Conker's Bad Fur Day
Conker's Bad Fur Day is a 2001 platform game developed by Rare and published by Rare in North America and by THQ in Europe for the Nintendo 64. The game follows Conker, a greedy, hard-drinking red squirrel who must return home to his girlfriend, Berri, after an evening of heavily drinking at the local pub. Most of the game requires the player to complete a linear sequence of challenges that involve jumping over obstacles, solving puzzles, and fighting enemies. A multiplayer mode in which up to four players can compete against each other in seven different game types is also included. It is the second installment in the Conker series, after Conker's Pocket Tales.
Although visually similar to Rare's previous games, such as Banjo-Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64, and Banjo-Tooie, Conker's Bad Fur Day was designed for mature audiences and features graphic violence, alcohol and tobacco use, profanity, dark humour, toilet humour, fourth wall breaks, and pop culture references. Development lasted four years, with concepts originating during the development of Killer Instinct Gold in 1996. The game, intended for a family audience, was initially titled Twelve Tales: Conker 64 and was set for release in late 1998, but by the time it received criticism for its kid-friendly tone and resemblance to Banjo-Kazooie during E3 1998, the game was transformed into an adult-oriented version of that product.
Conker's Bad Fur Day was released in North America on 5 March 2001, and in Europe on 6 April 2001, following an advertising campaign that targeted male college students. It received critical acclaim, with praise directed at its humor, sound, visuals, and gameplay. However, the game sold well below expectations due to limited advertising and a release towards the end of the Nintendo 64's life cycle, but has since developed a cult following. A remake, Conker: Live & Reloaded, was released for the Xbox in 2005, while the original version was included as part of the Rare Replay compilation for Xbox One in 2015.
Gameplay
Conker's Bad Fur Day is a platform game, its later sections featuring elements of shooters. The player controls Conker the Squirrel through a series of three-dimensional levels. The game features an overworld where players can transition from one level to another, although many are initially blocked off until Conker earns a certain amount of cash. Each level is an enclosed area in which the player can freely explore to find tasks to do. The gameplay mostly relies on figuring out a way to help other characters by completing a linear sequence of challenges. These challenges may include defeating a boss, solving puzzles, gathering objects, and racing opponents, among others. The result is always a cash reward, which aids access to other areas in the overworld.As compared to the player characters in Rare's previous platform games Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64, Conker's abilities are simpler. The player can run, jump, and smack enemies with a frying pan. Conker can also swim underwater for a limited period of time, climb ladders or ropes, and push objects. To regain lost health, Conker can eat pieces of "anti-gravity" chocolate that are scattered throughout the levels. The game employs "context-sensitive" pads that allow Conker to gain different, temporary abilities when pressing the "B" button atop them. For instance, in the beginning of the game, by pressing the B button on the first pad he encounters, Conker drinks some Alka-Seltzer to wipe out his hangover, at which point players can proceed forward. Some pads can turn Conker into an anvil to slam into the ground, while others pull out his shotgun, blow torch, throwing knives, and slingshot. They also serve to inform players of what needs to be done next.
The game includes a multiplayer mode where up to four players can compete against each other in seven different game types: Beach, Raptor, Heist, War, Tank, Race and Deathmatch. In Beach, a team of players must go up through a beach and into a waiting escape vehicle, while another must stop them by firing at them from fixed positions. Raptor involves a team of players controlling raptors to feed a baby dinosaur while another controlling cavemen who have to steal dinosaur eggs. Heist engrosses players in the robbery of a bank, where the goal is to retrieve a cash bag from the centre of the level and run with it to the team's vault without being damaged. War can either be a traditional capture the flag mode or Total War, where players have to get the other team's gas canister and use it to release a chemical gas that annihilates the enemy. In Tank, players fight using tanks and chemical canisters that release a lethal gas. Race is a racing mode which provides two variations of the same course. Items can be acquired and used against opponents. Finally, Deathmatch is a standard deathmatch mode where players fight against each other in shooting style from a third-person perspective. Players can set multiple options for each game, such as score limit, number of lives, and inclusion of computer-controlled bots.
Summary
Setting
Conker's Bad Fur Day is set in the Fairy Panther King's Kingdom. Windy is the game's main hub with entrances to most other sections: the farm Barn Boys, the poo-filled Sloprano, Heist, the horror-themed Spooky, Bats Tower, and It's War. Only one other section requires entering from an area besides Windy: Uga Buga, which must be entered under the bottom of Sloprano by paying the location's weasel guards $1,000. Obtaining access to the entrance requires going through a sewer pipe only accessible after defeating a large opera-singing mountainous pile of feces, named the "Great Mighty Poo". Windy has a beetle-populated area entirely filled with fecal matter, consisting of a big Poo Mountain and a Poo Cabin and a river next to it. Poo balls are required to enter the Sloprano section within the mountain, and Bats Tower which is only opened once the water in the river is drained. Poo balls are available at Poo Cabin, accessible after completing Barn Boys. The dung beetle near the entrance offers Conker poo balls if he can make the farm cows excrete in the pasture. Doing so involves Conker on the Poo Cabin's pasture turning on a big spigot to activate the prune juice, and using a bull to open gates for the cows to get out, as well as to kill the cows once each one finishes defecating. $2,110 is needed to pay Mr. Barrel to propel down a slope and break a barrier to the entrance of Spooky.Plot
The morning after a night of binge drinking with his friends before they are drafted for a war, a drunken Conker loses his way while attempting to get home, and awakens to find himself lost in an unfamiliar land with a terrible hangover. Meanwhile, the Panther King, ruler of the land that Conker is lost in, finds that his throne's side table is missing one of its legs and orders his servant, Professor Von Kriplespac, to solve the problem. When Von Kriplespac suggests the use of a red squirrel as the fourth leg of his table, the Panther King sends his minions to capture one. During his quest to return home to his girlfriend Berri, Conker finds wads of cash scattered throughout the land and becomes sidetracked from his goal in pursuit of monetary rewards. This leads him to embroil himself in a series of increasingly absurd and often dangerous situations, including having to recover a beehive from enormous wasps; confronting a giant opera-singing pile of feces called The Great Mighty Poo; being tasked by Don Weaso, the head of the Weasel Mafia, to bomb an entire village of cavemen; being transformed into a bat by his vampiric ancestor Count Batula in order to feed him the blood of a villager mob; and getting drafted into the aforementioned war between grey squirrels and a Nazi-like group of teddy bears known as the Tediz, which Conker ultimately destroys.When Conker finds Berri, Don Weaso returns to enlist their help in robbing the Feral Reserve Bank. After entering the vault, Conker and Berri find that the bank scene was an elaborate trap set by the Panther King to capture Conker. In the confrontation, Berri is shot by Weaso on the Panther King's orders, and she dies in Conker's arms. The Panther King suddenly begins having chest pains and calls for Von Kriplespac. The Professor stands aside and watches gleefully as a Xenomorph-like creature bursts out of the Panther King's chest, killing him. Von Kriplespac explains that the creature, whom he names "Heinrich", is one of his creations, and that he had planned to use this opportunity to kill the Panther King and escape his captivity. He then reveals that they are inside a spaceship, which he activates and takes into low orbit. From there, he instructs Heinrich to attack and kill Conker as revenge for destroying the Tediz, which were also his creations. Conker opens an airlock, expelling Kriplespac as well as the Panther King and Berri's corpses into space, and then battles Heinrich with the aid of a robotic suit.
Despite being cast into outer space after the fight, Heinrich manages to crawl back aboard the spaceship. Conker loses hope but, as he is about to be mauled by Heinrich, the game suddenly freezes. Conker expresses disbelief that Rare did not test the game properly before releasing it. Upon managing to communicate with the programmers through the command-line interface, Conker promises the programmers not to tell anyone about the terrible lockup left in the game, provided they assist him in dealing with Heinrich. Among many weapons at disposal courtesy of the programmers, Conker chooses a katana and requests to be taken to the Panther King's throne room, where he decapitates Heinrich. With the Panther King's servants now released from his oppressive control, Conker is then crowned the new king of the land. Conker, who does not want to go through with this, realises that he should have asked the programmers to bring Berri back while he was negotiating with them. He calls out to them, only to realise that the programmers have already left. Now sat on his throne, an embittered Conker gives a closing monologue, in which he discusses appreciating what one already has instead of always wanting more, stating that "the grass is always greener, and you don't know what it is you have until it's gone".
After the credits roll, Conker is seen back at the same pub he was drinking in at the start of the game, now barren of all his friends due to their deaths in the war against the Tediz. As it begins to storm outside, he drunkenly exits the bar, leaving in the opposite direction he took previously, presumably back home.