After five years of development the GoldenEye mod built on the PC Source engine has officially dropped its beta tag. Team GoldenEye: Source has put countless hours into this project so they could update this most beloved N64 games. December 25, 2005, the first alpha release was launched with a mere four maps, seven weapons and three characters. A year later the GoldenEye: Source beta was released and along with it eight new maps, 10 new weapons and an additional two characters. On December 10, 2010 the development team released the final version of GoldenEye: Source with a total of 22 maps, 28 weapons,11 characters,  eight game modes and a partridge in a pear tree.

During the first two weeks of the alpha’s release GoldenEye: Source was downloaded over 65,000 times in a two week period. Since 2005 the beta had hundreds of thousands of downloads. Now that the title has officially launched their page saw over 21,000 visitors.

To get GoldenEye: Source, you can download it directly from their site hosted on the moddb website, though the developers have encouraged gamers to add it to torrent sites. Although the mod is free, Steam requires you to own at least one game that uses the Source engine. There are currently only three servers listed, but there appears to be a few more U.S. based ones coming and they are looking for other volunteers.

The game also requires Steam, a 1.2 GHz processor and 256 MB of RAM. If you are able to play any of the other Source based games, GoldenEye: Source will more than likely work. As for the graphics, they have been upgraded and in some areas trump those of the Wii’s new GoldenEye 007 remake. As you can see from the introductory video they kept the characters looking the same, but with a lot less boxy feel to it.

The GoldenEye: Source Project Lead, Jonathan Scott, helped build some of the characters and kept the project focused. Said Scott:

For those also complaining that this free game mod is lacking the single player mode there is good news. According to a comment Scott left on Reddit, the single player missions are likely to make their way to the game in a future release.

“I’m not sure which aspect of the project I like most, I think it might be modeling characters thats a real blast.”

Now that there is a free alternative to the recently released GoldenEye 007 game for the Wii, what is your next wishlist old school remake? Perhaps Conker’s Bad Fur Day, as there appears to be a new mod project to recreate the multiplayer game.

GoldenEye: Source is currently available for free on the PC.

Source: GoldenEye: Source