#conker's BFD

[n64retro]

Conker's Bad Fur Day Rare Nintendo 64 2001

[missnatzooie]

One of my favourite facts about Conker is that he has a beer belly, and it’s a canon fact

[alexitoelmichi]

Conker kinsona!

Yeah he's emo now mwahahaha

I'm cringe but I'm free 😼✨

[adhstegaming]

F### Off!

So even though The Great Mighty Poo is the show stealer of Conker's Bad Fur Day, Carl/Quentin the cog was my favourite offensive character.

Did have the clip for the first cog going on (which he treats as a sexual act) but lost it, but I did find a clip of a well timed idle moment where I throw a can at his head and he swears instead

[yethyethyeth]

i made a fursona for my 8 yr old self

i was obsessed with conkers bfd

[theherooftime-ismys0n]

im so hungry for any conker bfd content i swear

[blackemrald]

Doing my best to get this out remotely on time this week. We're continuing the run of Conker's BFD and I have gotten sucked into Palworld...so expect more of that going forward.

[skyboxeye]

Capturing the ambience of Conker's Bad Fur Day

This self-satirizing adventure game pushes the N64 to offer impressive audio/visual atmosphere.

Capturing footage

While it appears widescreen display was planned at one point, BFD didn't ship with it. We can force widescreen rendering ratios by using memory cheats.

We should be able to hide Conker by using an Invisible Character cheat (800CE23A 0041), but I couldn't get this working on any of the emulators I tried. Instead, use the Conker Size Modifier cheat to shrink the player to a very small size.

I couldn't find any NTSC camera cheats, but we can use BFD's over-the-shoulder camera to get character-free footage. Free-camera hacks have been developed, but I couldn't find any that are publicly-available. Another strategy is to aim down the sights of certain ranged weapons and employ emulator-level texture mods to hide the scope UI.

Retroben's cheat for 60FPS and pacing miserably slowed down RetroArch for me. I saw this outcome with different (albeit similar) cores, so it may have something to do RetroArch e.g. trying to output at the wrong framerate.

Meanwhile the cheat usually worked as intended on Project64, but other times slowed down just like RetroArch. I also suspect the difference has something to do with applying the cheat immediately at startup versus during normal gameplay.

If you're playing on PAL, I found a pretty extensive screenshot guide focused on staging BFD's characters.

BizHawk

This emulator, designed for speedrunners and other serious users, offers simple per-game scripting capabilities. In BFD's case we can open the ScriptHawk project and use its controls to maneuver Conker with configurable precision.

Navigating the game

We can move about BFD's levels quickly using moon jump and invincibility cheats. BFD is also supported by ScriptHawk.

Enter the WELDERSBENCH code into the in-game cheat entry to gain access to level select. Alternatively to that, you can use a 100% completion gamesave or emulator cheats.

Debug builds

An in-development debug build of the game has surfaced. It offers several read-only displays to explore the current in-game state. We can use this to obtain details of the currently playing sound and music.

Capturing sounds

For more consistent results, I recommend using your emulator's recording features to capture rather than recording at the Windows level. Alternatively Video-Game OST HQ offers crisp downloads rendered by the author's own N64 tools.

Putting it all together

[game-boy-pocket]

As much I love Conker's Bad Fur Day, I'm still super curious as to what Conker Twelve tales for 64 would've been like?

I'm also curious if the multiplayer modes would've been nearly as diverse and involved as BFD or if that was something that only started happening after the game changed directions? We only have vague screenshots of four Conkers running around in a split screen, but that could be anything.

Same here, I don't think the humor in Bad Fur Day really holds up. It was funny when South Park was still a novel concept but now that we've lived through 20+ years of adult cartoons it's actually more refreshing when something aiming to be "mature" is actually... well... "mature", I would not want to lose Bad Fur Day, or it's multiplayer which, thank god you can play it against CPU when a lot of N64 games, and hell, even modern games, can't be bothered to do that, but I wish I could know what Twelve Tales would have been like.

I hope the rom of the mostly complete game gets dumped online some time. Not likely, since I believe Rare Staff teased that they still have the cart.

[lcd-101]

“It’s gonna be one of those days...”

Finally, after more than a decade of searching, I found the Toy Vault Conker: Live & Reloaded talking plush! This is Conker in the “multiplayer” (D-Day) outfit (although a singleplayer one exists in the set) and he still talks after seventeen long years!

Time to get this guy cleaned up.

...Or into rehab.

[n64retro]

Conker's Bad Fur Day Rare Nintendo 64 2001

[missnatzooie]

Conker becomes a silly dork when Berri compliments him, she'll scratch his ears and call him cute, he'll become all sappy and silly by laughing, becoming fluffy and giving her compliments.

I love imagining my OTPs being silly and cute with each other <3

[suicide-mouse132]

Un Dibujo Como Intento de Dibujar a Conker La Ardilla.

Para Los que No Conozcan a Conker Es Una Ardilla, Ustedes Busquen en Youtube "Conker Bad Fur Day" y Ahí lo Encontrarán, Su Videojuego Es de La N64 y es Para Mayores de 18 años.

[yokaiibutler]

Me: I have easy workdays this week. I should do stuff on Whisper. My gremlin brain: Hey, remember Etno from Space Goofs? You should probably muse him. Me: :( Yeah, I GUESS...

[kokorodachidanii]

anyone else hear Werner Werman in Kripelspac’s voice? Cuz I totally hear Werner Werman in Kripelspac’s voice.

[nintendroid]

Conker’s Bad Fur Day is a cult classic, a staple of the Nintendo 64 library and I want to throw it out the window. 

Ok, maybe that’s going overboard, especially considering how expensive an original copy is. To say that Conker’s BFD was a less-than-stellar experience for me is an understatement. After completing my 14-hour playthrough, I was left bummed out and disappointed - thanks in part to the unbelievably depressing ending.

I understand why it’s a  cult classic - it’s got a lot going for it, but after years of hype and top 10 lists and accolades, I just don’t feel that it’s up there with the likes of Super Mario 64 or Donkey Kong 64. 

“Blasphemy!” you say, “Heresy!” you say “You’re talking out of your rear-end!” you say, but that’s physically impossible, sir. I have my reasons and I think they’re justified. Does it mean you should hate the game too? Absolutely not. Play what you enjoy - this is simply a recital of my personal experience and at the end of it all, this is one guy’s opinion. 

So let’s start with the good stuff. Conker’s BFD is a very good-looking game graphically, and I adore the sound effects in this game - walking through mud/poop is like ASMR to me. The juxtaposition of a foul-mouthed, drunken squirrel with a cutesy, cartoony backdrop is funny at times and when the humor is good, it’s good. While a majority of the humor fell flat with me, there is some clever humor sprinkled throughout. I enjoyed the fourth-wall breaking stuff, the way stacks of cash would insult you in a Brooklyn-esq accent, the references to R-rated movies are pretty fun as well. 

Some of the levels have enjoyable gameplay. The Mighty Poo boss-fight and the gladiator-style caveman fight kept me playing, when I felt like tapping out. For better or worse, there’s a fair amount of variety here, ranging from platforming segments to third-person shooter, to puzzle-solving.

That sounds pretty good as I type it out and it gives me fond memories of the short times I enjoyed Conker’s BFD - then I remember the bad stuff. A big turn-off from the get go was the cynical humor. I know comedy is subjective - I watched “Joker” too but as a 30+ year-old man, my days of forcing myself to laugh at gore and mean-spirited humor are long in the past. Watching a cow crap like a fountain before being blown into bloody chunks or having the top of Conker’s head being sniped off with a fountain of blood accompanying it isn’t funny. Being that this dropped in 2001, Rare was definitely gunning for the South Park audience - which was white hot at the time. 

Performance issues are a big problem in crucial moments. BFD looks awesome and for the most part plays ok. If there’s a lot going on onscreen however, expect the framerate to nearly rival that of a slideshow. The worst example I can point to from the top of my head is the “Saving Private Ryan” stage near the end of the game. The rockets and gunfire slow the action down to a crawl, while the enemies spawn out of nowhere to destroy you in one quick blast. Speaking of...

Conker is pretty underpowered for the most part. You can’t upgrade your health so from start-to-finish you have six hits of life. Fall damage is ridiculous too and it’s very easy to take damage from falling even if you use your tail to float down. However, lives are easy to acquire and checkpoints are reasonable so it’s not an impossible game. It can be difficult, especially the dreaded  “Saving Private Ryan” stage as mentioned. 

I think next to the humor, the biggest flaw in BFD is just the gameplay. I mentioned the variety, but it isn’t variety in the same way as Banjo-Kazooie or Donkey Kong 64 where things feel different but cohesive - Its variety feels like they started with one idea to abandon it for the other. The “context” power-ups support that claim, where you only have power-ups related to whatever is going on in that stage. A clever humor device, but not an empowering video game mechanic. Is it really that hard to let me freely roam the land with a flamethrower and a shotgun? Why wait until I hop on a stupid “B”?

Conker’s Bad Fur Day could’ve been so much more in my eyes. A little more thought put into the gameplay, scale the humor back to PG-13 territory who, knows what kind of heights it would’ve reached? From here on I’ll choose to remember Conker fondly as the little squirrel who was fun to race as in Diddy Kong Racing. I’m interested to check out his Game Boy Color game to see what could’ve been. As far as Bad Fur Day goes, I’ll probably never play it again. I know it’s a classic in the minds of many, but this kind of stuff just isn’t for me. 

I’ll leave off with a question: If a sequel was made today, would you want to see them continue in the direction of Bad Fur Day, or take a more traditional platforming mascot route?

Screenshots/images: MobyGames