I’ve started Conker’s Bad Fur Day several times, but for one reason or another, have never finished it. I’m not really sure why, I’m a huge fan of Rare’s games, especially on the N64, but I just never made it all the way through. But, when I sat down to figure out what game I’d be playing today, the random number generator decided I need to play it again. I don’t know that this will lead to me finally beating the game, but I sure did play through the first hour or so again.

If you aren’t already in the know, Conker’s Bad Fur Day started as a game called Twelve Tales: Conker 64. It was a pretty standard, cute N64 collectathon. But as the story goes, after criticism that it was too similar looking to other games, such as Banjo-Kazooie, they decided to go in an adults-only direction. It’s a little weird, considering Conker already had a game release, Conker’s Pocket Tales for the Game Boy Color, as well as an appearance in Diddy Kong Racing, so he’s an established cute character. But whatever, that’s what happens and now we have a game that opens with a drunk squirrel puking on some monk looking guy outside a bar.

The humor is obviously the thing the game is famous for, and unfortunately, I think it’s pretty hit or miss. I really enjoyed an early interaction with Birdy the scarecrow. He drunkenly explains a major mechanic of the game, context sensitive pads you can stand on to get whatever you need in this particular situation. In this case, Conker pulls out a beer the Birdy happily takes. On the end of things, there’s a bee who’s a king who just wants to “pollinate” a sunflower who happens to have comically large breasts. Afterwards, you can use said breasts as a platform to get a collectable. It’s not the big-boob-sunflower is somehow offensive to me, it’s just that it comes off as more dumb than actually funny.

On a more completely positive note, Bad Fur Day is one of the most technically impressive games I’ve played on the N64. All the characters are well animated, Conker in particular has great facial expressions. Conker also casts a realistic looking shadow, which was not at all common on the platform. It’s also fully voiced, another thing that was pretty rare. All around, the presentation of the game is excellent.

Within the first hour, the gameplay is pretty good. The level design definitely isn’t as interesting as some of Rare’s other games, like Banjo-Kazooie for example, but it’s easy to figure out where you’re going and what you need to do. Unfortunately, some of the objectives aren’t too interesting. It starts out promising enough. One of the first things you have to do is get a bee hive back to a queen bee (the wife of the bee mentioned earlier) who had it stolen by some wasps. You find the hive and then carry it back to the queen while avoiding hornets. That’s fine. Later, there’s a talking block with his much larger talking block wife on top of him because she’s scared of a mouse who keeps farting. You have to collect cheese and bring it to the mouse. The mouse needs three cheeses, so you end up doing the same thing three times. This isn’t one of those cases where it gets a little bit tougher each time. No, you just do the same thing three times, then the mouse explodes and a bunch of fart gas floats up from his ribcage. It’s not bad, but it could have been much more interesting.

While I didn’t play any for this post, I do have fond memories of playing the multiplayer modes. In particular, there was one called Beach, which was a parody of the Omaha Beach scene from Saving Private Ryan. One team is at the top of the beach shooting machine guns while a second team tries to sneak their way up the beach without being shot. It’s a lot of fun from what I remember. I don’t usually bring up stuff that I didn’t play when writing these, but I thought it was worth bringing up.

Conker’s Bad Fur Day is totally fine. It’s fun enough while not hitting the highs of some of Rare’s other platformers. It’s funny at times while also just kind of stupid in other times. It does look and sound really good. One of these days, I’d like to finish the game and see if it gets better as it goes, but I don’t know that I’m going to get to that any time soon.