I had friends who had little to no interest in Mario or even Zelda anymore who bought an N64 just for marathon sessions of GoldenEye.
It was a pretty big deal. I remember playing the game for the first time, and even though I wasn't a really big fan of FPS, I remember playing the multiplayer and getting that feeling of "wow ... this is something special". I think even Miyamoto before the release of the game singled it out as being really good, which caught some people by surprise because it was a game that had like little to no hype. No one was talking about it.
Sadly though I think GoldenEye was also the last time Nintendo was that relevant with the teenager/college-age male audience. They've never been able to replicate its success (though they haven't really even tried ... Perfect Dark and then uh ... Geist).
