RickRollEye 64

About 10 years ago, I came across the image below. It’s a mixture of two things that were trending back then, RickRolling and James Bond: Quantum of Solace. I even had it as my desktop background for some time. Never did I think that it would actually become real, let alone playable on a Nintendo 64. Well, now it has become reality in the form of RickRollEye 64.

Appropriately released on April Fool’s Day 2019, RickRollEye 64 is a homebrewn hack of 007 Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64 made by Johnny Thunder over the course of 1 year and 4 months.

You can download the patch on the N64 Vault page for RickRollEye 64 for the latest version, or you can download a mirror on here, using password “johnnythunder”

In order to install it, you need to apply a patch using xdelta onto a 007 Goldeneye ROM with the name “GoldenEye 007 (U) [!].z64”. I won’t tell you how to get one of those though.

The hack changes several things from the original Goldeneye game. First of all, all the character models have changed. Pierce Brosnan has been replaced with Rick Astley, Alec Trevelyan has become Gerard Butler’s Leonidas from 300… You get the idea. The mod is based on internet culture jokes and memes.

The levels and objectives are pretty much the same, so there is some sense of familiarity when playing the game.

I only managed to get to the end of the third level so far, and it really is a hell of a ride. The story revolves around there being a whirlwind of memes that all have been united into the same universe, and it is up to Rick Astley to find Doc Brown and figure out what is going on.

There’s a great attention to detail all throughout the game, even the smallest things are changed. The weapon names, meme music remade in a goldeneye style, theRoblox ‘Oof’ sound effect when you kill someone… It makes going through the levels again a great pleasure.

Johnny Thunder even went far enough to do a face swap on all of the guards in RickRollEye to make them be friends and members of the N64 hacking community.

The only complaint that I have about RickRollEye is that there is some problems with the sound effects mixing with the music. You can see it in the video above, every time I shoot, there’s a skip in the background music. It can get pretty distracting when your’s gunning down dozens of guards at a time.

Overall this is a great mod to play and have some laughs with, I’m looking forward to seeing it through to the end. Only the dankest of all memes can survive.

For another great Goldeneye mod, have a look at GoldFinger 64.