Post by conker the squirrel on Feb 5, 2007 15:12:06 GMT 10
"Conker's Bad Fur Day was originally going to be titled Conker's Quest and was later titled Twelve Tails: Conker 64. Early screenshots suggested the game would be targeted at younger children and would feature cute characters and colorful settings. Rareware had a long history of making games of this sort, such as Banjo Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing, and at first Conker did not appear to be any different.
However, Rare started to fear that the game would simply get lost in the cutesy platforming crowd, and critical mockery of 'yet another cute platformer' caused the original kid-targeted game to be drastically overhauled. When the announcement was made that Conker would be re-tooled into an "adult" game with lots of scatological humor, many did not initially believe it, and assumed the press release was an April Fool's Day joke. However, as the months went on, the change quickly was understood to be very real and permanent. Inspired by South Park, the game's producer, Chris Seavor, lobbied to revamp the graphics and attitude, and it transformed into the adult Bad Fur Day. Seavor himself voiced Conker in this new version.
Even though this game did well in both the UK and US, it fared worse than expected, in part because of its prohibitively high cost and early 2001 release: a year later, the Nintendo 64 was discontinued after the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, yielding to the new GameCube system.
Another factor was Nintendo's fear of controversy. Even though it was to be published by Rare themselves, Nintendo felt that parents might accidentally buy the game because of the cartoon squirrel who had appeared in other, kid-friendly games, and not realize it was intended for the 17 and up crowd. As the image of the promotional artwork above illustrates, Nintendo demanded the image feature a larger-than-usual ESRB "Mature" rating graphic, as well as the disclaimer "Warning: This game is not for anyone under 17" — both highly unprecedented moves that signified the company's fears. The actual box, however, featured a modified version of the message in which the "Warning" was removed, the text was changed to black with the words "Advisory:" included in the text box, and the text box's color was changed to white. It featured a standard-sized Mature rating icon in order to conform to the ESRB's guidelines.
Nintendo of America refused to even acknowledge the game in their Nintendo Power publication, and all advertising was limited to late-night cable television and ads in Playboy. Neither of the two Conker games that Nintendo published (Conker's Pocket Tales and Bad Fur Day) are even mentioned on the Nintendo website, nintendo.com. Despite (or perhaps because of) everything working against it, the game has enjoyed a cult following, actually growing in popularity despite it being for an older console. Much of the gameplay in Conker's Bad Fur Day features parodies of various movies, including The Terminator, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, The Wizard of Oz, The Untouchables, The Exorcist, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, A Clockwork Orange, Alien, The Matrix, and Saving Private Ryan."
Physical powers
Probably the most straightforward abilities of Conker's are physical. Being a squirrel, he can duck then jump a high distance vertically, as well as jump at least twice his height in any direction. Also, he can spin his tail around quickly like a helicopter for a few seconds. (Rather than give it an official-sounding name, as is the habit of moves in video games, Conker just calls it the "helicoptery-tail thing." This ability is also likely a parody of Miles "Tails" Prower from Sonic the Hedgehog as this was Tails' signature move.) This allows him to jump a little higher, navigate in the air to accurately land, and slow his descent if he's far from the ground. After a few seconds, the tail slows down, and he drops and isn't able to do it again until he's landed and jumped again. Besides this, he has few other physical powers. He can swim underwater for a while until he runs out of breath, jog indefinitely and not get tired, and is strong enough to push heavy round objects, which in one of the later levels are a "big bourgeoisie boiler's brass bollocks".
[edit] Antigravity chocolate
Another aspect of Conker's powers comes from antigravity chocolate spread around the game. When eaten by Conker, they give him resistance to injury. In a parody of similar platformers with unexplained floating pickups throughout levels, they were originally created by the Professor, but he threw them out the castle window when he started a new project. Afterward, Conker could eat up to six of them. They're large pieces of chocolate about half the size of Conker that float and rotate in a stationary position. There are two types of chocolate; regenerative chocolate and one-time chocolate. One-time chocolate disappears after eaten, and doesn't re-appear until Conker exits then re-enters the world. Regenerative chocolate re-appears 10 seconds after being eaten, apparently out of thin air. Antigravity chocolate does not provide protection against certain things, such as falls from especially high heights, being severed in two by spinning blades, or being dismembered in a grinder. However, it does protect against being hit with a heavy object from above, such as a large dollop of poo.
[edit] Context Zones
These usually activate on "B-button pads", and sometimes while Conker is in mid-air. However, they are always evident by a light bulb appearing above Conker's head with a "ting!" noise and can be activated by a press of the B button. Conker can do things he couldn't normally do outside Context Zones; he usually pulls a far-too-big thing out of his far-too-small pocket, although sometimes he turns into an anvil and slams into the ground. B-button pads under barrels of beer can give him "drunken" abilities as well (He is able to stagger around and urinate). Although most Context Zones only work once, some can be used more than once, or even indefinitely. However, most of the context zones lose their purpose after being utilized, even if they are continuously usable.
[edit] Graphics and sound
When Conker's Bad Fur Day was released, many publications and websites considered the graphics to be the best to date on the N64 (even better than Perfect Dark's) (see IGN Review, GameSpot Review). The game featured dynamic shadowing (shadows stretch and skew depending on nearby light sources), colored lighting, and more. Though these graphics techniques were not completely unheard of at the time, they were still fairly new to video games. The game also featured large areas with a large draw distance and no distance fog, a rarity among Nintendo 64 games. Conker's Bad Fur Day also featured detailed facial animations including lip synching. Again, this wasn't the first game to do so, but at the time, the vast majority of 3D games had characters with completely static or minimally animated faces. Also some characters had individually rendered fingers rather than the standard "brick." In short, Conker's Bad Fur Day featured a number of technical effects that gamers were not yet used to seeing. Though for all of these graphical effects, the game did suffer from some framerate drops.
Developer Rareware had a close relationship with Nintendo and they are known for squeezing out as much performance as possible from a console. Conker's Bad Fur Day was one of the last games published for the Nintendo 64; Rare had all of their previous developing experience from 10 published Nintendo 64 games going into the project. So perhaps it's not surprising that Conker's Bad Fur Day is considered to be one of the best-looking Nintendo 64 games technology-wise.
Also notable was the game's large and diverse vocal track, which easily rivaled that of other N64 titles which were well-known in this regard, such as Star Fox 64.
However, Rare started to fear that the game would simply get lost in the cutesy platforming crowd, and critical mockery of 'yet another cute platformer' caused the original kid-targeted game to be drastically overhauled. When the announcement was made that Conker would be re-tooled into an "adult" game with lots of scatological humor, many did not initially believe it, and assumed the press release was an April Fool's Day joke. However, as the months went on, the change quickly was understood to be very real and permanent. Inspired by South Park, the game's producer, Chris Seavor, lobbied to revamp the graphics and attitude, and it transformed into the adult Bad Fur Day. Seavor himself voiced Conker in this new version.
Even though this game did well in both the UK and US, it fared worse than expected, in part because of its prohibitively high cost and early 2001 release: a year later, the Nintendo 64 was discontinued after the release of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, yielding to the new GameCube system.
Another factor was Nintendo's fear of controversy. Even though it was to be published by Rare themselves, Nintendo felt that parents might accidentally buy the game because of the cartoon squirrel who had appeared in other, kid-friendly games, and not realize it was intended for the 17 and up crowd. As the image of the promotional artwork above illustrates, Nintendo demanded the image feature a larger-than-usual ESRB "Mature" rating graphic, as well as the disclaimer "Warning: This game is not for anyone under 17" — both highly unprecedented moves that signified the company's fears. The actual box, however, featured a modified version of the message in which the "Warning" was removed, the text was changed to black with the words "Advisory:" included in the text box, and the text box's color was changed to white. It featured a standard-sized Mature rating icon in order to conform to the ESRB's guidelines.
Nintendo of America refused to even acknowledge the game in their Nintendo Power publication, and all advertising was limited to late-night cable television and ads in Playboy. Neither of the two Conker games that Nintendo published (Conker's Pocket Tales and Bad Fur Day) are even mentioned on the Nintendo website, nintendo.com. Despite (or perhaps because of) everything working against it, the game has enjoyed a cult following, actually growing in popularity despite it being for an older console. Much of the gameplay in Conker's Bad Fur Day features parodies of various movies, including The Terminator, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, The Wizard of Oz, The Untouchables, The Exorcist, Star Wars, Apocalypse Now, A Clockwork Orange, Alien, The Matrix, and Saving Private Ryan."
Physical powers
Probably the most straightforward abilities of Conker's are physical. Being a squirrel, he can duck then jump a high distance vertically, as well as jump at least twice his height in any direction. Also, he can spin his tail around quickly like a helicopter for a few seconds. (Rather than give it an official-sounding name, as is the habit of moves in video games, Conker just calls it the "helicoptery-tail thing." This ability is also likely a parody of Miles "Tails" Prower from Sonic the Hedgehog as this was Tails' signature move.) This allows him to jump a little higher, navigate in the air to accurately land, and slow his descent if he's far from the ground. After a few seconds, the tail slows down, and he drops and isn't able to do it again until he's landed and jumped again. Besides this, he has few other physical powers. He can swim underwater for a while until he runs out of breath, jog indefinitely and not get tired, and is strong enough to push heavy round objects, which in one of the later levels are a "big bourgeoisie boiler's brass bollocks".
[edit] Antigravity chocolate
Another aspect of Conker's powers comes from antigravity chocolate spread around the game. When eaten by Conker, they give him resistance to injury. In a parody of similar platformers with unexplained floating pickups throughout levels, they were originally created by the Professor, but he threw them out the castle window when he started a new project. Afterward, Conker could eat up to six of them. They're large pieces of chocolate about half the size of Conker that float and rotate in a stationary position. There are two types of chocolate; regenerative chocolate and one-time chocolate. One-time chocolate disappears after eaten, and doesn't re-appear until Conker exits then re-enters the world. Regenerative chocolate re-appears 10 seconds after being eaten, apparently out of thin air. Antigravity chocolate does not provide protection against certain things, such as falls from especially high heights, being severed in two by spinning blades, or being dismembered in a grinder. However, it does protect against being hit with a heavy object from above, such as a large dollop of poo.
[edit] Context Zones
These usually activate on "B-button pads", and sometimes while Conker is in mid-air. However, they are always evident by a light bulb appearing above Conker's head with a "ting!" noise and can be activated by a press of the B button. Conker can do things he couldn't normally do outside Context Zones; he usually pulls a far-too-big thing out of his far-too-small pocket, although sometimes he turns into an anvil and slams into the ground. B-button pads under barrels of beer can give him "drunken" abilities as well (He is able to stagger around and urinate). Although most Context Zones only work once, some can be used more than once, or even indefinitely. However, most of the context zones lose their purpose after being utilized, even if they are continuously usable.
[edit] Graphics and sound
When Conker's Bad Fur Day was released, many publications and websites considered the graphics to be the best to date on the N64 (even better than Perfect Dark's) (see IGN Review, GameSpot Review). The game featured dynamic shadowing (shadows stretch and skew depending on nearby light sources), colored lighting, and more. Though these graphics techniques were not completely unheard of at the time, they were still fairly new to video games. The game also featured large areas with a large draw distance and no distance fog, a rarity among Nintendo 64 games. Conker's Bad Fur Day also featured detailed facial animations including lip synching. Again, this wasn't the first game to do so, but at the time, the vast majority of 3D games had characters with completely static or minimally animated faces. Also some characters had individually rendered fingers rather than the standard "brick." In short, Conker's Bad Fur Day featured a number of technical effects that gamers were not yet used to seeing. Though for all of these graphical effects, the game did suffer from some framerate drops.
Developer Rareware had a close relationship with Nintendo and they are known for squeezing out as much performance as possible from a console. Conker's Bad Fur Day was one of the last games published for the Nintendo 64; Rare had all of their previous developing experience from 10 published Nintendo 64 games going into the project. So perhaps it's not surprising that Conker's Bad Fur Day is considered to be one of the best-looking Nintendo 64 games technology-wise.
Also notable was the game's large and diverse vocal track, which easily rivaled that of other N64 titles which were well-known in this regard, such as Star Fox 64.