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Conker's Bad Fur Day
Rare/ Nintendo/ Nintendo64


Nintendo "Conkers" E3

1975. Star Wars began principal photography in Tunisia; Salem's Lot captivated and horrified readers, and Wish You Were Here had teenagers staring at the basement ceiling, craving more homemade brownies. It was also the year that saw the development of Nintendo's first video game system using the electronic video recording player in co-operation with Mitsubishi Electric. Ten years later the Nintendo Entertainment System was born and the home lives of children and adults around the world would never be the same.

Fast-forward to 1996 and the birth of Nintendo's latest triumph: the Nintendo 64. This console has thrilled gamers from around the world with titles as varied as its players. Mario 64 took everyone's favourite plumber and turned him into a three-dimensional entity that is proclaimed by many as "the greatest video game of all time!" Star Wars: Shadows Of The Empire ushered in the new era of Star Wars gaming that was even followed up with a novel and soundtrack. GoldenEye took the first-person shooter genre by storm, unleashing a game that has yet to be beat. Diddy Kong Racing made kart-racing fun with comic power-ups and inventive style. The Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time placed gamers in the role of Link on a quest to save Hyrule from the evil deeds of Gannondorf. These are some of the games that made the N64 a power to be reckoned with, full of bewilderment and a uniqueness that is purely Nintendo.

With the new millennium comes a new outlook. Nintendo continues to bring unbridled giddy to the world of games as they unveil their new line for 2000. Diverse. Different. Unique. Amusing. Entertaining…Nintendo. This year's line-up includes a couple of new innovations never before seen on a Nintendo property and they are definitely not for the Pokemon crowd: blood spattering and vulgarity.

Conker's Bad Fur Day. This is a title that stands on its own, to which many future comparisons shall be made, that will initiate discussion around the water cooler, and will gather many in front of the television. This is it, the game!

Conker is a cute, furry, little, pantsless squirrel who is anything but what he appears to be. Full of media savvy send-ups and parodies, the game opens with Conker awakening from a hard night of partying only to discover he is about to be catapulted onto the front lines of a D-Day akin to Tom Hanks. Most likely suffering from a hangover, this irreverent rodent is poised to experience the worst day of his life. Using an arsenal of weapons ranging from frying pans to two-fisted machine guns to urine, Conker encounters a plethora of creatures with which he must do away.

Riding upon his trusty steed-a dinosaur, Conker stumbles across a gargantuan caveman. Rising only to the caveman's crotch, the only way for Conker to slay this mortal enemy is to hit him where the sun don't shine. Now, you may think that juvenile little blows to the groin would do the trick, but no, Rare has taken this game a step further as Conker must thwart this being with repeated and alternate bites to the caveman's dangling balls and exposed ass. You may peruse that sentence over and over again, but it will always read the same. What to do when confronted by flaming creatures of the incendiary variety? Why urinate on them of course! Dousing flames with an arcing stream of warm ammonia will inevitably put an end to these fiendish creatures, not to mention evoking a sigh of relief. If that doesn't do it for you, or if it just isn't shocking enough, Conker also lets loose with a expletive now and then like anyone else suffering from a bad day that persistently gets worse.

Conker has been spotted riding a talking pitchfork outside of a barn-'cause where else would they be, chillin' out near a gigantic sunflower-probably "watering" the plants, scrutinizing a selection of "reading material" at the Beaver Bookstore, and charring his furried, orange behind in the cauldrons of Hell.

As prefaced earlier, this is not a game for patrons of traditional Nintendo fare, like Pokemon or the adventures of Mario, but rather a game geared towards a more mature and not-so-mature audience. This is a burlesque lampoon of games past, present, and future, full of indecent and salacious humour that mocks everything that the pop culture youth of America have grown up on. Sure, it's full of crass vulgarity and predominately male bathroom humour, but that is part of the charm. The novelty may wear off within the next year, or even sooner, but it is a niche that had yet to be filled. Certainly a caravan of competitors and developers have already jumped on Conker's bandwagon in order to reap the rewards that Nintendo is sure to harvest, but there is nothing ever quite like the originator.


-Rob Koval

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