MundoRare

Mission 5: Severnaya

[Surface II]

• It seems that some soviet soldiers have fun as if they were kids. If the first time we got to Severnaya we saw miniatures of Bond’s bike and a car from St. Petersburg level, on this occasion, inside one of the huts we’ll find an helicopter that’s just exactly the same as the one we have to destroy near the end of the mission using a mine. If we shot the miniature, it’ll fall to the ground causing a massive explosion, as if it were trying to mimic the effects of the real model related with that explosive fate. Anyway, as it’s GoldenEye, it doesn’t seem too weird watching ordinary items blowing up spectacularly. After all, it’s not as weird as a wooden chair exploding as if it was a hand grenade. Also, if there’s an enemy close to you, it’s never a bad thing to have a little explosion caused by a pair of tables and a lamp, don’t you think?

[Bunker II]

• After leaving the cell, if we go right, we’ll find a well covered by a grating. At the end of the corridor there’re various knives that can be reached using the magnetised watch. Of course, this won’t be a huge discovery for the vast majority of GoldenEye’s players, but it’s very interesting for the ones who didn’t know of their existence, as the level gets a little bit hard if we don’t use those knives.
• Another obvious detail: the VHS tape that keeps the security cam records has the same cover as the VHS tape of the film GoldenEye, starring Pierce Brosnan.
• Nobody has ever asked himself why Bond keeps throwing knives instead of simply stabbing the enemy? It may be programmer’s caprice, but in fact he also uses to throw them on the silver screen. In Diamonds are Forever (1971), Connery kills one of Blofeld’s henchmen by throwing him various scalpels. In For your Eyes Only (1981), Roger Moore killed an enemy shooting him a climbing instrument similar to a knife. In fact, Roger Moore spends a lot of time disguised as a knife thrower in Octopussy (1983), where he also kills another guy by throwing a knife. Instead, Bond has never killed an enemy on the silver screen by stabbing him.
• The magnetised watch that Bond used in this level is based in the one that appears in Live and Let Die (1973). Roger Moore used its abilities many times during that film for things as usual as picking a spoon, as strange as attracting a boat, or as useful as getting the zips down the dress of Miss Caruso.

Mission 6: St. Petersburg

[Statue]

• As in Facility, dialogues change due to the situation. Alec will say different things if when we meet him we’re unarmed or carrying a weapon. If we don’t have any weapon, Trevelyan will laugh at us for doing that. On the other hand, if we have some king of weapon equipped, he’ll tell us to put it away.
• Using the ‘Fast Animation’ cheat, the enemies will be able to reach and attack Bond even in the introduction sequence of the level.
• When you get close to the entrance at the beginning of the level, it’s possible to hear the sound of a helicopter. This noise comes from the same helicopter that carries the black box we have to find to complete the stage, but it shouldn’t be there yet. It is though. In fact, the helicopter is waiting for his appearing time outside the park, a place Bond can’t reach. That place is accessible using GameShark codes and it’s possible to see both the helicopter and the black box. A gamer without any modifications on his cartridge can also discover this thanks to the noise.
• Originally, this level was also available in Multiplayer. Due to N64 limitations they were forced to drop it. Anyway, Rare’s official website has stated that every level had been tested for multiplayer, but only remained those that allowed fluid gaming.

[Archives]

• Posters spread through the level are real soviet propaganda, and some of them clearly show Marx or Stalin.
• Although they’re not extremely hard too find, there are two hidden passages on this level that are really helpful to lose the soldiers or to ambush an enemy. One of them joins two twin corridors that lead to the upper windows zone, and the other is hidden behind a pile of boxes and leads us to a room guarded by various men in black. You have to press B in front of the entrance walls to open them, and of course these hidden tunnels are also available on the multiplayer version of this level.

[Streets]

• One of the mysterious discarded characters that could have been available on the multiplayer mode may have belonged to this level. We are talking about the St. Petersburg guard. This agent of the local police department was possibly part of the multiple obstacles we find on the streets of St. Petersburg while we drive our big green tank. In the original GoldenEye film, Bond has to face many Russian police cars during the tank chase. Maybe the Rare guys thought about including this in the videogame, but in the end they chose to commend the task of stopping 007 only to the well-known military soldiers, leaving aside the Russian police.

[Depot]

• Through this level there are dozens of graffiti on the containers and the walls surrounding us. However, one of those is more unusual than the rest and is a classical detail on Rare games. Near the station where Trevelyan’s train is waiting, we can find something like graffiti on a wall, but in fact it’s a torn poster that shows the Rare logo. Not much, but a classic from Rare games. The soviet authorities would had probably banned naked girls, so that's what we get. For everything else, we still have Duke Nukem. Forever.
• At the end of the level, when you open the train doors to get inside, we’ll find two soldiers waiting for us. If we chose to get on the other wagon without worrying about them, the ending sequence will get longer and we will see how Bond takes care of those guys.

[Train]

• When you get to the end of the first wagon, near the door where you get to the next one, there are two wooden boxes. If you destroy them, you’ll het a full RCP90 ready to be used. However, if you do this on 00 Agent, you’ll only get a gun.
• There’s a way to get to the room where Alec and Xenia are at the end of this level. To do so, we have to use a golden gun (we suggest using the Gold PP7) and kill Ourumov, Xenia, and Trevelyan fast and accurately. If you’ve done this right, the metal shutter that protect Alec and his partnet won’t go down immediately, giving us enough time to reach the end of the wagon (specially if we use ‘Turbo Mode’). You won’t be rewarded if you succeed, you’ll only get the superiority complex and auto-satisfaction that every videogame fan has when he/she achieves a new challenge. That, of course, if you don’t consider enough reward visiting the new ‘wagon’, completely useless and empty, behind the door in the back of Xenia and Trevelyan.
• After killing Ourumov, if we get near Xenia or Alec (or even if we kill them, as it’s also possible as you may have noticed) before the metal shutter is down, we’ll have more time to escape as the countdown will begin later.