GoldenEye 007, the classic first-person shooter for Nintendo 64, was a dorm room staple when it came out in 1997. Teens spent countless hours as James Bond, trying to gun each other down over pizza and beer. But a select few elevated the game beyond a slacker pastime, setting speed records for beating levels. The oldest, most vaunted speedrun was Brian Bosshardt’s 53-second finish on the game’s first level, Dam, set in 2002. And this week, it finally fell.
Here’s Karl Jobst flipping the hell out after clearing Dam in 52 seconds, finally toppling a 15-year-old record. His effort was the culmination of 250 hours of practice, he wrote on Reddit. That would explain his elation here:
“Oh my fucking god! Look at it!” he gasps, practically in tears.
To pull this off, he needed to hit 3 lucky “boosts,” the GoldenEye 007 term for getting shot by an enemy and propelled toward the end of the level. In all the time he’s been practicing, Jobst says he’s only had a “3 boost” run three times. This just happened to be the one where it all came together.
Commenters on the Reddit thread have speculated that beating this record may be literally impossible, as Jobst managed to find every possible edge the level can provide. Even with “tool-assisted” speedruns, using programs that help players optimize every frame of gameplay, this may be the pinnacle of what’s possible on Dam.
Oh my fucking god. Look at it.