Yes, I could say the same about Mario Kart 64, Tribes, Unreal, Quake, or any number of other games, but: 1) This post is about GoldenEye, so that’s what we’re

Yes, I could say the same about Mario Kart 64, Tribes, Unreal, Quake, or any number of other games, but: 1) This post is about GoldenEye, so that’s what we’re talking about. 2) It doesn’t matter who is first or if other things are similar; it’s undeniable that some games just happen to hit on a certain combination of elements that makes them a hit, and others just don’t, even if they have the same feature list. 3) At the time, most FPS games were single-player with some kind of storyline, with multiplayer being mainly an afterthought. GoldenEye has a pretty good storyline for single-player, so people would buy it for that, and then just happen to have it for the multiplayer. This no doubt contributed to its popularity, as most people just had it around and it turned out to be a great thing to do with friends too.