Digital Tales

Welcome to Digital Tales, VideoGamer.com’s latest feature where we reminisce about a special moment in our gaming life that’s proved unmoveable in our memory banks. So whether it’s an unbelievable frag in Halo 3, a quite stupendous moment in World of Warcraft or simply a moment in a classic RPG where we couldn’t help but shed a tear, Digital Tales will recount the best anecdotes about the games that made us smile. And to get the ball rolling, Deputy Editor Wesley Yin-Poole remembers completing one level in particular within legendary FPS GoldenEye 007 that’s proved to be one of his all-time gaming highlights.

Back in the day, games used to get me quite upset. So upset in fact that I used to lose it slightly. I’d work myself up into a bit of a frenzy, usually culminating in me head-butting my wonderfully tough TV. Many games would make me do this. One of them was GoldenEye 007 on the N64.

Not because I found the gameplay frustrating or anything. Oh no. I absolutely adored the game, as did everyone else at the time. It was the rock hard cheat unlocking objectives that used to set me off. How hard were they? Absolutely rock hard.

All involved speeding through the game’s wonderfully designed levels, most demanded the 00 Agent difficulty setting. Most of the time you wouldn’t have time to actually kill anyone. Instead you’d run-strafe about like a headless chicken, initiate mini objectives, take out security cameras, open doors, power down installations, then bomb it to a lift while dodging fire from 5000 guards. Thrilling, but also very frustrating.

Which brings me nicely on to my digital tale. Remember the Control level? The one that required you to protect sexy computer hacker Natalya from endless rifle-wielding bad guys as she hacks into a computer network? Sure you do. You had to protect her then bomb it towards an elevator and ultimate safety. It was tough stuff. Natalya couldn’t take much pain, and the guards came rushing in from multiple directions. In short, it was like trying to protect a honey pot from a swarm of bees.

To unlock the Infinite Ammo cheat, you had to finish Control on Secret Agent difficulty in under 10 minutes. Now this sounds like you had a lot of time, but you didn’t. The level was a long, drawn out affair, which made it even more frustrating when I would successfully protect Natalya, get towards the end, have the lift in sight and then get killed by a million bullets, each one lodging themselves into my back.

I tried unsuccessfully to unlock Infinite Ammo for two weeks. Two whole weeks during the school summer holidays. I would wake up, and have a try. I would keep trying till lunch. I would have lunch while trying. I would think about trying while having dinner. And then I would stay up half the night trying again. I tried and tried and tried for two weeks. Each time I would invest 10 minutes of my life, get excruciatingly close to the lift, then watch in horror as James Bond inevitably got shot to pieces. Every time, so close, and yet so far.

And then I did it. Somehow, without expecting to, I did it, about three in the morning and after a fortnight of effort. I had dreamed of this moment. Of punching the air in victory, of jumping up and down in celebration, of stripping off and running down my street, arm aloft as if I was Alan Shearer and had just scored the winner in the Euro 96 final at Wembley. And yet I didn’t. I didn’t do anything. I couldn’t make a sound. I just sat there in silence, calmly put down the N64 pad and sighed. This was the greatest gaming moment in my life, something I had been working towards for what seemed like the entire summer. And I just felt numb.

I checked the cheat had been unlocked, turned the N64 off and went to sleep. Anti-climactic yes. But I’ll never forget that particular digital tale.