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Conker's Bad Fur Day: My 3rd Favourite Video Game

Released: March 2001
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Rare
Platform: Nintendo 64
Type: Action-Adventure
Graphics: Narly
Game Play: Narly
Originality: Narly
How many hours I’ve wasted: Blank-eyed soulless stare
The Nostalgia Factor: Narly

Any game featuring a cartoon squirrel with a pint on the game cover and starts off with the theme music for A Clockwork Orange requires further investigation.

I first encountered Conker's Bad Fur Day at a friends house. He'd rented the game from a local video store (there's a dated term) on the basis of the afore mentioned squirrel on the game cover. After playing all evening, (and feeling slightly shell-shocked) I promptly ran out and bought a copy.

Conker's Bad Fur Day, is one of the most demented, violent and hilarious games I've ever played (easily trumping Sierra's Space Quest and Leisure Suit Larry series). Don't let the Nintendo label fool you... this game was designed for a purely adult audience. It features swearing, graphic violence, sexual themes and more film parodies (mostly violent) than you can shake your fuzzy red tail at.

Essentially, you (as Conker the alcoholic red squirrel) are just trying to get home from a night of binge drinking... unfortunately for you, many things stand in your way of this lofty objective, namely: fascist teddy bears (Tediz) created by a crazed cyborg weasel, large breasted flowers and cave girls, dinosaurs, aliens, zombies, vampires and a singing pile of poo (but to name a few of his adversaries).

The adventure mode is epically re-playable just for some of the uniquely enjoyable levels and cut scenes. Easily some of the best: the Matrix bank heist and a D-Day landing a-la Saving Private Ryan.

Conker's Bad Fur Day also hosts a versatile multiplayer mode with various games based on the above content. The AI is one of the better from this period and could be altered from "inbred" all the way up to "Einstein" depending on how badly you wanted to be mauled. The most enjoyable of these levels are:
  1. "The Beach" (which is essentially a shooting gallery). You can play as refugee French squirrels trying to reach an escape vehicle (while dodging obstacles and avoiding being gunned down) or play as the excitable and viscous Tediz  which are tasked with stopping the escaping French using a sniper rifle, Gatling gun or rocket launcher. 
  2. "War" which comes in "all-out" or "capture the flag" modes. A veritable bounty of weapons lay at your disposal for eliminating the opposing team, including such fun items as: rocket launchers, machine guns, grenades, sniper rifles, poison gas, magnums, or for that close up and personally violent feeling that can only be provided with by a chainsaw or samurai sword. 
Conker's Bad Fur Day was the very last game released for the Nintendo 64 platform. Due to the graphic nature of the content, the game was supported with minimal advertising and thus suffered from low sales (if you could even find it). I was lucky enough to find a copy and like the rest of the devoted cult following that sprung up around it, I've enjoyed it ever since.


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