Conker's Pocket Tales

"This game was developed by Rare?!?"

Could it be that Rare have finally laid a bad egg?Read on.

I must admit,the only reason i bought this game was becasue it was from Rare.I looked at the pictures and thought what the hell,this game is devloped by the company that brought us Goldneye!After inserting the cartridge into my Special Gameboy(It's covered with Matchbox20 pics if you were wondering)i was in for quite a shock. I'll start with the story.

You are Conker,a squirrel and it is your birthday.You and your girlfriend are partying and all of a sudden your girl and all your presents are stolen by your arch enemy, the ''Evil Acorn''.Put simply,the storyline is so dreadfully simple that your 4 month old cousin who cant talk yet would be having no trouble at all understanding the objective of this game:Regaining all of the presents and ultimately defeating the ''Evil Acorn''.

The visuals are pretty much the best you will see for a while on the GBC.The levels are varied and no obvious shortcuts have been taken.Everything is portrayed in real colour,none of that light grey trying to be blue stuff i've seen in other games.

The sound in Conker will have you putting on the headphones and listening to Matchbox20 in no time.It is designed to appeal to the young ones among us so more mature gamers will find the sound about as appealing as my singing voice.Trust me,that's pretty darn bad!

Gameplay is where Conker excels.There are various mini games to keep your interest's up and they all seem to wear out your thumb rather quickly.A lot of the mini games require you to push the b button as fast as you can for an extraordinary amount of time.Often you will require help from another person if you wish to complete these mini games.Whilst playing the normal parts of the game(collecting presents,beating up baddies)you will often have other objectives to complete.My favourite is the desert level,where you have to collect all the different boat parts and return them to the owner,thus gaining a prize to help you on your quest.It's little things like this that add to the enjoyablilty of a game.

Even with the good level design and somewhat compelling gameplay,Conker falls short in that the game is too short and it will probably only appeal to the younger gamers among us.
Put simply,i expected a lot more from Rare.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 04/28/00, Updated 04/28/00