Conker's Bad Fur Day

"Good. Bad. I'm the guy with the beer."

People grow up. When I was a few years younger, I met a charming young girl by the name of Charlene. Charlene was just a few years younger than I was at the time, but she was cute in a “little kitten” kind of way. She was polite, too. She always opened the door for me, she always said “Please” and “Thank you” and she was a model young girl. She volunteered in the community even though she was 12 years old! She was the perfect daughter, and the other 12-year-old boys thought she was the most beautiful thing to ever walk the earth.

Then, as soon as she turned 13, things changed. Little Charlene began to wear skimpy, revealing outfits and started working at strip clubs. A mustache started growing, and she grew unusual amounts of armpit hair for a young girl. She started smoking pot and doing all types of drugs, and even sold drugs to the kids during recess at school! Her life continued into a downward spiral of drugs, booze, and rampant sex until she finally became a lesbian at age 14.

People grow up and change. Take Conker, for example. When evil acorns crashed a party of his, Conker went on a quest to stop their evil. Or, when Wizpig attacked a lonely island, Conker was one of the furry animals there to help. But, you see, years after that incident with Wizpig, Conker grew up. He became materialistic, greedy, mean, and started drinking more often. He even started urinating in public places! One night, he parties too hardy, waking up with the king of all hangovers. Poor Conker has no idea where he is, either, and just wants to go home.

But our poor squirrel doesn’t know about the great Panther King. After the Panther King gets a glass of his favorite beverage, milk, he sets it on his trusty table. Alas, the table is missing a leg! The table promptly falls over, spilling the King’s milk. The King, enraged, orders his scientist to figure out the problem with the table. The scientist, after much study, found out the problem. The table is missing a leg! After researching what would be the best fit for the gap under the table, the scientist realizes that a squirrel will fit perfectly… more importantly, a red squirrel… but where can they find a red squirrel?

Conker’s Bad Fur Day is a platformer at heart, but sheds any reputation on Nintendo’s games being “kiddy” or any past pre-conceptions of what platformers are suppose to be. While most platformers are mindless collect-a-thons, CBFD offers just one thing to strive for and collect. Conker, the greedy little squirrel he is, collects cash. Yes, as Conker progresses through the game he’ll go from a poor squirrel to the animal equivalent of Hugh Hefner.

Cash is hard to find. In true platformer fashion, Conker must perform a few tasks and objectives to get some of the green stuff. A few of the tasks are brought on by interaction with some of the… well… more tasteless inhabitants of Conker’s world. For example, a drunken bee wants to “pollinate” a sexy, sultry big-breasted sunflower. After he “pollinates” her, she’s more than happy to let Conker “go for a bounce” on her boobs to reach a small cave where money resides. Sure, it’s tasteless (An off screen orgasm is heard during the bee’s “pollination” process), but it is also remarkably original and funny.

Every turn in CBFD feels new, exciting, and original. You rarely see any of the more common objectives in platformers (Flip this switch, then run over there before the time runs out, etc.), but if you do, it will have surely been spiced up by the game’s profane, rude humor. While the game is heavy on shock humor, most of it is clever and witty enough to make you chuckle or laugh out loud every time you see it. I still chuckle and laugh when I encounter the Great Mighty Poo, a large bulbous pile of poop that sings opera during your encounter.

The game also blends many genres of gaming into one, but it is still a platformer at heart. You’ll race against idiotic cavemen to get money. You’ll be thrown in the middle of a massive war, shooting everything you see. Or, why leave out the survival horror genre? An encounter with some of the scariest zombies ever to grace the N64 will leave Conker wetting his pants. These genres blend perfectly, and take the edge of the platformer in CBFD, making the game feel fresh and exciting.

The worlds Conker visits are radically different from each other. Of course, sure are any worlds in other platform games, but these worlds are incredibly, drastically different from each other. Conker wanders around a farm filled with evil haystacks and pitchforks one minute, and then traverses a poop filled wasteland the next minute. While other platform games try to tie together all the worlds in some way (vegetation, bad guys, etc.), each one of Conker’s worlds is as different as night and day.

These graphics are undoubtedly the best ever to grace the poor N64. The details are astounding and immerse you in the game. Conker’s beautiful looking fur looks strikingly real, and almost makes you want to try to pet him. When Conker looks up into the bright, glaring sun, he gets teary-eyed. When Conker gets drunk, the entire world seems to bend and waver humorously. The insides of the dead animals Conker sees look so realistic, you’ll often want to puke. The water effects are splendid, and you after Conker jumps out of water or another liquid and runs around, you see watery footprints and water drip from the wet squirrel. Different facial expressions are visible on Conker’s face throughout the game. Everything looks remarkably smooth, and the character animation simply flows. The textures are very nice looking, and few things suffer from the jaggies. The only problem that CBFD has is its somewhat erratic frame rate. It drops rarely, but when it does, you’ll notice it.

CBFD also excels at creating massive depth. You actually feel that your TV screen is just a door, showing you the massive world inside, due to the amazing graphics. Only in this game have I tilted my head to attempt to see what was up above Conker, soon realizing I couldn’t and that I needed to adjust the camera to see instead.

Everything sounds equally amazing, if not better. A few of the tunes in the start are usual “happy-go-lucky” tunes that are pleasant to listen to, but when Conker starts to get deeper in the game is when the real good music starts to play. The dinosaur world, for example, plays an awesome jungle type tune set to drums. When you enter Rock Solid, a nightclub filled with rock monsters, a hard dance mix plays. The Great Mighty Poo’s song is one of the best songs I’ve ever heard, and his lair, Poo Mountain, has a catchy tune set to farts and burps. When Conker gets thrown headfirst into a the war, the music picks up and gets your adrenaline pumping when you get attacked by the enemy. The best music ever to come in contact with the Nintendo 64 is during the “spooky” chapter of the game, where Conker is face-to-rotting face with extremely scary zombies and a vampire. During this chapter, you’ll hear the most beautiful, excellent sounding orchestra piece in years. This is the one game where the music certainly heightens the experience.

The N64’s swan song also features the best voice acting I’ve ever heard. Conker sounds rather innocent for his adventure. His girlfriend, the valley-squirrel Berri, has that complete valley-girl accent and sounds over-the-top, but funny. The Panther King is the most evil sounding villain I ever heard, and his growls and roars only make me more certain of that fact. The professor has this high pitched voice and a hilarious German accent. The orgasm you hear is fairly realistic (just ask me, I’ve heard millions of them). The zombies moan and groan and send chills down your spine, but when you hear them chewing on you is when you’ll really get freaked. The voice acting was there throughout the game, and that was excellent. The voice acting brings more to the humor and drags you into the well-constructed plot.

Control is something Rare got right since Banjo met Kazooie. Conker is remarkably easy to move, and none of his moves are more then a combination of two button presses. With how much the squirrel does, this is a great thing. Controlling him in first person mode is a tad difficult, with walking assigned to the C-Buttons, but it works. The camera is also nice, and it always picks a good angle for you. My one complaint is that in Bat’s Tower, a huge, massive tower, the camera gets fixed in one spot as Conker climbs up the tower using very small and thin wooden planks. The view gets obstructed in the middle of a plank due to a hanging rope, and that might cause you to fall off because you do not know how far you have to go. Other than that, the camera works.

Sadly, CBFD’s single player mode lacks replay. There are no secrets in the game, but since the single player mode is somewhat long and rather difficult, you’ll be playing for a while. Once you beat it though, you’ll only really want to play it another 3 or 4 times until you move onto the real beauty on the cart: multiplayer.

The multiplayer modes are in the top three for best multiplayer modes ever to come to the N64. There are a bunch of the modes, but two of them are lackluster. The two are the Race game and the Tank game, which lack a bunch of the random, manic fun and energy the other games offer. The other games, though, are massive fun. In a brilliant move by Rare, one person can play the multiplayer games by their lonesome, which is a function that should be implemented in ALL games that have multiplayer. Not everyone has friends, ya’ know!

Conker’s Bad Fur Day is the reason to own a N64. It has a hilarious and great single player mode whose only downfall is lack of replay value. The multiplayer is everything you could ever ask for. The story is funny, and everything on this cart feels original. Add to the fact that CBFD delivers one of the most risky endings to a video game in history, and this is why you have the Nintendo 64. If you have the Nintendo 64 but don’t own CBFD, I implore you to put away your XBox and PS2, take the N64 out of your closet, and buy CBFD! It is dirt-cheap now, and there is no reason for this not to be in every gamer’s library.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/12/01, Updated 07/15/02