Saved Pages of The Goldeneye Elite

Another Jon Barber Supersite

I always thought it was kind of sad how Goldeneye never had its own, complete history page, to go along with the excellent pages that have been created for Perfect Dark and Mario Kart. Well, I'm not going to change all that myself, but I thought I'd make my own little contribution by putting some of the old, historic pages I've saved while competing over the past 3 years.

For some history, along with plenty of current action, there's always Derek Clark's excellent Informational WRs Page. And here's some more very old saved pages ('98-9), thanks to Micheal Liem.


March 10, 2000. Ah yes, the topic that made me famous. This was one of my first posts as a member of the message boards at GameFaqs.com. I started out by listing all of the GE world records as of that time, and encouraged people with good times to send them in to Wes at his page. Then Karl Jobst (FAQ GOD) dropped by and posted his PRs from way back then, and then out of no where Sterling Neblett himself pops up, and starts thanking me for praising his GE skills. Before you knew it, the three of us were debating what was to be done about Marshmallow (the immortal Nintendo FAQ writer) who was not at all a popular guy at the time, due to his accusing Sterling and Wes and all the top guy of lying about their times. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that he had posted those thoughts in his enormous GE FAQ, which at this point (the very height of Goldeneye's popularity) was getting several thousands of hits every week! Eventually we were able to talk some sense into him, and he took all those remarks out of his FAQ.

Also of interest: one of the first people to come to Sterling's defense was none other than Greystar, later to become one of the most famous posters on all of GameFaqs. [non-GE history, skip if you wish] Of course, he did it in late 2001, this time during the height of PD's popularity, on the PD board. As some of you may remember, he was the guy who claimed to have opened up Egyptian as a multiplayer level. He would then drop by every week or so, posting a hint about how it was done, for around three months, before finally posting a pretty convincing screen shot, which was proven fake on close examination. He later apologized, and has even been admitted into the PD Elite, where he had been a model citizen. Also, this topic became the first place I ever met Yako, who would become my good friend and, in the following month, help form the Perfect Dark Elite along with me, Snap, and Paragon. Oh, man, I keep finding more great stuff as I scan down those posts... The short post by a guy named "Sword" on 8/27 would end up being huge, as that was the world's introduction to Steve Foy, or DarkLight. He would end up pointing to that post two months later, while trying to prove to us at the PDE that he was, indeed, not Darren Frickel. But that's another story altogether.[/non-GE stuff]

But getting back to GE... Just when PD playing was taking over, and it looked like the topic was dying out, along came none other than Wouter Jansen (on 9/26) as he first introduced himself to the world at large. He claimed to have 35 world records already by that time, and 18 of them untied. Just before posting all his times, he claimed "I bet you don't believe them." Boy, was he ever right about that one! Karl said: "Half of them are simply physically impossible. Sorry, you won't get these by me." And Sterling was his usual self, claiming: "I mean sure u might have your own way and all, but I am almost positive there is no stage where my start isnt fastest..." Hehe, good old Sterling. The debate lasted for months, with other GE greats like Craig Makepeace, Tim Greneby, Damian Coe, and Patrick Zalesky dropping in to give their opinions. Eventually Wouter was able to get a few runs online, Wes added him to the rankings (see that historic page below), and pretty much everyone came around to believing him. Well, except Sterling.

So talk moved on to other things, like when we started the first version of an automatic "GE Elite," thanks to Wes' taking off from updating for months at a time. The topic just kept on going, until it eventually set a few World Records of it's own. It was the first topic in GameFaqs history to last for a full year, from March 2000 all the way to March 2001. The only reason it closed down was because of hitting the 500 post mark, which CJayC had just set up the month before as the new limit before a topic is closed. All in all, quite an amazing topic.

April 22, 2000. The last update of the "golden age" of Goldeneye, before the release of Perfect Dark.

December 29, 2000. Wouter Jansen is finally added to the GE World Rankings. Check out where he started.

February 26, 2001. Wouter had pulled to a very slim lead over Sterling. Wes treats us with a surprise by ranking the old world records from way back in December of 1998, ranked like a normal person.

May 24, 2001. The unthinkable happens... Sterling Neblett, pushed down to third place?! Wouter's hard playing, along with a big surge from Karl is enough to do it.

August 1, 2001. Wouter's 6 month reign as champion comes to a crashing halt, as Randy pushes his way straight up to the top, becoming only the 5th man to ever hold GE's title as "World Champion." The battle raged on for these two, until...

August 21, 2001. The first-ever first place tie in GE history! The great rivalry continues.

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