When Goldeneye 007 came out for the N64 I, like many people, simply wanted to play it because I really liked the movie. James Bond was back! As far as movie tie-in games go, they usually suck, but Goldeneye as an exception to that well established rule.
My friends and I rented it the weekend it came out and for the first few days just took turns playing the single player campaign. It wasn't until we were at Statue Park that we took a break and decided to try out the multiplayer.
Talk about mind-blown...
The three of us stayed up all night playing multiplayer over and over. It sparked what would become a ritual. Every week we would try to get together at a friend's house and play this game all night, or even multiple days, playing multiplayer matches.
This would go on from Goldeneye's release in 1997 and continue on into the early 2000s with the release of Perfect Dark, the spirtual successor to Goldeneye.
In University, when we had migrated on to Perfect Dark, we had some new friends over to play. Within a few minutes we realized a glaring issue. They didn't follow the rules.
What are "the rules", you ask? For us, playing Goldeneye and PD required some gentlemanly directions, if you will. For example, in a game that included proximity or remote mines every player had a few minutes to plant mines before the fighting actually began. This allowed for maximum chaos and a level a strategization.
Another rule that everyone seems to agree on is that no player can use Odd Job, or in the case of Perfect Dark, the Grey Aliens. They were too damned short!
Although there were many random rules that we'd set for different game types, there was a golden rule that could never be broken. Doing so would result in having to forfeit a kill to the player you wronged: No killing an unarmed player.
This rule is the one that really threw some of our other friends off. To them, finding a player unarmed was totally fair game and it was imcumbent upon yourself to get armed as quickly as possible. In our world, you had a grace period to find a weapon, as sometimes you could spawn in an area with nothing available. You couldn't abuse that and, say, run around without a weapon and expect no one to kill you. You had to try and find one and if one was near you and you didn't pick it up, you could be killed on sight.
I'm not even sure how our rules were established. It was an organic thing. Like I mentioned, many involved certain gametypes we'd created ourselves, but rules like the golden rule, probably stemmed out of some level of "fair play".
I've heard that back in the arcade days there was an unspoken rule in something like Street Fighter II that certain moves were outlawed, like the throw maneuver that could half a players health bar in an instant.
Did you have any rules like this when you played games with your friends? Any personal rules you placed on yourself? I'd love to hear them in the comments!
Peace,
Surf
I never really had any multiplayer rules to my knowledge. But I remember one match of Goldeneye that had two people slapfighting because both had run out of ammo shooting at eash other and another guy rolled up with a Magnum and killed them both with one shot.
Haha, that's pretty awesome.
We had a lot of bitchin' gametypes, too. One I loved was a game in Perfect Dark where the only weapon on the map was the handgun, with a scope, and combat boosts were everywhere. You'd take a boost, which made everything go in slow-motion, and everyone would fight it out Matrix-style.
I will agree that we had those rules. The only one we didnt have was the time to place mines. On a side note, the G5 building with all mines was always loads of fun to play.
Definitely!
We always enjoyed prox mines in the Facility as well. It was amazing where you could hide some of them, haha.
We didn't have too many constant conduct rules in Goldeneye, but I almost always played as Jaws, even if someone was being a jerk and picked Oddjob.
I always went for the Helicopter Pilot for some reason.
so did my roommate at the time. I love killing that pilot. 
Uuuhhhh ... there was this one time I kept beating everyone in line at an arcade by just rapid pressing buttons using Yoshimitsu in Tekken; so basically I was more like one of your asshole new friends. lol
We did have a rule in Goldeneye though: physically abuse the motherfucker that kept getting a hold of the golden gun, especially if he was the one that suggested it be allowed.
Oh, (Pile On) The Man with the Golden Gun was definitely staple for us as well.
One hit kills - slaps only. Fantastic.
NO DOUBT!
I read that when Goldeneye came out college scores plummeted or something. We had some similar rules like no odd job. The main one was no looking on other player's screens. I can't say how many times we would scream out stop looking at my screen! lol. Goldeneye's multiplayer was so much fun!
Haha, I can totally see that! We also discourage watching another player's screen, especially when planting mines.
This was the best Multi-player ever!! I miss it, I wish I had the game but I played it at a friends house YEARS ago and we were up all night as well playing it. So much fun.
It was the best!
It also had an awesome campaign as well, with lots of cheats you could unlock via achievements. I had them all, which was so difficult. What sucks is that my sister loaned out my copy to a friend of hers years ago and I never got it back. I bought another one, but I don't have the heart to unlock all the cheats again.
It looks like we followed the same rule. If we were playing anything other than one-hit kills, you could not go after an unarmed player unless they attacked you. It was unsportsmanlike and those who broke that rule were hunted by everyone for the rest of the game.
As for some other rules we played by, you couldn't use auto-aim and the map was always turned off. Oddjob was acceptable, though, only because of the hilarious moments he created (my brother would always use him for melee during OHK matches).