Rare Ltd.
Conker's Bad Fur Day

A game like this could only run on a Nintendo 64.

And, incredibly, the reason for such a statement doesn't lie in the fact that the features of that console designated it as the most powerful of its generation, but rather in its limitations. Because the Nintendo 64 wasn't just powerful and loved by the minority of gamers who preferred it over the PlayStation; it was also very very very bizarre.

A bit of history (if you're not interested, skip to the next paragraph). Released in North American markets in 1996, the N64 arrived late compared to the aspiring new queen produced by Sony and the super-flop from Sega, the Saturn. Nintendo, in fact, wasn't swift in the previous 16-bit generation either, but at that time, the right timing mattered less, and the Super Nintendo has become a cornerstone in the history of video games. But this time something was not going right for the Kyoto-based company. Already in 1992, it saw its agreements for the production of a Super Nes add-on to read CD-ROMs fall through: agreements were first made with Sony itself (which, coincidentally, was supposed to be called Playstation) and then with Philips, who also went their own way, creating the forgotten and failing CD-i, which was the only non-Nintendo console to have original Mario (the infamous Hotel Mario) and Zelda games, due to some unbroken agreements. Also, due to Nintendo's lack of familiarity with 3D graphics, the hardware creation took a long time and was first presented (with the provisional name “Ultra 64”) in 1994, when the other two consoles were about to be released in Japan. Unlike these latter two, it did not use CDs but remained anchored to the old cartridges. The reasons for this choice were essentially two: the almost total absence of loading times and a certain immunity to piracy. In reality, Nintendo this time lacked foresight: CDs had a storage capacity of up to 700MB, had low production costs, and allowed high-quality sound reproduction. Not to mention that the considerable “moddability” of the Sony console, along with the thriving underground market favored by optical support, was one of its major success factors. Cartridges lacked all these qualities, and it was due to them that many external companies, like Squaresoft (with its lovely Final Fantasy VII spread across 3 CDs), weaned themselves from the mother to whom they owed many joys. Not to mention that due to the lack of memory offered by cartridges, the Nintendo 64 games could not show the true power of the console. Indeed, the textures (i.e., the images that give color to the polygon models) could not be excessively heavy and therefore enriched with too many shades and details: to address the issue, it followed the use of very homogeneous textures that gave a very vibrant and non-realistic look to the games (which is quite ironic considering that the initial hardware project was named “Project Reality”).

Due to its structure and its particular cartoony graphics, the Nintendo 64 was a console destined for a predominantly young audience in an era when video games were starting to open up to a mass audience precisely because they had stopped looking like “just video games,” pastimes for computer whiz loners with virtually nonexistent social lives. Adult games, such as sports or extremely dark and violent ones (as well as those capable of selling millions), were almost absent on the PlayStation for Nintendo 64.

The exception was made by the trusty Rareware, Nintendo's right-hand side since the Battletoads days on the NES but better known for the extraordinary revival of Donkey Kong in the Donkey Kong Country trilogy on SNES. The British company produced three masterpieces of the N64's "adult" catalog: GoldenEye 007, which demonstrated that FPSs could be done outside the PC, Perfect Dark, which demonstrated that FPSs with an engaging storyline could be done outside the PC, and Conker's Bad Fur Day, which demonstrated that the console's flagship genre, which it had helped to forge (with Super Mario 64) and perfect (with Banjo Kazooie, again by Rare), namely the 3D platformer, a cartoonish genre by definition, could be transformed, overturned, deconstructed, shattered from the ground up to create a game with the M rating (which stands for “Mature,” i.e., for ages 17 and up). A game that, like the other two, is without a doubt a masterpiece.

Conker's Bad Fur Day in its highly oxymoronic essence of “platform for adults” is an improbable mixture of blinding colors and nastiness, of improbable as well as obscene characters, and of traditional game mechanics refined for a less traditionalist audience.

The story is not only as imaginative as required by games of this kind, it is also completely idiotic: it begins with the red squirrel Conker calling his bunny girlfriend Berri, telling her a fib to not go home and instead spend the evening partying with his friends at the tavern. Finding himself drunkenly wandering the streets after closing time, Conker gets lost and it's up to us to bring him home, trying to help along the way all the strange animals and normally inanimate talking objects we will encounter. At the same time, we'll see scenes where the Panther King is angry because he can't drink his milk, which always spills due to his table with one leg shorter than the others. His mad scientist advisor notices that to repair it and keep it standing, it would be enough to use something the length of a red squirrel...

The whole game is structured in a single freely explorable world, and the developers' creativity has run wild to create a diverse and original experience: Conker will find himself fighting with a frying pan against living cheese shapes to feed to a giant mouse, hatching a dinosaur egg to then “sacrifice” the hatchling, blowing the heads off zombie rabbits with a gun, shooting at wasps inside a giant hive, bouncing on the breasts of a buxom sunflower, defeating with toilet paper tossing The Great Mighty Poo, a giant excrement with a passion for opera, inside a mountain of dung built by dung beetles.

But the title of platformer for adults that Conker's Bad Fur Day undoubtedly deserves comes not only from its story (full of references from movies like Terminator, Saving Private Ryan, Matrix, just to name a few) and its obscene situations (often quite naïve, to be truthful), but from the gameplay itself which is designed for those not accustomed to playing such games. First of all, the platform sections are relatively easy, complicated only by fall damage, which is rarely seen in these games where gravity is generally just an opinion: if you fall from a significant height, you'll splatter into a thousand pieces (literally). Secondly, the amount of collectible items and commands to memorize is minimal, facilitated by the inclusion of “context-sensitive” buttons: we will find platforms with “B” written on them scattered through Conker's world, and by pressing the corresponding button on them, our squirrel will perform a certain action (e.g., wield a specific weapon) suitable for the context. A mechanic that, to some extent, is even too simplistic for a young audience accustomed, from a “manual” point of view, to more intense challenges.

Precisely for this reason, backtracking (i.e., returning to already explored areas to obtain items with skills we previously didn’t have) is practically nonexistent: to progress in the game, we'll only need bundles of money, which won't be difficult to find since they will shout at us inviting us to grab them ("Here I am, ya greedy bastard!"), even though reaching them will still require a minimal amount of brain work.

In total, the single-player adventure (yes, there's also an awesome deathmatch mode that supports up to 4 players) of Conker doesn't last more than 10 hours but, while similar games amaze from the start only to become monotonous, our rodent's journey starts in fits and starts (due to his hangover) and becomes more and more intense. It turns out to be one of the most fun, unpredictable, and twist-filled games of all time with a truly truly TRULY shocking ending (perhaps the only element that makes this game genuinely mature) that will make us realize that Conker's journey wasn't just a fun jaunt but a journey into his vices and flaws culminating in a truly unexpected and not at all trivial moral lesson.

In the end, the graphics are not only colorful, they are also definitely some of the best of the fifth generation, still perfectly enjoyable, and the characters display various facial expressions that make the entire game world vibrant and “alive”. Also, the audio is remarkable with perfect English dubbing featuring numerous voices in different accents (spread across one of the few N64 cartridges with “just” 64MB), not to mention the memorable music used creatively: such as the main theme that will be performed by the buzzing of bees when we are near a hive or the one in the poop world composed by an orchestra of farts.

Released in 2001, at the end of its console's life cycle, Conker's Bad Fur Day not only couldn't sell many copies, due to marketing too focused on adults with ads in Playboy pages, but it was even disowned by Nintendo, which censored a few small things and refused to distribute it in Europe (fortunately, THQ did). Luckily, it was still able to build a cult following to the point that Rare, bought by Microsoft in 2002, made a remake for Xbox 360 in 2005.

And to think that during the design phase it was supposed to become the usual game for kids, but Rare, in a rebellious outburst, decided to change their mind at the last minute, probably forfeiting a lot of money but giving us a semi-unknown masterpiece that with the use of an irony balanced between the absurd and the tragic shows us that even an ostensibly childish game can teach us, making us bend over with laughter, something very profound.