Game: Conker’s Bad Fur Day
Platform: Nintendo 64
Year Released: 2001



When it came to the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64, I was a PlayStation girl all the way. I was obsessed with the little gray system, kind of a Sony fangirl before I even knew what that meant. As a result of this (and of being 12, probably), I thought the Nintendo 64 sucked, and didn’t even want to give it a chance. As a result, there are a lot of classic 64 games I missed out on the first time around.


While I later became more open-minded and picked up a Nintendo 64 (mostly to play Ocarina of Time and Pokemon Stadium), it wasn’t until recently that I managed to expand my collection of 64 games. Conker’s Bad Fur Day is one I recently managed to find pretty cheap. However, moving, work, and other life things have prevented me from actually playing it… until today.



For those who do not know, Conker’s Fur Day was a late Nintendo 64 release, one of the last games for the system before the Gamecube’s launch. It was a cute, cartoonish platformer featuring Conker, a cuddly squirrel-type creature. Oh, did I mention that Conker also has a smoking hot girlfriend, a potty mouth, and a slight drinking problem? It’s also worth mentioning that this game is most definitely rated Mature and says so explicitly right on the cartridge.

The mature content and adorable gameplay make for a hilarious and unexpected adventure through Conker’s world. The story begins much like Friday nights do at Gamervision, with Conker getting sauced with his friends at the bar. As he drunkenly tries to make his way home, he loses his way, and this is where the story begins.



Conker’s Bad Fur Day is a 3D platformer, and a really good-looking one at that. The game is one of the best I’ve ever seen on the Nintendo 64. This isn’t surprising, given that it was released so late into the console’s lifecycle. Not only are the characters and landscapes very visually appealing, but there’s a level of voice-acting I never would have expected from a game of that generation. The lip-syncing actually comes close to matching the voice work, which is very humorous and suits the tone of the game well.

Camera control, on the other hand, was a hit-or-miss aspect of the game. At some points, the camera can be pivoted in any direction using the N64 controller’s yellow buttons, but at other times it will remain static for some reason, which gets annoying when you can’t see where you are going.



My biggest gripe while playing this game had nothing to do with the game itself; my problem was with the Nintendo 64 controller, which I’ve never been a very big fan of. Trying to use the 64 thumbstick to maneuver Conker led to a lot of falling off of cliffs and veering off of paths that I needed to stay on in order to complete the task at hand. It’s a shame, because this is really a terrific achievement in gaming, and if it were to show up on the Wii’s Virtual Console, I’d probably invest ten bucks to be able to play it with another controller. An Xbox port called Conker Live and Reloaded was also released four years later, but was basically the exact same game with updated graphics (which I’d still prefer over having to use the Nintendo 64 controller).

Despite the controller issues, Conker’s Bad Fur Day is definitely a game I could see myself wanting to spend a lot of time with. If you can get your hands on a copy (or even the used Xbox game, which can’t cost very much at this point), go ahead and give it a go. In a generation where 3D platformers often failed horribly, Conker managed to be a fantastic game even with the limited hardware it was running on; for Nintendo 64, the thing is a technological marvel. It’s too bad I missed out the first time around, but now that I’ve gotten a taste, I’ll totally be playing this again.

 

 

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