MEL Magazine has published a special feature on the development of GoldenEye 007, one of the most popular and mature Nintendo 64 titles published by Nintendo at that time.

During the development of GoldenEye 007, Nintendo was very worried that the violence in the game “looked too real” due to the amount of killing in the game. The company asked the developers to remind people that James Bond is fictional and even wanted to include a scene of having Bond visit a hospital and shake hands with everyone he had shot in the game.

“Edmonds: In some of the original testing, there were huge gouts of rendered blood boiling out of enemies when you shot them. So this got toned down a lot to just brief flashes of red. There was some worry about leaving the red markings on enemies where you had shot them, but luckily that stayed in. There was also some attempt with the front-end sequences to impart a bit of a filmic feel — to show that all the characters in the game who you’re going round shooting aren’t actually real, and they aren’t actually dying, they’re just characters in a video game!”

This shows how worried Nintendo was at that time about their family-friendly image, but it looks like they have crossed the bridge with releases such as Bayonetta 2 and Devil’s Third in recent years.

If you’re interested, you can read the full feature here.

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