The equivalent of "Fritz the Cat" in the video gaming world! 8)
User Rating: 10 | Conker's Bad Fur Day N64
For seven years from 1993-2000, nobody would argue against one very important fact. As far as partnerships went, Nintendo and Rareware's partnership was the greatest for video games. They were supreme in their execution, pure in their form, and revolutionary for the graphics they put out in their video games! They were the Kings of making great, graphical quality video games. But there was trouble and unrest in this perfect kingdom. Rareware had grown tired of being seen as a kiddy company just because it made many games featuring cute, fuzzy, furry characters built for the family! Even when Rareware tried to deviate from the formula, with "Killer Instinct, Goldeneye 007, Blast Corps," and even "Perfect Dark," people could only see Rareware as the company that made the "Battletoads" video games, the "Donkey Kong Country" trilogy, "Diddy Kong Racing, Banjo-Kazooie, Conker's Pocket Tales, Donkey Kong 64, Banjo-Tooie," and "Mickey's Speedway Racing." And Rareware was thinking about a breakup. Nintendo was appalled Rareware would think about such a thing! With Nintendo, Rareware was expressing talent to the highest degree, it had done no wrong! Everything was a success! But none of that mattered to Rareware. For once, it wanted to be seen as hard-core. The only way to do that was to get away from Nintendo and it's family-friendly image. They wanted to go to Microsoft! Nintendo knew however, that Microsoft knew NOTHING about video games like Nintendo did, it didn't know how to handle a company like Rareware, and there was nothing proven that they could make good video games with Rareware's talents the way Nintendo did! So Nintendo was willing to compromise. Nintendo would let Rareware do a hard-core game, see how it turned out, and would make their decision then. And boy, did Rareware have one DOOZY of a hard-core game! They completely re-worked an existing game system from the ground up, and made their star characters into something completely unimaginable! It's clear from the very first moment the star's protagonist was introduced that every rule Nintendo had made up to that point as far as what was acceptable for a video game, was going to become irrelevant and completely broken! So many previously off-limit taboos in video games got broken for the very first time in a way that had never been done before! No alcoholic drinking? Broken! No on-screen puking? Broken! No recognizable vulgar language? Broken! No hung-over characters? Broken! No realistic looking blood-shed? Broken! No appearance of excretement or urine? Broken! No female characters having distinctive breasts? Broken! No animal abuse or no spousal abuse? Broken! No dismemberment? Broken! No public male nudity? Broken! No pictures of the horrors of war? Broken! No blood-sucking by vampires? Broken! No bank-robbing? Broken! No female characters dying? Broken! And finally, the rule of no unhappy endings? Broken! This game systematically tore down one by one, all of the previous game rules Rareware had followed up to that point in making games, and not only did they do all that, but they had cute, furry creatures doing it! That kind of behavior had never been done before! (Although it would be quickly copied by "Happy Tree Friends, Wonder Showzen, Drawn Together," and "Retarded Animal Babies.") Needless to say, Nintendo was appalled. It was too late to cancel the game, and while Rareware had done everything it had always done, provide a killer soundtrack with a full musical score, some singing, full voice acting (still quite uncommon at the time) excellent graphics that outshone everything else available on the N64 including realistic fur, textures, emotions, lighting, shading, and even water reflections, could not outshine what Nintendo felt about the game. Nintendo publicly disowned it, and refused to even advertise it in Nintendo Power! Needless to say, Nintendo didn't regret dumping Rareware in 2002 when "Star Fox Adventures" underperformed. And sadly for the giant known as Rareware, they have never recovered. Microsoft transformed Rareware from a King of Quality to a Queen of Trash, setting it on an abysmal, declining course of lowering standards in terms of making games. Rareware could no longer do anything right! They couldn't even re-release this game correctly on the X-Box. In fact, they made it worse by censoring it even more, and adding a completely superficial online game which I can't genuinely say that anyone honestly enjoys! And yet, for all the trouble the N64 original had to go through to get past scrutiny, shock, shame, controversy, and pure disbelief about what the game contained, it still managed to do which only a few thought it could do: it became a gigantic success! It became one of the best, if not the best playable game on the N64! The controls, the gameplay, the graphics, the music and sounds, and the story was well thought out to! It was completely genius what Rareware did, they made a perfect game, and they made it for adults! And it changed what video games could or couldn't do. With all those taboos broken, it became for better or worse, a whole new world for video games. Now there were options available where there hadn't been any options available before. There were almost no limits left now to a video-game developer's imagination! There was so much freedom available to them now, and it was all thanks to this humorous, sad, touching, poignant, and truthful in every way story, that was "Conker's Bad Fur Day." Kind of fitting, that the last good game Rareware ever made would become the best game available for the N64. While the golden touch is gone, the memories of the game will live on, and this game gets it place in history, for being a very good rule-breaker, like no other game had ever been before it! And this game deserves to be saluted! 8) Enough said! ;)
