character that was finally rejected from the final version of GoldenEye (as the female scientists, the civilians or the Moonraker Elite). Deleted characters that, even though, we can still see on the Multiplayer mode once they’ve been unlocked.
• We can find two narrow doors on both the right and the left side of the Frigate’s dock that lead to little balconies, as it can be seen from the outside. In the beginning those doors are locked, but if we follow the hostages after releasing them, they will be able to open and cross to the other side. However, it’s still too narrow for Bond to go through.
• There’s a programming glitch hard to find, and really weird, in this level. If we choose the “Tiny Bond” option and head to the first stairs that go below in the ship (near a pair of rooms with two hostages) we’ll be able to watch it. To make it happen we need to place ourselves in front of the stairs without going down. Then, we have to crouch down (R + down C) and keep walking as if we were to go down the stairs. The strange thing is that we won’t go down; instead we’ll be floating as if the floor continued, and we’ll get through the wall in front of us. From that point we’ll be out of the scenario and we’ll be able to see doors floating on the ocean’s surface. One of them can be opened, and if we do that we’ll be able to get into the level again and everything will be back to normal.
• The helicopter found on this level is called ‘Pirate’, but in the film it was called ‘Tiger’. Even more curious is the fact that the helicopter is an ‘Euro Chopper’ according to the original vehicle from the movie. This name belongs to an existent helicopter called ‘Eurocopter’. One of those ‘Eurocopters’ had a crash on Gorges de Nuria, located in Girona, Spain, on June 26th, 2001.
• Rare used the same device that Bond has to allocate on the helicopter in this level in Perfect Dark. In Joanna Dark’s futurist adventure, that device is an electronic sensor that has to be placed on a limousine with the same objective. The first time we saw this thing, however, was on DAM, in GoldenEye, with a totally different purpose.