Conker's Bad Fur Day

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At first glance, Conker’s Bad Fur Day looks like any other N64 platformer. The DNA of Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie is right there. 

But then the game does something strange when you start it. The camera starts closed in on Conker, who stares coldly at the audience before sipping a glass of milk. Wait, you think. Are they starting the game with a shot from Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange? Yes, yes they are. 

In that moment, any thought of another kid-friendly Rare adventure evaporates. This was something else entirely.

Marketed as an M-rated, adults-only platformer, Conker’s Bad Fur Day was packed with movie parodies riffing on Kubrick, Spielberg, Cameron, and even David Lynch.

It featured full voice acting, a script dripping with profanity, and humor that could fit in with any South Park episode. This was not a game you wanted to play with your mom in the room. 

Welcome to Conker’s twisted world, where Saturday morning cartoon visuals collide with late-night, anything-goes irreverence.

The evil Panther King has a problem: the table next to his throne only has three legs, and every time he sets down his glass of milk it tips over. His scientists propose a solution, find a red squirrel to serve as the perfect fourth leg. Yes, you read that correctly. This is the motivation of the evil bad guy for this game. Just go with it. 

Enter Conker, a hungover squirrel just trying to get home to his girlfriend, who suddenly finds himself caught up in an outrageous quest that spirals into mafia dung beetles, raging warzones, and even an opera-singing pile of poo.

Conker's Bad Fur Day stands as one of the Nintendo 64's most technically impressive achievements, showcasing vibrant cartoon visuals that pushed the system to its limits.

The character animations were fluid and expressive, bringing personality to every creature in this twisted fairy tale world. Rare's attention to detail showed in every bouncy tail flick and exaggerated facial expression.

At its core, Conker’s Bad Fur Day is about exploring oddball worlds, solving mini-quests, and stumbling into stranger and stranger characters.

Combat is deliberately simple, mostly frying pan swings, baseball bat smacks, or context-sensitive gags, so the challenge comes less from skill and more from figuring out what ridiculous solution the game wants.

Progression comes less from collecting items and more from helping (or aggravating) the bizarre residents you meet along the way, a trio of barn bullies (a paint can, brush, and pitchfork) who gang up on you, or a furious bull who wants you dead simply because he hates the color red.

Here’s an example of the absurdity of the quests: to help a dung beetle mob boss with his poo quota, Conker lures cows to troughs filled with prune juice, nature’s laxative, so they’ll unload into a drain at the center of the barnyard.

To do this, you have to lure a bull in the area to charge you and get its horns stuck on a wooden fence. You then jump on top of it, and use it to hit the cows to go drink the prune juice and then poop down the drain.

Once the cow is finished, you ride the raging bull again to ram the cows, tearing them apart in slapstick gore to clear them from the drain, and repeat the process until three cows have “processed” enough poo to meet the quota. It’s crude, over-the-top, and exactly the kind of gross-out humor the game thrives on.

Exploration rewarded curious players with hidden cash, used to unlock new areas and push the story forward. A central hub linked wildly different worlds, from prehistoric valleys to war-torn beaches, each with its own mechanics and style. 

The game is packed with parodies, from a slow-motion lobby shootout straight out of The Matrix to a climactic showdown with the Alien Queen from Aliens. Everywhere you turn, there’s another wink at a classic film.

The soundtrack matched the chaos, shifting from sweeping orchestral themes to goofy jingles that spoof Terminator and Jaws, while full voice acting, packed with British accents and crude humor, pushed Nintendo’s boundaries. Sound effects stood out too, from the chime of collected cash to the crunch of cartoon violence. 

The game also included a surprisingly robust multiplayer mode, with scenarios ranging from capture-the-flag shootouts to squirrel-versus-teddy bear warzones. While some critics praised its variety and dark humor, others found the controls too clunky for it to compete with N64 staples like GoldenEye or Mario Kart.

Critical praise couldn’t save it from poor marketing and limited shelf space due to its M-rating, leaving it a cult classic and a pricey collector’s item today.

Is the game perfect? No. My biggest complaint going back to it was, once again, the camera. You’re stuck with inverted controls that make the world feel backwards, with no way to fix it in the options. For me, the main challenge wasn’t any specific enemy or boss, it was fighting the camera.

And I’m sure the goofy humor won’t land for everyone, a complaint I read back in magazine reviews when the game came out. Immature and too many poop jokes? Well sure, but it just fits in the world they are trying to create here.

Its context-sensitive controls and seamless genre-hopping showed how platformers could evolve beyond simple jump mechanics. Even two decades later, few games have captured Conker's unique blend of cartoon charm and adult irreverence.

Conker's Bad Fur Day stands as a testament to what happens when talented developers are given creative freedom to make something completely unhinged. It's gaming's equivalent of a Saturday morning cartoon having an existential crisis, and we're all better for experiencing its beautiful madness.

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