Conker's Bad Fur Day is a Nintendo 64 video game developed and published by Rare, and distributed by Nintendo. The game stars Conker the Squirrel, a Rare character who had previously appeared in other games marketed towards children, such as Diddy Kong Racing for the Nintendo 64 and Conker's Pocket Tales for the Game Boy Color. Marketed as an "adult" platform game, Bad Fur Day features scatological humor, graphic cartoon violence, sexual themes and several film parodies. The game received very positive critical reviews, despite its limited advertising, and earned a cult following. A remake of the game was made available on the Xbox in 2005 in the form of Conker: Live & Reloaded.
Gameplay
In the single-player mode, the player takes on the role of Conker and plays the game in a free-roaming environment. Conker can duck and jump a high distance vertically, as well as jump at least twice his height in any direction. Conker can also spin his tail around quickly like a helicopter for a few seconds. Rather than give it an official-sounding name, as is the unofficial 'tradition' in the video game business, Conker just calls it the "helicoptery tail thing". This allows him to jump a little higher, navigate in the air to accurately land, and slow his descent if he is far from the ground. After a few seconds, the tail slows down, and he drops and is not able to do it again until he has landed and jumped again. Besides this, he has few other physical powers. He can swim underwater for a while until he runs out of breath, jog indefinitely and not get tired, and is strong enough to push heavy round objects, which in one of the later levels are a "big bourgeoisie boiler's brass bollocks".
Conker can eat pieces of "Anti-Gravity Chocolate" to regain lost health and incidentally his life bar is represented by six-square chocolate bars. In a parody of similar platformers with unexplained floating pickups throughout levels, they were originally created by the Professor, but he threw them out the castle window when he started a new project. Afterward, Conker can eat up to six of them. There are two types of chocolate; regenerative chocolate and one-time chocolate. One-time chocolate disappears after eaten, and doesn't reappear until Conker reenters the game world. Regenerative chocolate reappears 10 seconds after being eaten. Antigravity chocolate does not provide protection against certain things, such as falls from especially high heights, being hit by spinning blades, or being dismembered in a grinder. However, it does protect against being hit with a heavy object from above, such as a large dollop of feces.
Conker has a limited number of lives. The ability to do this in the context of the game is explained in a cutscene the first time that Conker dies; according to the game, squirrels have as many lives as "they think they can get away with," similar to cats, and the Grim Reaper is willing to grant Conker another chance if he picks up squirrel tails.
"Context-sensitive Zones" allow Conker to do things he could not normally do; he usually pulls a far-too-big thing out of his far-too-small pocket, although sometimes he turns into an anvil and slams into the ground. Zones under beer kegs can give him "drunken" abilities as well. For instance, he is able to stagger around and urinate on stone people and fire imps. Although most zones only work once, some can be used more than once, or even indefinitely. However, most of the context zones lose their purpose after being utilized, even if they are continuously usable. These context-sensitive areas usually take the form of "B-button pads", and sometimes activate while Conker is in mid-air. However, they are always activated by a press of the B button. A light bulb appears over Conker's head when he is in a context-sensitive zone.
Much of the gameplay in Conker's Bad Fur Day features parodies of various movies and games, such as Reservoir Dogs and Super Mario 64.
The game has a lot of strong language in it, but only censors a few words, with the subtitles of the speech containing the word being flashing symbols in red, like skulls, spirals and lightning. More words are censored in the Xbox remake.
Multiplayer
Conker's Bad Fur Day has a multiplayer option as well, featuring seven different minigames: Beach, Raptor, Heist, Death Match, War, Tank, and Race. It also has eight different levels, one for each mode. Health is measured in chocolates just as in the single player mode. In Beach, the player controls either the Frenchies or the Tediz. As the Frenchies, the player must guide a french refugee up through the beach and into a waiting escape vehicle without getting killed by the Tediz. The Tediz fire down on the Frenchies from three different fixed positions located above the escape vehicles, utilizing either a sniper rifle, a bazooka, or a mounted machine gun in order to prevent the refugee's evacuation. The Frenchies are unarmed, but can retaliate by setting off a detonator switch, blowing up the Tediz who are preventing their escape and giving them a window of time to make the beach run uncontested. Though in any case, as the Sergeant, who has gotten the Frenchies to the beach, warns in the intro cutscene, within a several seconds, if one of the Frenchies does not get killed by the Tediz or escape, they will be instantly killed by an off-map laser weapon, thus forcing Frenchies to move quickly and not wait too long.
Raptor involves up to two players playing as Velociraptors who are trying to feed a baby dinosaur, while the cavemen want to steal the eggs for breakfast. Heist involves a parody of Reservoir Dogs in the intro. Four teams (either two per team or one player each, depending on how the game is set up)--Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow—all take place in the robbing of the Feral Reserve Bank. The objective is to retrieve cash bags from the center of the level and run it all the way back to their corresponding vault without being damaged (in which case they lose the bag and it returns to the center). War can either be a large Team Deathmatch or Capture the Flag with all of the game's weapons scattered between each level. Each level has two bases, a large field between them, each with multiple access points and places for different tactics for example sewers where a gas canister can be planted to kill all unprotected soldiers in Total War (Deathmatch) or Sniper Towers.
Tank uses a tank from the Campaign. Players all spawn in their own bunker and go around a large canyon with optional, pickup upgrades and battle to the death. Players have the option of also grabbing a gas canister, much like in War, and returning to their bunker where they are protected. Race is simply the multiplayer version of a minigame within Single Player. Here, players must go around a volcano with their hoverboards. They can attack other players and, if not careful, crash into walls and die. The first one to make a certain amount of laps, determined before the start of the game, or is the last man standing wins. Deathmatch has all of the multiplayer maps available to play in, except for the ones used in Beach, Tank, and Race.
Plot synopsis
The story opens with a prologue, spoofing the opening scene of A Clockwork Orange, where a miserable Conker tells the player that he is now "king of all the land", and begins to tell the story of the game.
The morning after a night of binge drinking with his friends, Conker awakes to find himself lost in an unfamiliar land with a terrible hangover. Having no other choice, he begins a long journey with the goal of returning home to his girlfriend, Berri. Meanwhile, the Panther King, ruler of the land that Conker is lost in, finds that his throne-side table is missing its fourth leg when he accidentally spills his milk because of it. Not knowing what to do about this problem, he has a meeting with Professor Von Kripplespak, a legless mad scientist weasel that the king keeps as a right-hand servant. Kripplespak suggests the use of a red squirrel as the fourth leg for his table, and heeding this advice, the Panther King orders his minions to search for one and capture it. In the meantime, Kripplespak plots to assassinate the king and escape.[2]
As Conker searches for his way home, he finds himself embroiled in a series of increasingly absurd and oftentimes dangerous situations, including having to recover a bee hive from some enormous wasps, confronting a giant opera-singing pile of feces, being turned into a bat by a vampire, and even getting drafted into a war between grey squirrels and a nazi-like race of teddy bears simply known as the "Tediz". However, Conker keeps managing to find wads of cash scattered throughout the land, and in his desire to find them all, he is sidetracked from his ultimate goal of returning home.
While this is occurring, Don Weaso, head of the Weasel Mafia, sends one of his henchmen to abduct Berri from her home, with the intention of using her as an exotic dancer for his nightclub.
In the final chapter of the game, Berri and Conker are enlisted by Don Weaso to rob a bank. When they get into the vault, they find many wads of cash, enough to make them both millionaires. Conker is overwhelmed with excitement at this development; however, the Panther King then appears before them both, revealing that the entire bank scene was an elaborate trap set by him and Don Weaso in order to capture Conker. Hearing this, Berri defiantly stands up to them in defense of Conker, but Don Weaso shortly opens fire on her with a machine gun, killing her. Just as all hope seems lost for Conker, a Xenomorph bursts out of the Panther King's chest, killing him instantly. In the ensuing confusion, Don Weaso sneaks off and escapes unseen. Kripplespak reveals that the alien is one of his creations, and that he had planned all along to use this opportunity to kill the king and escape, expressing hatred for the castle's lack of technology. On that note, he activates the vault's machinery, revealing it to be a spaceship that immediately launches into low orbit. Naming the alien "Heinrich", he instructs it to attack and kill Conker as revenge for destroying the Tediz, which were also his creations. However, Conker thinks fast and pulls a switch that opens an air lock, pulling Von Kripplespak into the vacuum of space. Berri's body is sucked into space as well.
Using an armored robotic suit found in the vault, Conker throws the xenomorph out of the airlock. However, it returns and lunges at him again, and as it does so, the entire game suddenly freezes. Exiting the suit, Conker expresses disbelief at the fact that Rare apparently did not beta test the game properly, and breaks the fourth wall to ask some software engineers to assist him. A programmer immediately responds to him, communicating to Conker with a command line. Entering the game's debug mode, Conker asks the programmer to spawn a selection of weapons, from which he draws a katana. He then asks the programmer to transport them to the Panther King's throne room and unfreeze the game. Conker then decapitates Heinrich, and is crowned the new king of the land by the characters who shortly rush into the room. However, Conker states that he doesn't really want to be king because he was supposed to go home, and then comes to the grim realization that Berri is still dead. He attempts to ask the programmers to bring her back to life, but realizes that they have already left.
Conker then speaks to the player in a closing monologue, in which he discusses what it means to appreciate what one already has instead of being overcome with desire and envy for superficially better circumstances, stating that "the grass is always greener, and you don't really know what it is you have until it's gone."
After the credits, Conker returns to the pub seen at the beginning of the game, alone and completely miserable. After drowning his sorrows in scotch whisky, Conker drunkenly stumbles off into the stormy night once again, this time walking in the direction opposite from the one he took previously.
Development
Conker's Bad Fur Day was originally going to be titled Conker's Quest and was later titled Twelve Tales: Conker 64. Early screenshots suggested the game would feature cute characters and colorful settings. Rare had a long history of making games of this sort, such as Banjo-Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing, and at first Conker did not appear to be any different. However, Rare started to fear that the game would simply get lost in the platforming crowd, and critical mockery of "yet another cute platformer" caused the original game to be drastically overhauled. When the announcement was made that Conker would be retooled into a "controversial" game with lots of scatological humor many did not initially believe it, and assumed the press release was an April Fools' Day joke. However, as the months went on, the change quickly was understood to be very real and permanent. Inspired by South Park, the game's producer, Chris Seavor, lobbied to revamp the graphics and attitude, and it transformed into Bad Fur Day. Seavor himself voiced Conker in this new version, along with all the male characters in the game except the Great Mighty Poo and the Fairy Panther King, who were both voiced by Chris Marlow. Louise Ridgeway voiced all the female characters in the game. The game was also different from the Banjo series and Donkey Kong 64 in relying far less on collecting a variety of items. When items were required they were usually to solve a puzzle in the immediate area, resulting in a cash reward, aiding access to other areas. Moves were also simplified by having "context sensitive" buttons.
Initial concepts
The promotional videos and pictures from Electronic Entertainment Expo (at the time when the game was still called Twelve Tales) revealed objects and characters which have influenced the released game. Objects such as the flower and mushroom sprites were seen in the promotional video and a character closely resembling Buga the Knut was seen chasing Conker (who was wearing a knight's helmet) in a promotional picture. Conker's Bad Fur Day is considerably a far different game from the original plans despite the small influences it had on the release game.
The game's original ending was very dark. It involved Conker walking up to a mirror in the pub, bursting into tears, pulling out a gun and aiming it at his head. The screen would fade out, and a gunshot is heard, indicating that Conker had commited suicide. This ending was dumped because "It didn't spot much for a sequel." When Chris Seavor was asked about a new Conker game, he said it would focus entirely on the SHC/Tediz war, and Conker would be killed in the first scene.
Reception
| Reception |
| Aggregate scores |
| Aggregator |
Score |
| GameRankings |
8.9 of 10 |
| Review scores |
| Publication |
Score |
| GamePro |
5 out of 5 |
| GameSpot |
9.3 of 10 |
| IGN |
9.9 of 10 |
After the release of Conker's Bad Fur Day, many publications and websites declared the graphics were the best to date on the N64 (even better than Perfect Dark).[3][4] The title included a number of technical effects that gamers were not yet used to seeing. The engine featured dynamic shadowing, colored lighting, and other visual effects, still fairly rare at the time; large areas with a long draw distance and no distance fog, a rarity among Nintendo 64 games; detailed facial animations, including lip syncing, at a time when the vast majority of characters in 3D games had static or minimally animated faces and individually rendered fingers on some characters, rather than the standard "brick." However, with all of these graphical effects, the game's frame rate sometimes suffered.
Rare had a close relationship with Nintendo, and the developer is famed for squeezing as much performance as possible out of a console. Conker's Bad Fur Day was one of the last games published for the Nintendo 64, and Rare put all of their previous developing experience, from ten published Nintendo 64 games, into the project.
Also notable was the game's large and diverse vocal track, which easily outnumbered that of other voiced N64 games, such as Star Fox 64. No other N64 title has come close to the amount of recorded dialog in Conker's Bad Fur Day, which is considered to be a technological miracle due to the N64 cartridge constraints. The soundtrack is also notable for its two or three different remixes of specific songs that change depending on the context, such as a new mission or change in scenery; for example the background music for Barn Boys is the same as the area preceding it, but is performed by banjos instead of a string ensemble. It won the 2001 BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award for sound. In March 2009, the Official Nintendo Magazine placed Conker's Bad Fur Day at Number 97 in their 100 Greatest Nintendo Games Ever list.[5]
Even though the game fared well with critics in both the UK and US, it sold worse than expected, partly due to its prohibitively high cost and release in early 2001. A year later, the Nintendo 64 was discontinued after the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, yielding to the new GameCube system. The game was still a moderate success, selling about 700.000 copies[6].
Nintendo of America refused to even acknowledge the game in its Nintendo Power publication except for the playback in volume #230, and all advertising in the U.S. was limited to late-night cable television and ads in Playboy. In other regions, the advertising was far less limited. Despite all of these factors, the game has enjoyed a cult following, actually growing in popularity despite its age.
GameTrailers has stated Conker's Bad Fur Day as the #1 funniest game ever on their "Top Ten Funniest Games".[7]
Unfinished Sequel
After the release of Conker's Bad Fur Day, Rare began production on a new Conker game initially named, 'Conker's Other Bad Day', but may have been changed to incorporate a subtitle, 'Getting Medieval'.[8] But in 2002 Microsoft bought Rare from Nintendo, so instead of finishing and releasing the game, Rare remade Conker's Bad Fur Day for the Xbox, naming it, Conker: Live and Reloaded. On September 16, 2008 it was announced that Microsoft cancelled the game Rare was working on, and in a later interview, some of Rare's staff members hinted at what might have been. [9] A petition has been started for Microsoft to jumpstart the project and let Rare complete the game.[10]
Conker: Live & Reloaded
A remake of Conker's Bad Fur Day titled Conker: Live & Reloaded was released in 2005 for the Xbox console. It includes improvements to graphics and sound with a slight addition to story at the training level. The game retains the single player mode of the original but dumped the original multiplayer modes in favor of a revamped Xbox Live multiplayer featuring an entirely new weapons set and gameplay mechanics. Unlike Bad Fur Day, it was released in Japan.
Multiplayer
The Multiplayer in Live & Reloaded uses the same third-person perspective as the single player game. Multiplayer consists of different game modes such as Capture the Flag or the standard Deathmatch modes. The player may participate as a member of the SHC or the Tediz. As well as a choice of soldier, the game has a choice of "classes" which significantly affect play style.[13]
Each class has its own special equipment, special abilities, and physical capabilities; each class being designed for a distinct purpose. They are also designed to have advantages against certain classes while being vulnerable to others. For example, the Thermophile's flamethrower inflicts extreme damage on Sneekers and Long Rangers, who have less health, but is virtually useless against the high-vitality Demolisher. Each class comes equipped with a primary weapon with unlimited ammunition, (although reloading of the weapon is still required), a limited stock of grenades, and at least one special ability. Scattered throughout the arenas are yellow Upgrade Orbs, which grant a player more equipment and abilities when obtained. A player loses his upgrade orb upon death, allowing another player to obtain it.
Censorship
The game was originally titled Conker: Live and Uncut and featured a completely uncensored single player experience. At some point during the development of the game, this was changed and the game was released with heavy censorship.[14] Even minor obscenities which were present in the original N64 version were censored. This drew heavy criticism from fans of the original, especially as it detracted from comedic highlights such as the song in the Sloprano chapter. This song was also censored on the soundtrack, but Rare has the uncensored Xbox version of the song on their website.[15]
Like the original, the game was rated M by the ESRB and carried warnings about its content as well as Rare's promotional spoof warnings that advertised the fact that the content of the game was explicitly 'adult'. The audio files on the game disc are censored to begin with and contain the bleeps, indicating that they are not censored by the game engine.
Reception
Conker:Live and Reloaded was praised by critics for its brilliantly colored graphics.[16][17] The game was awarded IGN's "Best of E3 2004" and "Best of E3 2005" in the category of "Best Graphics" for X-Box.[18][19] However it was criticized for changes to the singleplayer campaign compared to the original.
The multiplayer mode (new in this version of the game) remained popular well into 2007 (Over a year and a half from its release) when it remained in the top 10 most played online titles for its platform.[20]
Conker: Live and Reloaded scored a 78/100 on Metacritic.[21]
References
- ^ http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=7506
- ^ Ze Professor: Duct tape... I'll give him a duct tape... fucking arsehole! I'll come down here... I'll show him where the duct tape is... I'll show him where to stuff it! Stupid fucker... All I do all day is try and sort his stupid fucking problems out! Asshole, I fucking hate that fucker! Anyway, vat ver ve? Ze milk, ze milk, ze table, ze table! (looks at the Anti-Gravity Chocolate) Vat shall ve do vit zis? Clean slate, ja. Clean slate. Anti-Gravity Chocolate... is kinda vurking! Ah, zat vill do... Out the fucking vindow vit zat! (Conker's Bad Fur Day)
- ^ "IGN review". http://ign64.ign.com/articles/163/163960p1.html. Retrieved 2007-07-05.
- ^ "GameSpot review". http://www.gamespot.com/n64/action/conkersbadfurday/review.html. Retrieved 2007-07-05.
- ^ http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=210037
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ http://www.answers.com/topic/conker-s-bad-fur-day
- ^ http://mundorare.com/news/2008/09/conker-commands-and-conquers
- ^ http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/7zf5f/conkers_other_bad_fur_day_make_it_happen_petition
- ^ Adams, David (June 3, 2005). "Conker's Gold Fur Day". IGN. http://xbox.ign.com/articles/622/622139p1.html. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
- ^ "CONKER - LIVE & RELOADED". BBFC. http://www.bbfc.co.uk/website/Classified.nsf/0/D94DAACB46128AC0802570040034475D?OpenDocument. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
- ^ Douglass C. Perry (April 6, 2005). Conker: Live and Reloaded: Hands-on Multiplayer. IGN. http://xbox.ign.com/articles/602/602184p1.html. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
- ^ Hilary Goldstein (April 12, 2005). Conker: Playing with Yourself. IGN. http://xbox.ign.com/articles/603/603594p1.html. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
- ^ "MP3s". http://www.rareware.com/extras/mp3s2.html. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
- ^ Williams, Bryn (June 22, 2005). "Review of Conker:Live and Reloaded". Gamespy. http://xbox.gamespy.com/xbox/conker-live-and-uncut/628192p1.html. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
- ^ Goldstein, Hilary (May 12, 2004). "E3 2004: Conker Live and Reloaded Hands-On". IGN. http://xbox.ign.com/articles/514/514188p1.html. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
- ^ Hilary Goldstein; Doug Perry (May 21, 2004). "Xbox Best of E3 2004 Awards". IGN. pp. 9. http://xbox.ign.com/articles/517/517931p1.html. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
- ^ Douglass C. Perry; David Clayman (May 27, 2005). "Xbox Best of E3 2005 Awards". IGN. pp. 3. http://xbox.ign.com/articles/619/619567p1.html. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
- ^ Lary 'Major Nelson' Hryb. "Top Xbox LIVE Games of 2007". http://web.archive.org/web/20080107034847/http://209.11.233.28/archive/2008/01/04/top-xbox-live-games-of-2007.aspx. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
- ^ "Conker: Live and Reloaded". metacritic.com. http://www.metacritic.com/games/platforms/xbx/conkerliveandreloaded?q=Conker. Retrieved 2009-05-24.
External links
