GoldenEye 007

In the 80s and 90s, James Bond's video games failed to live up to the giddy thrills of his films. That all changed when British studio Rare unleashed GoldenEye 007 in 1997. In basements and college dorms across the world, friends bumped shoulders while shooting, knifing, exploding, and slapping each other's digital faces in the Nintendo 64 game that would redefine the modern first-person shooter genre.

But GoldenEye's success was far from a sure thing. For years of development, GoldenEye's t...