During the course of the N64’s life, Rare showed off Twelve Tales: Conker 64 , a cutesy 3D platformer starring the squirrel from Diddy Kong Racing. With Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 already announced, people noted how many cute 3D mascot platformers Rare were making. Due to this criticism, Conker’s game was transformed. It was still a mascot platformer, but not a child friendly one. Instead, it was full of gore, swearing, and obvious sex references.

The plot is wonderfully ridiculous: a panther king spills his milk due to a broken leg on his table. His insane scientist deduces that the missing height perfectly matches a squirrel. That said, it takes a while for this plot to reach Conker, who goes the wrong way on a drunken stumble home and gets caught in all sorts of things, like hatching a dinosaur, becoming a vampire bat, making a shy sunflower giggle to bounce on her breasts, and fighting an opera singing giant poo. All mixed in with a ton of film references from the era (luckily, for the game, extremely memorable films that are still notable today).

The biggest flaw of Conker’s Bad Fur Day is, sadly, the gameplay. The moving and jumping isn’t as refined as Rare’s other platformers in the system. The game does alleviate this with the large variety of things you’ll be doing in the game, so you’re playing the game in slightly different ways all the way through. The last few chapters are shooting segments, and these are, unfortunately, the worst parts to play as they don’t utilise the N64 controller well at all.

Conker’s Bad Fur Day is a hilarious and amusing game, which makes it even more of a shame that it’s so clunky to actually play.

Fun

Although this in itself is quite a linear premise, the important thing about Conker is that it never seems simple while you’re playing. Each and every puzzle or test of joypad dexterity you encounter is vastly different from the previous one, and requires you to think differently every time. One moment you’ll be trying to figure out how to climb a dragon’s snot-covered tongue, the next you’ll be racing around at high speed, attempting to smack unruly cavemen with the business end of a frying pan.

Geraint Evans, N64 Magazine #53. Review Score: 89%

Remake or remaster?

The Xbox Remake refines the gameplay, and I would personally recommend that version over this (unless you want the multiplayer mode from the original). The shooting sections are proper third person shooter sections as well, which is a big improvement. The downside is the increased censorship, but there’s really only one moment where it is noticeable. With people accusing the Rare Replay version of extra censorship, I think people forgot how much was bleeped in the original. It looks great, running in HD on newer Xbox consoles, although a widescreen update  (with the original amout of bleeping) would be very welcome.

Official Ways to get the game

The original can be purchased on Xbox One/Series as part of Rare Replay, and the remake, Conker Live & Reloaded, is also available on Xbox One/Series.