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Conker's Bad Fur Day
Text Review
Once upon a time there was a cute little squirrel called Conker. He liked to go kart racing with his friends in Diddy Kong Racing and even went on a cute colorful adventure to save his girlfriend in Conker's Pocket Tales for the GameBoy Color. Conker's solo debut on the Nintendo 64 (N64) started out as a traditional kid-friendly 3D platformer but with the huge collection of games in the genre already available for the system, Conker was likely to become overshadowed by the other more well known series. At this point the games developer Rareware thought screw it, let's just redesign the entire game and break as many taboos as the M rating can possibly take, and so they did. The result is Conker's Bad Fur Day (CBFD), a game that is obscene, violent and sometimes downright disgusting. But it’s also fun, incredibly fun.
The game starts with Conker waking up in a field after a night of heavy drinking with his friends. Hung over and tired, he sets off for home to get some rest, a simple goal that turns out to be much harder than it sounds.
One of the greatest things about CBFD is the level of variety; pretty much every mission throws something completely new at you. One minute you may be hover board racing against a group of cavemen and the next you're fighting Nazi like teddy bears in a parody of Saving Private Ryan. The core of the game is a 3D platformer in the vein of Super Mario 64; you complete different objectives on huge 3D levels which earns you money that you then use to access new levels. There are also a few levels that deviate from the platformer genre including a couple of third person shooter levels. There is also a superb 4-player multiplayer mode and, like the main game, it doesn't limit itself to one style of gameplay. There are a total of 7 different multiplayer modes, and unlike other games, the multiplayer actually has story cut scenes to set the stage.
But what really sets Conker's Bad Fur Day apart from other games is the humor. CBFD was made when the TV show South Park was at the height of its popularity, and the game has undeniably got some inspiration from the show, but it has a totally different style and never rips off South Park in any way. The game’s developer is British, and there's a whole lot of the classic nonsensical “British humor”. For instance, one of the game’s main antagonists wants to capture Conker only because he is the right size to replace his broken table leg. The game has no shortage of toilet humor either, but even if you like me are not generally a fan of that type of humor, CBFD delivers the jokes so well that it's almost impossible not to laugh.
CBFD has among the best, if not the best, graphics of any game on the N64; this game could easily have been released for the Dreamcast and still be considered beautiful. The levels look great and the annoying fog that many N64 games used to hide their bad draw distance is nowhere to be found. The character models look even better; they all have a lot of detail and personality put into them, and Conker even casts a realistic looking shadow. Even if the game looks incredible, it does not require the N64 Expansion Pak so you'll be able to play with all the detail even if you don't have the upgrade.
The sound design is equally impressive. Not only does the game’s entire dialog have great quality voice acting which was not very common with the storage limitations of the N64's cartridges, but the dialog is also lip-synced with the characters which was even rarer at the time. The music is fantastic, especially the incredibly catchy music in the first level which I'd put right up there with classics like the Super Mario Bros and Zelda themes any day of the week. I dare you to try listening to it for more than one minute without starting to whistle along. If that's not enough, there's also a hilarious opera song sung by a gigantic pile of crap.
CBFD was made at the end of the N64's lifespan and had a very limited release so the game is not the easiest to find or cheapest game on the system. But it's honestly one of the best and most original games ever released on the N64, so if you ever find a copy you should definitely buy it even if it costs a few dollars more than most other games.
- Christian Ljungqvist
Developer: Rareware
Game Publisher: Rareware, THQ (Europe)
Platform(s): Nintendo 64
The game starts with Conker waking up in a field after a night of heavy drinking with his friends. Hung over and tired, he sets off for home to get some rest, a simple goal that turns out to be much harder than it sounds.
One of the greatest things about CBFD is the level of variety; pretty much every mission throws something completely new at you. One minute you may be hover board racing against a group of cavemen and the next you're fighting Nazi like teddy bears in a parody of Saving Private Ryan. The core of the game is a 3D platformer in the vein of Super Mario 64; you complete different objectives on huge 3D levels which earns you money that you then use to access new levels. There are also a few levels that deviate from the platformer genre including a couple of third person shooter levels. There is also a superb 4-player multiplayer mode and, like the main game, it doesn't limit itself to one style of gameplay. There are a total of 7 different multiplayer modes, and unlike other games, the multiplayer actually has story cut scenes to set the stage.
But what really sets Conker's Bad Fur Day apart from other games is the humor. CBFD was made when the TV show South Park was at the height of its popularity, and the game has undeniably got some inspiration from the show, but it has a totally different style and never rips off South Park in any way. The game’s developer is British, and there's a whole lot of the classic nonsensical “British humor”. For instance, one of the game’s main antagonists wants to capture Conker only because he is the right size to replace his broken table leg. The game has no shortage of toilet humor either, but even if you like me are not generally a fan of that type of humor, CBFD delivers the jokes so well that it's almost impossible not to laugh.
CBFD has among the best, if not the best, graphics of any game on the N64; this game could easily have been released for the Dreamcast and still be considered beautiful. The levels look great and the annoying fog that many N64 games used to hide their bad draw distance is nowhere to be found. The character models look even better; they all have a lot of detail and personality put into them, and Conker even casts a realistic looking shadow. Even if the game looks incredible, it does not require the N64 Expansion Pak so you'll be able to play with all the detail even if you don't have the upgrade.
The sound design is equally impressive. Not only does the game’s entire dialog have great quality voice acting which was not very common with the storage limitations of the N64's cartridges, but the dialog is also lip-synced with the characters which was even rarer at the time. The music is fantastic, especially the incredibly catchy music in the first level which I'd put right up there with classics like the Super Mario Bros and Zelda themes any day of the week. I dare you to try listening to it for more than one minute without starting to whistle along. If that's not enough, there's also a hilarious opera song sung by a gigantic pile of crap.
CBFD was made at the end of the N64's lifespan and had a very limited release so the game is not the easiest to find or cheapest game on the system. But it's honestly one of the best and most original games ever released on the N64, so if you ever find a copy you should definitely buy it even if it costs a few dollars more than most other games.
- Christian Ljungqvist
Developer: Rareware
Game Publisher: Rareware, THQ (Europe)
Platform(s): Nintendo 64
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