Key Points
- Karl Jobst is an Australian Perfect Dark and GoldenEye 007 speedrunner who focuses on exposing scams and fraud in the gaming space.
- The top three best GoldenEye 007 speedrunners ever are Wouter Jansen, Rayan Isran, and Bryan Bosshardt.
- Wouter Jansen set a total of 172 world records for GoldenEye 007 speedruns.
- Rayan Isran holds the GoldenEye 007 championship for the longest time of 2000+ days and has 169 world records.
- Bryan Bosshardt is known for his innovative gameplay and has created 215 world records in his gaming career.
Born in February 1986, Karl Jobst is an Australian Perfect Dark and GoldenEye 007 speedrunner. He’s also an investigative journalist and YouTuber. If you look closely at Jobst’s work, you’ll see that he hasn’t done many speedruns. According to Speedrun.com, Jobst has only done 24 runs to date. Instead, most of his videos focus on exposing scams and fraud in the gaming space. He also covers world record histories and other speedrunning feats.
In this article, we’ll focus on his video on the top three best GoldenEye 007 speedrunners ever. We also talk briefly about his other video categories.
What Is GoldenEye 007?
GoldenEye 007 is a first-person shooter Nintendo published for its Nintendo 64 console. The game was based on GoldenEye, the 1995 James Bond movie. Rare, the developer, took inspiration from the GoldenEye film set and expanded the game with additional sequences not shown in the movie.
The player controls James Bond, a secret agent who has to stop a criminal syndicate from accessing a satellite weapon. To accomplish this, the player has to complete several levels in which they recover objects, kill enemies, and destroy items. GoldenEye 007 also has a multiplayer mode that allows up to four players to play in a split-screen view.
The game has over 20 weapons, including submachine guns, grenades, throwing knives, assault rifles, to pistols. Each weapon has individual characteristics, and some share the same ammo. The player has to use their strategic thinking and knowledge of the game to determine which weapons to choose for a certain level or enemy.
You can play every level on three settings; 00 Agent, Secret Agent, and Agent. The settings differ in terms of difficulty, types of enemies, number of objectives, and amount of ammo. Once a player completes all levels on three settings, they unlock a new mode, in which they can customize the level’s difficulty by adjusting the damage extent, reaction times, and other factors.
- Based on the 1995 James Bond film
- Released in 1997 for the N64
- Developed by Rare
- 2-4 player multiplayer mode
- One of the most influential first-person shooters
Overview of Karl Jobst’s Top 3 Best GoldenEye 007 Speedruns
In his GoldenEye 007 speedrunners video, Jobst explains that he has personally been doing GoldenEye 007 speedruns for 20 years. Several ”crazy” players have done speedruns of the game in these two decades, but he chose the top three speedruners that stood out to him. Jobst talks about their accomplishments and how they changed the way that GoldenEye 007 is played. Here’s what you need to know about these three legendary players.
Wouter Jansen
Since speedrunning is quite popular today, it’s not as likley that there is an unknown player who has beaten the current GoldenEye 007 speedrun world record. However, this is what happened from 1999 to 2000 when speedrunning wasn’t as popular.
Wouter Jansen had broken multiple world records in GoldenEye 007 speedrunning before he reached out to the game’s community to share his accomplishments. He made his first public post on the GoldenEye 007 World Records board on Game FAQs, a popular forum at the time. On September 26, 2000, Jansen mentioned in his post that he had 35 GoldenEye 007 world records, of which 18 were unbroken.
Many people, including the then GoldenEye 007 world champion and Jobst himself, doubted Jansen’s claims. Jansen’s slow internet made the situation even more dubious because he couldn’t provide proof for his speedruns quickly enough. However, Jansen ultimately provided evidence for all of his speedruns, and his name was added to the GoldenEye 007 ranks on December 29, 2000.
In 2000, Jansen made it to second place underneath Sterling Neblett, who was the current GoldenEye 007 world champion. However, on February 26, 2001, Jansen became the world champion in GoldenEye 007. Jansen had a lot of new, strategic ideas that focused on pushing the limits of the game.
His career spanned from 2000 to 2003, after which another amazing player dethroned him. Even at the tail end of his career in 2005, Jansen continued to set world records, including the Frigate Agent 23, which is one of the longest-standing records in the gaming world. Although he is no longer highly ranked, he’ll still be a legend known for setting a total of 172 world records for GoldenEye 007 speedruns.
Rayan Isran
The second GoldenEye 007 speedrunner Jobst talks about in his video is Rayan Isran, who started playing GoldenEye 007 in 2000 at the age of seven. He sent his first message to the GoldenEye 007 forum administrators three years later at age 10. Even then, he wasn’t old enough to send the email, so his older brother helped.
His entry in the game wasn’t as mindblowing as Jansen’s, but his post mentioning his young age raised suspicion among other players. Since he had better speedrunning times in Perfect Dark, he first made waves in that community. His GoldenEye 007 speedrunning times were also considered ”insane,” especially for a player that young. Although many claimed he was a fake, he proved them wrong by uploading a video of himself playing Perfect Dark. After this, the community accepted him with open arms.
In 2005, he was ranked just below the top 50 GoldenEye 007 speedrunners. The main disadvantage to Isran’s gaming strategy was that he only had the PAL version of the game, which made him lose time on each level. Although the PAL format used in Asia, Oceania, and Europe has higher resolution, the NTSC format used in North America has higher frame rates, resulting in smoother action and less input lag.
All GoldenEye 007 levels were PAL-disadvantaged, with the exception of Train. On February 19, 2007, Isran broke the world records in all three difficulty levels of Train, lowering them by four seconds. The cool thing about his feat was that he did not use any new strategy or loophole. He was simply a better player because he trained for hours and mastered a level won on skill rather than technique.
Isran’s Post-PAL GoldenEye 007 Speedruns
In 2008, Isran finally got an NTSC copy of GoldenEye 007. Three months later, in June 2008, Isran became the GoldenEye 007 world champion for the first time in the level Jungle on the difficulty level Secret Agent. His record was unbroken for six years until 2014.
Even then, it was the longest-standing unbroken world record in GoldenEye 007 history. He stopped playing the game for about two years, only replaying it in 2010, after which he took another two-year-long break. When he returned in 2012, he created many world records, including:
- Jungle Agent 50
- Aztec Agent 125
- Egypt Secret and 00 Agent 45
- Facility (all three difficulty settings)
Although he doesn’t play consistently, Isran always reclaims his top spots in GoldenEye 007 speedruns once he gets serious. He has the honor of holding the GoldenEye 007 championship for the longest time of 2000+ days. In total, he has 169 world records.
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Bryan Bosshardt
In 2002, Bryan Bosshardt became known for creating a new strategy for playing Aztec, the second-last level of GoldenEye 007. While his times were decent, they weren’t good enough to make him the world champion at that time.
However, his email to the GoldenEye 007 rank moderators highlighted a new strategy to get the guards to open the glass door in the Aztec level. Although Bosshardt said he wasn’t sure if this method made the gameplay faster, Jobst claims it to be the most impactful sequence break in GoldenEye 007 history.
Three months after joining the GoldenEye 007 ranks, Bosshardt created his first world record in the level Dam Agent 53. In 2003, he beat Wouter Jansen to become the world champion in GoldenEye 007. He kept his position for three years and made plenty of records during this time. In January 2003, Booshardt completed Archives Agent in just 16 seconds, a record that remained unbroken for 15 years. Similarly, in 2006, he was the first gamer to complete the Runway Agent 00 tankless run, lowering the record to 37 seconds. He has created 215 world records in his gaming career.
However, Bosshardt’s influence wasn’t due to his world records but his innovation. Whenever a new optimization or strategy was found in GoldenEye 007, he used it in his speedruns. For example, when look-downs were introduced in the game, Bosshardt used them to his advantage, although other players complained about it ruining the experience.
To this day, he is known for his innovative gameplay. Many of his strategies were theoretically possible but considered too ”stupid” to use in a speedrun. However, Bosshardt was willing to try anything and everything. He has since influenced countless players with his techniques and strategies in GoldenEye 007.
What Other Videos Does Karl Jobst Make?
Besides speedruns, Jobst also makes informational videos about popular gaming titles. For instance, his video about Perfect Dark speedrunning goes into detail about the history of the game’s speedrunning. He has also covered the “most insane strategy” for Perfect Dark.
Jobst’s most widely watched videos are the ones in which he exposes speedrunning frauds. His video about the famous Minecraft world record being faked has nearly a million views on YouTube. Similarly, he also has a video about Rocket League’s biggest cheater, garnering 1.4 million views.
He doesn’t only expose cheaters. He also hypes up and follows the journeys of speedrunning world record makers. For example, he has a video about the best Super Mario 64 speedrun ever. He has similar videos for Minecraft and other games too.
Top 3 Best GoldenEye 007 Speedruns: Wrapping Up
Since it’s an older game, GoldenEye 007 may not have the music score, graphics, and polish of present-day games. However, its storytelling compensated for the lack of presentation. It is widely considered to be one of the most influential first-person shooter games ever made, establishing practices such as local multiplayer that later became common in the genre.
As important as technique is in speedrunning this game, practice is just as necessary. Jobst’s video is an excellent example of how you need both to ace GoldenEye 007. You must learn all of the nooks and crannies of the game to find the fastest way through each level. Plus, familiarity with weapon categories is vital in choosing the right gun for the job. Hours of gameplay is the only way to accomplish this particular mission objective. However, check out the video below to learn some new strategies from the top three best GoldenEye 007 speedruns ever.
Watch Karl Jobst’s Top 3 Best GoldenEye 007 Speedruns Here!
- GoldenEye 007 (Renewed)
- Based on the 1995 James Bond film
- Released in 1997 for the N64
- Developed by Rare
- 2-4 player multiplayer mode
- One of the most influential first-person shooters
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