The Case of the Cursed Cartridge: A Goldeneye 007 Story

Note: The following feature was written entirely by Adrian Madriz, one of our Goldeneye 007 contest winners.

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I seriously think that my physical copy of GoldenEye 64 was cursed.

Not cursed in a bad way mind you. It actually turned out to be quite handy on certain occasions. But there was no denying between me and my friends that there were some seriously strange and spooky things that happened around that game cartridge—things that might be explained by coincidence… or maybe demons?

Anyway, some context for your curious eyes. I bought my copy of GoldenEye in conjunction with my (then) best friend Giovanni. He payed for one half of the game, and I the other half. This would later turn out to be a decision that would lead to the end of our friendship as we simply couldn’t decide who was the “true” owner of the game. Petty I know, but this was no small matter. This was GoldenEye. And not just any copy of GoldenEye, the copy of GoldenEye that anyone would pay 10 times the amount that we paid for if they knew what it could do.

The way we found out that the game was cursed was pretty random. We had been playing the game fairly hardcore since the day it came out (August 26th 1997, a day I will never forget). At first he was definitely much better than I was, but very soon my skills caught up and we came to be so evenly matched that we averaged a 50-50 split in terms of our wins and losses to one another. And we would always come within a kill or two. It was pretty amazing how intimately we came to know each other through playing the game. I was usually able to predict what he would do well in advance of doing it, and he would do the same for me. We developed a system of communication through our actions in the game that didn’t even necessitate words, and when a rematch was in order, we both knew it. There was never any arguing over its justification. We just knew we couldn’t BS one another into doing anything, and so we didn’t even try. The way I write about it now almost makes me wish I had romantic relationships that worked that well. Too bad Giovanni lacked the requisite parts.

But I digress, back to the cursed game. So because we had basically grinded out a system that would predict the chances of who would win to a better 50:50 ratio than a coin flip, we decided one day to just try to predict whether something completely unrelated would happen depending on the outcome of the next match. We started small, trying to predict whether his mom would get home that day at 7 or 9 (for some reason she either came home at exactly 7PM or exactly 9PM, and not a minute in either direction) If I would win the match at 6:55, she would come home at 7 and if he would win she would come home at 9. We turned out to be pretty accurate. Too accurate. We started testing it out on other things, like whether or not Ms. Kubilion would assign us extra math problems, or if she would just stick to the problems in the lesson plan. That was such a random thing to predict that we never thought GoldenEye would be up to the task, but lo and behold, it turned out to be a better method than trying to get in sync with her menstrual cycle. The predictions would take on more elaborate variables as time went on, and we even came to start predicting the weather better than our local weather man (though admittedly, that was too easy since South Florida has a rainy season that can result in rain on an almost daily basis). As months went on, we even started predicting the outcomes of movies (whether or not they would suck) and political events. I’ll never forget 1998, at the height of the Lewinsky scandal, when I stood by Bill Clinton and said he wouldn’t have done something so stupid as to commit adultery as a sitting president, and Giovanni was like “Nope, nope, nope. He stuffed her like a Thanksgiving turkey.” (Giovanni loved quoting Jim Carey movies). The match that eventually decided what the prediction would be was somewhat of a draw. We both died at about the same time, though it registered as a kill for him first. Sometimes, I honestly don’t know if the game really knows what a genuine kill is. Of course, that depends on what my definition of “is” is. We were both definitely caught off guard by the cigar, though.

The tipping point for the curse came very early in our time with the game. 1997 was a big year for us Floridians in baseball because the Marlins had unexpectedly made it into the World Series as a wild card. I was never really into baseball, or sports in general, but that year a fever had taken over Miami unlike anything people had seen since the 72’ Dolphins (or so I hear). Naturally, I was also swept up in the furor, but Giovanni was not. He had family that lived in Cleveland, and they had indoctrinated him very early on as an Indians fan, and he was really hardcore about it too. He had their paraphernalia all over his bedroom and he wore an Indians t-shirt every single day that season for fear that they wouldn’t make it to the World Series unless he did. (We were obviously very superstitious pre-teens). He was also one of those people that knew so much about sports that you’d swear he had a doctorate in stat tracking. It was insane what he could remember about random players from years before he was even born. Every time we would sit down to watch a sporting match, he would always end up rooting for the winning side. Always. It infuriated me so much because more often than not I picked the losing team (predominantly due to the fact that I didn’t know anything about sports, so anytime I would pick a team to root for it would be the home team, and Florida teams suck, usually).

But this time, I was feeling a little more bold. The Marlins managed to fend off the Indians until game 7, and I was genuinely surprised that they had managed to make it that far. It really started to look like it was gonna come down to a coin toss… or maybe a GoldenEye match? I had decided in my mind that if this curse thing was the real deal, then I had to wager the outcome of the World Series. So one day I tell Giovanni, “Let’s predict the World Series. You’re the Indians, and I’m the Marlins.” At first, he didn’t even know how to respond. Then he looked at me as though he had just seen me sing and dance “The Timewarp” in fishnet stockings. “So you basically wanna get your ass handed to you?” he quipped. “Because you know that’s the only possible way it can end.” I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure I wanted to risk having the Marlins lose because of me, but the potential reward, having them win and having me actually root for a winning team, especially against one that he likes so damn much, was too grand of an opportunity to pass up.

We booted up the game just as game 7 was about to start. We agreed that in order to allow for the most reliable outcome that we would have to play multiple games, only it wouldn’t be tournament style. We would play one match during every commercial break, no matter how many there would be, and per his insistence, “The winner of the last match during the last commercial will predict the world champions of baseball.”

I was really nervous, and my N64 controller was already starting to accumulate gamer scum before the match had even begun. To my surprise though, I won the first match, and the second, and the third. But then I lost the next one, and the next one… and the next one. In fact I lost every match during every commercial break until the 9th inning, and I was losing the matches by margins that I’m too embarrassed to even reproduce on paper. “This was such a stupid idea.” I thought. “Now they’re gonna lose and it’s all because of my pompous arrogance.” Of course, I was 12 at the time, so I’m sure I probably used much less colorful language (or more depending how you look at it) to describe my discontent with the situation. It also didn’t help that the baseball game itself was mirroring my shameful performance in GoldenEye. The Marlins had only managed one run the entire game, and even though the Indians were only at 2 runs, this was the last inning, and they had just brought out their best pitcher (Jose Mesa) to finish the game.

But then, the most miraculous thing happened. Someone got to first, then they got to third, and after a sacrifice fly we had ourselves a tied game and another inning to play it out. Mind you, I still hadn’t won any GoldenEye matches since the very beginning of the game, but the fact that the Marlins weren’t giving up gave me a renewed, Rocky-like confidence to do better, and get my A-game going again.

Or so I thought. I still continued to lose at every commercial, but at least I was definitely narrowing the gap, inching my way closer to a potential victory. “You know what the sad thing is about this?” Giovanni says after I get real close at one point. “You might actually eek out a win on me, but it probably won’t be the last commercial, and you’ll definitely start losing before you start winning again.”

Perhaps. But I still had to try. By the time the 10th inning came and went without a run on either side, I really felt like the fate of the Marlins were inextricably linked to everything I was doing in Giovanni’s room at that very moment. I truly felt that by pushing myself to achieve the seemingly impossible, I could somehow create a butterfly effect that would push the Marlins over the edge. Insane I know, but the passions of that very heated moment really had me in a zen-like state that had me thinking, “This, right here, right now, is the point where the future can be changed, where I can determine the outcome, and I can turn future events upside down.”

The 11th inning came to a commercial. I had a gut feeling that if I didn’t win this match, it was over. I also knew that with 2 outs and the Marlins up to bat, this could be the moment that the game is decided, and I could very well still be playing GoldenEye long after the commercial is over and we are seeing those panoramics of the winning team celebrating in their locker room. But I didn’t care. I was going to win this match so I could get those Marlins their first World Series win.

The Match began with a 5 kill limit on Complex. I managed to find the proximity mines first and laid them in some fairly unusual places, far more abstract than anything I had ever done before. I then armed myself with my favorite weapon (dual DD44s) and I went to work. He died first, then me, then him, then me. We alternated until we were both one kill away. “Man.” I thought. “This could not have come down to a more epic showdown.” When I respawned, we both took a moment to pause and look each other in the eyes. Then out of no-where, he blurts out, “For England James?” And of course I reply, “No….. for me.”

We start running, I lay more proximity mines, and he gets his rocket launcher. We find ourselves in one of the central rooms and it starts to get hectic. He fires a shot at me that he thinks kills me (and indeed it should have, I don’t know how it didn’t) and in his panic to get away from the explosion… BOOM!… he trips over one of my randomly placed mines.

It was an uncharacteristically long match, and by the time I switch it back to the World Series (nearly breaking the TV remote in half as I frantically try to do so) the Marlins are already celebrating on the field. Confetti everywhere and crowds in the stands that I swear I could have heard from my house. Giovanni was almost in tears. I almost felt bad for him. I couldn’t explain what happened, but somehow, it made sense.

Giovanni and I ended up playing GoldenEye together on a fairly regular basis until about the year 2000, when we went to different High Schools. We still made predictions from time to time, though they seemed to lose their accuracy after a while. He eventually kept the copy of the game at his house so long that it was practically his. When I tried to reclaim it from him for a weekend, he got uncharacteristically mad and accused me of stealing his game. The spat was something that we never got over and I only spoke to him one more time after that to ask him if he still had the game. “I lost it.” He told me. “Must have left it at a friend’s house or something. Haven’t seen it in years.”

And I never saw him, or our copy of GoldenEye, ever again.

I’m hoping that with this new release of GoldenEye, I can bring back the good times with none of the bad.