Sterling Neblett
Sterling Neblett is a GoldenEye 007 & Perfect Dark spedrunner and former champion of GoldenEye 007
Sterling's played GoldenEye actively from early - mid 1998 to April 2001.
According to Sterling, he first got GoldenEye and started to play it on January 8th 1998.
Sterling then started competing probably in early 1998 (in between March and May), likely competing and submitting his times on René Elsässer's "REX's GoldenEye World Rankings", as he is nowhere to be found on Glen McDiarmid's rankings by mid May 1998, even after Zwartjes joined them.
Sterling Neblett VS Steven Zwartjes (1998)
It is unknown exactly when Sterling started to compete against Zwartjes, they may have started competing against eachother on REX's since March 1998, but the earliest known rankings snapshot with both of them featured is from July 26th 1998, and by that time, Sterling was holding 32 World records including 22 Untieds simultaniously, Zwartjes was right behind with 31 (20), and according to Sterling's account, he had just passed Zwartjes in June probably, while he was on a break from GoldenEye.
Later in the year (~August - September) Zwartjes would make a comeback and pass Sterling again, a rankings snapshot from September 12th 1998 shows that Zwartjes was now far ahead of Sterling, sitting at 37 World Records held simultaniously, including 23 Untieds, Sterling only being at 22 (13).
Sterling would answer that by playing intensively troughout September and November, on his way to Champion Sterling would achieve on of the best times of his career in ~November 1998, getting the untied World Record Bunker 1 Agent 0:18. By the end of that month he had achieved enough records to be back ahead of Zwartjes, as rankings a snapshot from November 20th 1998 shows Sterling ahead of Zwartjes (at least using the point system that was used back then) while the previous one from October 23th 1998 did not. Regarding who was 1st in numbers of world records held at this time, it's hard to determine as they seem to have been close, a rankings snapshot from Bob Aunan from around that period does shows new worlds records that haven't been credited to either Sterling or Zwartjes yet since no initials appear on that WR table (~Late November 1998).
Sterling Neblett is Champion (1998 - 2000)
When Sterling passed Zwartjes for the second time in November 1998, he would begin the first truly dominant and extended reign that a GoldenEye champion would have.
The year 1999 was not well documented, but we do know that Sterling was Champion troughout the whole year with no other contenders for 1st place in sight.
By this point Sterling was widely accepted as being the best GoldenEye 007 player in the world, he had proven his skill by writting guides of the strategies he used to get Untieds. (~April 1999 guide), he also recorded his own runs and uploaded them online, something that very few other players would do in that era.
This is a disputed claim, but Sterling may at some point have held 57/60 World Records of GoldenEye 007 in 1999, the closest thing that exist to validate that claim is a rankings snapshot from June 8th 1999 where Sterling is shown holding 2000 points on both Agent and Secret Agent, meaning that he has all the World Records on both difficulties, and 1988 points on 00A, having 5988 / 6000 points, the highest amount ever recorded. It is known that at this point Wouter Jansen had been playing since February 1999 but was not on the rankings yet at that time, but even if he was, his times would not have been good enough to have an impact on Sterling's point count.
Later in the year, other players like Wes McKinney, Graeme Faulds and Mike Martin would achieve multiple World Record including untieds, slowly catching up to Sterling but still not getting near him.
Sterling's reign would continue troughout the year 2000, with a rankings snapshot from April 22nd 2000 showing Sterling almost 200 points ahead of Wes McKinney who was in 2nd place, however by this point, Wouter Jansen would have been confortably sitting on 2nd place, while also doing a lot of damage to Sterling as well, but he would only join the community months later so none of that was known at the time yet, explaining the inaccuracies from rankings snapshots from that time, like this one from March 10th 2000 missing Wouter's times.
Sterling would also briefly take part in the very early Perfect Dark competition, achieving a few Untieds and World Records from June to ~August 2000.
The rise of Wouter and retirement of Sterling (2000 - 2001)
On September 26th 2000 an unknown player named Wouter Jansen joined the GameFAQs forums and claimed that he was currently holding 35 World Records, 18 of them being untied, just surpassing Sterling's World Record count that was 35 (14). In the following months numerous discussions happened, with many people pushing back against Wouter, being hostile and calling him a liar (Sterling being one of them).
But after months of debates, Wouter was finally added to the rankings on December 29th 2000, being ranked as 2nd on his first day, only 3 points behind Sterling.
After that both Wouter and Sterling had a short battle for 1st place, with both of them achieving ~ a dozen PRs from December 29th 2000 to January 4th 2001, including multiple World Records and Untieds, which made Sterling re-emerge on top of World Record leaders, barely ahead of Wouter again sitting at 38 World Record including 8 Untieds, with 37 (7) for Wouter.
Sterling would stop playing GoldenEye in early January 2001 to play Perfect Dark, Wouter continued to achieve numerous World Records and Untieds during that month and likely passed Sterling for champion at some point in mid to late January 2001, by the end of that month he had also made it far ahead in 1st place of World Record leaders, holding 40 World Records including 12 Untieds, Sterling now being only at 32 (5).
The earliest existing snapshot of Wouter Jansen being champion is from February 26th 2001, being ahead of Sterling by 8 points, to this day it is still not determined when exactly Wouter passed Sterling.
Sterling kept playing for a few months, with his last PRs from that period being Achives Agent 0:17 achieved on April 12th 2001 (he claimed 3 other times a few days later but they were likely achieved before that), but it is known that he kept playing troughout 2001 as he was still very active on the forums, in May 2001 he was still also actively playing, failing Surface 2 Agent 0:52's and 0:53s (would be untied) but never completing a run.
During that period, Sterling would grow more and more frustrated regarding the recently discovered adavantages of different control styles in GoldenEye
Sterling was a 1.1 user and he did not use CC (Cruise Control), soon putting him at a major disadvantage comparted to 1.1 CC and new 1.2 users, Sterling would also complain about other top players like Wouter and Zwartjes using the videos of his speedruns to learn faster strategies and getting World Records and untieds, while not providing enough proof. Zwartjes would never provide any proof, and Wouter's videos would take a long time to make it online in little quantities, leaving Sterling to a disadvantage when trying to learn about new strategies and recent improvements.
Sterling Neblett's GoldenEye times
Sterling Neblett's Perfect Dark times
Sterling Neblett's GoldenEye World Records
The Evolution of GoldenEye 007 Champions
This page is under construction
