Conker's Bad Fur Day
Nintendo 64
Nostalgia Factor:
I first rented Conker’s Bad Fur Day back in 2001, expecting it to be simply another Mario 64 or Banjo-Kazooie type game. I remember being so shocked as I played this game and watched its insane events unfold. The cursing and the profanity. The alcohol abuse. The sexual innuendos. The shocking, random moments of gratuitous violence. And who could forget the giant singing creature made out of poo? This was not your average Nintendo kids title.
Back then, I was never able to beat the game as I got stuck about halfway through it. But boy did it leave an impression on me.
I would revisit the world of Conker in 2006 when I played the Xbox remake of the original classic. This time I was finally able to complete the game, although I never did come back and finish off the N64 version. Well, here in the year 2021, that has changed. How would I feel about this version of the game, after finally beating it 20 years since it was first released? Let’s find out.
Story:
Things begins with an angry looking Conker sitting on a throne, crown askew on his head, surrounded by what appear to be his loyal subjects. The game takes us back in time to explain how we got to this point.
In the past, a completely shit-faced Conker stumbles out of a bar. He wanders into a nearby field where a scarecrow helps him sober up and teaches him the rules of the game. A newly sober Conker makes it a priority to get home quick, so he can be with his hot chipmunk girlfriend, Berri. I don’t know how Conker ended up at this bar, and why he couldn’t find his way home (all the areas we visit in the game seem new to him, but he had to have passed through them to get to the bar) but I guess these questions are never answered. In the end, it doesn’t seem to really matter.
The game’s big bad villain, the Panther King, sends his cronies out to capture and bring back a squirrel when he determines that a squirrel would be the perfect size to replace a missing table leg in his throne room. Conker’s a squirrel, so oh shit this seems to put him directly in the Panther King’s crosshairs. Conker travels through strange and mysterious lands as he heads home, dodging the Panther King’s cronies at every turn.
What makes Conker unique (aside from the adult humor) is the world of the game. Everything feels like it is made of a seemingly random hodgepodge of parts thrown together with no rhyme or reason whatsoever. You start in a corn field outside a bar, and you make your way past a gargoyle guarding a bridge near a waterfall. You end up in a seemingly cheerful area full of flowers and sunshine only to find yourself caught in a bloody skirmish between two groups of bees. You wind up at a farmhouse where you befriend some farming equipment and fight off a killer Terminator-like pile of hay. You lead bees to a giant breasted sunflower (really) to help pollinate it. You explore the land of the dung beetles, where everything is covered in shit. You fight a giant opera singing boss character made out of said shit, and you defeat him by throwing corn kernels at him. Then you head to an underwater area, a tower filled with bats, a cavern filled with cavemen and dinosaurs, a night club populated by rock creatures, and then a graveyard, and then Dracula’s house, and then a war zone pulled straight from Saving Private Ryan. Do you get my point? The connective tissue between these stages is very thin and oddly random. What kind of drugs were the makers of this game on? Is the whole point of this game’s world to be as random as possible and not make any sense? I mean, I like that kind of humor. I dig the non sequitur. It’s how I make people laugh myself. But I have never seen it taken to quite the extreme that it is in this game.
Long story short, at the end of the game Berri dies, Conker defeats the Panther King (without actually fighting him as a boss character, which I found strange), and Conker becomes the new king. Wow, what an eventful day! A bad fur day, you might say.
Gameplay:
While this game certainly has an interesting premise and storyline, it falters a bit in its gameplay. On the surface this may seem like your average 3D platforming collect-athon, but it really isn’t. It’s hard for me to classify what type of game this is exactly. A platformer? A puzzle solver? A shooter? It is all these things at once, but none of them at the same time. I don’t think this game even knows what it is. I think the best way to describe it is a platformer with an asterisk.
Conker’s Bad Fur Day takes place from a behind the back perspective. You jump, you run around, and you whack things with a frying pan (your normal attack). Pretty standard stuff for an N64 game. But unlike most games of this type, you aren’t collecting coins or notes or anything like that. You aren’t searching for jewels or keys. You aren’t looking to unlock any hidden chambers. There isn’t a constant stream of grunt-like enemies to kill or dispatch. Most of the time when you are running around, you aren’t fighting or collecting anything at all.
The main goal of the game is to find money, which is pretty rare and hard to find. Aside from the introductory area of the game, you mainly hang out on the overworld map. There are a couple areas you can go to. A farm, a beehive, the shit-covered land of the dung beetles, a waterfall that leads to certain death. You have to fully explore each area, collect what money you can find, and then move on to the next. Like I mentioned before, you aren’t just fighting enemies and collecting items like you would in a Sonic or Mario game. This game can almost be classified as a puzzler, since you really have to use your head if you want to advance.
For example, when you come to the barn area you immediately encounter two big sentient blocks with faces on them. They are afraid of a mouse nearby. Clearly you need to jump on these blocks to advance, but as it is – you can’t. So you have to take care of the mouse they are so afraid of. You have to haul your butt to the other side of the game area, collect a piece of cheese, bring it back to the mouse while navigating an obstacle course of shit that can hurt you, and throw the cheese at the mouse. Do this three times, and it explodes from overeating. The blocks then allow you to jump on them to get on top of the barn. You then have to corral a couple groups of bees and lead them to a giant big-breasted sunflower. Gather enough bees and she allows you to jump on her chest and bounce to a high platform to collect some money. During this whole sequence there is no fighting, no gathering coins or gathering anything collectible off the ground, nothing you would normally do in a game like this. You have to use your head, and the game doesn’t hold your hand either. This was just the first example that came to my head, but this game is filled with puzzling moments even more cryptic than this. I got stuck many times as I played and often had to turn to the internet for help. The prehistoric night club in particular stumps me every time. No wonder I couldn’t beat this game back in 2001.
As you get deeper into the game, you gain new attacks – not that any of them are any good. For example in the Dracula land you are given guns you can use to kill zombies and other enemies. Aiming, lining up, and firing your gun are all very tough to do, as the controls are slow and overly complicated. Same thing in the Saving Private Ryan area of the game. They finally give you some regular enemies to fight and it turns out fighting them is a giant and frustrating chore.
If there is one thing Conker’s Bad Fur Day does right, it is its boss battles. The boss battles are big and epic in scope, and often require observation and intuitive thinking in order to defeat them. This game felt most like a traditional platformer during its boss fights.
Graphics:
I think this game still looks really good. It has that classic N64 charm to its graphics that is hard to put down in words. Bright colors, detailed landscapes, well-designed characters, but rough around the edges at the same time. Many areas of the game are very atmospheric. Where this game really shines, though, is in its cinematography. The story segments and big action sequences are just so fun to watch. The game shows its age in some parts, but in other parts there are times when I simply can’t believe how ahead of its time this game was.
Sound:
This game has really good music and sound effects too. Each area of the game has its own little catchy tune attached to it, most notably the overworld theme. I couldn’t help but hum it to myself as I played – sometimes even when I was not playing.
Voice acting is great. Conker and the cast of this game have such big, vibrant personalities. The writing is exceptionally funny too, and had me cracking up more times than I could count.
When you think of this game’s sound, though, the first thing that comes to mind for me (and probably will for the rest of my life) is the boss battle against the Great Mighty Poo. Just listen to this guy sing! Freaking brilliant.
Overall:
I have so many mixed feelings about this game. I will start with the good. It’s funny, it’s clever, it’s got great music and sound effects. I love the premise of the game and how inappropriate it is. I mean, I just LOVE it. The mere thought of some blue-haired white girl firing this game up in the year 2021, not knowing what to expect, and immediately freaking out over its content and trying to cancel the game is something that brings me great joy. Please tell me this has happened somewhere.
But aside from all that, the actual game itself isn’t always very fun to play. Frustrating camera angles. Nothing to collect, no enemies to fight. All the backtracking and getting stuck all the time. Clumsy controls. Ridiculously poor shooting segments in the Dracula/D-Day areas of the game. The list goes on and on. I wish I could say that this game was an absolute blast to play, but I just can’t lie like that. Sure, there were segments of the game that were a blast (see the Great Mighty Poo), but those segments were few and far between.
Despite all that, I would still suggest this game to anyone willing to play it, if only for how unique it is. This game is both a worldwide fucking treasure and not very fun at the same time. How it manages to pull that feat off, I don’t know. But it does. Now that I’ve satisfied my curiosity and completed this game, I probably won’t return to it again in my lifetime. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t play it though. If you have never managed to try the oddball curiosity that is Conker’s Bad Fur Day, you should get on it.
Final Score:
C+
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