Nintendo 64 Has Hidden Secret Feature You Never Knew Existed

Gamers have uncovered an extremely interesting and borderline prophetic secret hidden within one of the most famous Nintendo 64 games of all time, 28 years after its release.

Considering the Nintendo 64 only had roughly 400 games, a paltry sum when compared to modern consoles, it still impresses me to this day that so many games on the system were so ahead of their time, and still considered certified bangers in the year 2025.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Donkey Kong 64, Banjo-Kazooie, and, of course, Super Mario 64– all games that, even today, are undisputed classics.

However, if you ask me, there’s one game on the Nintendo 64 that truly felt like it was heralding in a new era: GoldenEye 007.

Even back in 1997, reviewers and gamers alike knew that GoldenEye 007 was ahead of the curve, because the mechanics that Rare invented single-handedly revolutionised first-person console shooters following its release.

Turns out that Rare were even more prophetic than we assumed, though, because while GoldenEye 007 would remain the blueprint for console shooters for decades to come after it hit store shelves, the team understood that the single thumbstick on the Nintendo 64 controller had limited the game in a way that wouldn’t become obvious until the release of the Sony PlayStation.

As spotted by David Amador over on BlueSky, GoldenEye 007 was actually capable of using two thumbsticks to aim and shoot at the same time, and said feature had been incorporated into the game at release.

How, you ask? Pretty simple: just plug in an extra Nintendo 64 controller.

As you can see in Amador’s video, if you were rich enough to own two Nintendo 64 controllers back in 1997, plugging two in at once would allow you to aim while moving James Bond at the same time– whereas, usually, you’d have to come to a complete halt to do something like this in GoldenEye 007.

According to the commenters, Rare had advertised this feature during the game’s press tour, but I’ll be the first to admit that this is the first time I’ve heard about this.

In fact, it's often believed that Sony’s 1999 game Ape Escape was the first game to require the use of two thumbsticks in order to play it. While GoldenEye 007 certainly doesn’t require you to use two, it’s interesting that Rare was so ahead of the times that they knew something like this would become a mainstay in first-person shooters moving forward.

Man, I gotta wonder what else Rare would be cooking up these days if Microsoft hadn’t purchased and subsequently gutted the studio back in the early 2000s…