Prerelease Runway
Overview
Runway was one of the later stages made and we do not have much prerelease media for it at all. Runway was not even listed as a level in the original design document. A document by Karl Hilton of an unknown date shows that "Chemical Plant — Exterior," the developers' name for Runway, was not yet started at a time when Bunker 1 was considered finished. (Source)
Since we do not have much information about prerelease Runway a lot of what we can surmise comes from looking at leftovers in the final game. Being a small level made later in development, Runway did not go through as many changes as other levels. However, some textures were likely swapped similar to what happened with Facility.
Prerelease Media
Promo Video
A promotional video shows Bond originally started on the conveyor belt. This would have been more accurate to the movie, but we can also see the camera clipping through the level geometry as it moves along the intro spline.
Final release puts Bond's start point between Facility's two exits. GoldenEye does not support carrying data from one level to the next, so having Bond's spawn change depending on where he exits Facility is not an option.
Bond starting on the conveyor does make me wonder if originally Facility only had one exit and that exit was the conveyor. That's just speculation though.
All other prerelease media shows Runway looking identical to the final game.
Mission Briefing Picture
It looks like the plane model did not yet have the red wingtips in the mission briefing picture. It may not have had the Soviet red star on the vertical stabilizer either. The missile battery may not have been placed yet, though it is hard to tell.
Missed Textures
There are three places where the developers replaced textures but missed a few polygons. One quad under the conveyor belt uses texture 013F, a lighter gray concrete than the final texture. I think there is a good chance the walls of the loading bay area once used the lighter texture. The final texture, 0123, is a darker concrete commonly used in Facility.
It is difficult to see, but this one long thin triangle in the cliffs uses a different rock texture from all the other cliffs. This texture is 03D5.
Fun fact: 03D5 is the only texture used in the Caves multiplayer map.
One side of the very end of the runway uses a unique texture, 0133. This texture may once have been used for the fortifications along the runway, but that's just speculation. The other sides of the runway, including the side facing the mountains which you cannot see in-game, use texture 011E.
The outer sides of the tunnel's entrance also use the old 0133 texture. The other faces of the tunnel entrance got swapped to a new texture, 0121. In each of these cases a 64x32 pixel texture was swapped for a 64x64 pixel texture, showing how the developers tried to get as much texture resolution as they could out of the Nintendo 64.
Unused Presets
Preset 2710
Runway's only unused preset, 2710, sits below this heavy gun emplacement. Was this meant to be a screen? A button? Something to do with the gun? We really have no idea.
Motorbike
GoldenEye has a motorbike model that was meant for Runway. It is based on the Cagiva W16 600 seen in the movie. There is also a cheat-only multiplayer character head called Biker that was likely meant for a motorbike rider or at least someone who would have been found near the motorbike.
The original plan was to have the player ride the bike in order to catch up with the plane, but that was too technically difficult to implement. (Source: GoldenEye 007 by Alyse Knorr, p. 115)
On the "Rare Rumour Mill" page of Rare's 1998 website a GoldenEye developer addressed a question about the motorbike:
Q: Were you going to put a motorbike in the Runway level to chase the plane with?
A: We might have been. Are you saying you'd rather have a motorbike than a tank? And surely two vehicles on a level would have been an extravagance? Well, if you're not satisfied by that answer (and frankly who would be) you can see the motorbike model on a table in a hut in one of the Severnaya Exterior missions.
— Anonymous GoldenEye developer. (Source)
Well, that doesn't tell us much. Let's see what else the developers have had to say about the motorbike. MundoRare posed this question to two developers, "You tried to include an objective in the third level, Runway, where Bond had to ride a motorbike like in the film. Were players also supposed to chase the plane as it moved through the landing strip? Or even worse… chase it as it went down the precipice?"
Would we have done it like the film if we could? Yes, definitely.
— Duncan Botwood (Source)
We probably had that idea at some point! If we could have made it more like the film I’m sure we would have.
— Mark Edmonds (Source)
Based on these answers one gets the impression the motorbike chase idea probably didn't get that far along. If it had the developers probably would have remembered more concrete information about it. Indeed there are no unused paths or presets left in Runway to suggest the plane chase idea got very far. Ultimately the motorbike was relegated to a single use in GoldenEye — a miniature model tucked away in a Surface 1 cabin. Runway ended up being used as a testing ground for another vehicle, the Tank. The developers liked it so much they ended up keeping the Tank in Runway.
The motorbike idea was shelved for GoldenEye but the developers kept it in their minds. It ended up transforming into the HoverBike in Perfect Dark. (Source: GoldenEye 007 by Alyse Knorr, p. 191)
