Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Released for Nintendo 64 in 2001, re-released for Xbox in 2005
Anyone who knows me knows that I have a pretty sick and twisted sense of humour. Some of that due to watching South Park since the age of 9, and some of that is thanks to this fine game by Rare. The game was originally called Twelve Tales: Conker 64 and was set to be aimed for children considering the Red Squirrel had already starred in Diddy Kong Racing for the N64 and Conker’s Pocket Tales for the Game Boy Colour. After its announcement and gameplay footage was released at E3 1998, Rare was stigmatised by fans as being another kid-friendly developer. Soon after this Rare scrapped the entire game and took their character into the complete opposite direction – instead of being geared towards young’uns it was now aimed at the mature audience. And by “mature”, I mean “immature”.
Conker begins his journey after a hard night of heavy drinking with some buddies who are off to fight in a war the following day. Hungover and completely lost Conker tries to make his way home, however it’s not as simple as it seems. He must venture passed irate Scottish dung-beetles, a giant pile of singing poo, savage cavemen, vampire bats, the Evil Panther King, an army of evil Tediz and Death himself, just to name a few things. What makes this game more appealing however is its mostly crude sense of humour – within the first couple of minutes of the introduction Conker drunkenly stumbles out of The Cock and Plucker pub only to end up vomiting all over a Lizard Monk reading a scriptured tablet. I knew after that moment that I was going to enjoy this game.
Conker was set to be a radically different game.
There still isn’t anything quite like this game out there, except of course for the Xbox remake. Apart from the hilarious antics and storyline, the game also played and performed incredibly well. Since the game was developed very late in the 64’s lifetime, Rare managed to utlilise the complete power of Nintendo’s third-generation home console. Due the beautifully rendered graphics of the time, the game did however suffer a few hiccups in terms of framerate. As for sound, the game is still renowned as a technical achievement having fully-voiced dialogue on such a constrained medium. Also, the soundtrack is fantastic and catchy.
Last up is the multiplayer. CBFD features some more humourous concepts in terms of multiplayer scenarios. For example the mode Beach has the Frenchies (refugees) trying to penetrate the boarders of a country without getting killed by Tediz (boarder patrol), and the mode Raptor features cavemen trying to steal raptor eggs for breakfast whereas the velociraptors are trying to catch the cavemen to feed to their babies.
Conker’s Bad Fur Day was Rare’s second-to-last Nintendo game, next to Starfox Adventures for the GameCube. Despite being released late into the 64’s lifespan and having taken a complete U-turn during development, Conker has amassed a large cult following across the world for its technical achievements, crude humour and memorable story. I’m excited to place it as my third favourite game of all time.
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