Conker’s Bad Luck

If you gave this franchise twenty of so years to grow, what would that do?

Conker the Squirrel, the face of the Conker franchise is arguably one of the most famous faces not just for his company, Rareware, but in the general gaming landscape as well. This is after his infamous adventure, Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

But for all of that infamy, the tale of the franchise is one of stagnation and that is a tragedy. Despite a strong and loyal fanbase, the Conker franchise has never been able to maintain any sort of consistency. Whether it’s tied to the shock value of the franchise, shifting gaming trends, or just poor management from leadership, Conker has never really been able to conquer gaming.

Who was Conker?

Long before Conker’s foray into “mature” gaming, he was a mere cameo character in the much beloved 3D racing game, Diddy Kong Racing for the Nintendo 64, released in 1997.

Conker’s characterization in the game is minimal. He exists as one of Diddy’s friends as the game was made by Rare. Rare were the developers for a host of classic Nintendo games such as Battletoads, Golden Eye 007, the Killer Instinct series, and perhaps their most notable and successful efforts the Donkey Kong Country series.

The Rise of the 3D platformer

Rare had established themselves as top tier third-party developers working with Nintendo and had shown a unique deftness with regards to their creativity in game design. This was good because the era of 2D Platformers was quickly being supplanted by the rise of 3D gaming.

Super Mario 64‘s impact on the gaming landscape cannot be overstated. Considered by many to be one of, if not the greatest games ever released it set off a shockwave about what games could do with this technology. To this day you find people discovering new techniques and ways of play within the game and it has one of the most vibrant speedrunning communities around. With that in mind, it set the standard at time for what a 3D platformer could and should have. From its dynamic camera, open-ended level design, consistent 3D physics, variety of collectables, and so many more elements SM64 changed the understanding of what games in its genre were. And what happens when you have a fundamental shift in the industry? Others seek to match if not directly copy what you have created.

After Super Mario 64 there was a groundswell of games that were trying to get a little bit of the market share of 3D platformers genre.

You had Gex, you had Croc, you had Donkey Kong 64, Banjo and Kazooie. You had Bubsy 3D. Not to mention numerous licensed games like Toy Story.

And that’s just a few of the titles.

The 12 Fails of Conker

Conker’s gaming difficulties start with his creation. His first game Conker’s Quest was renamed to Twelve Tales: Conker 64

So with an extremely flooded market, Conker’s first game solo adventure was not a 3D home console release. No, Conker’s first video game his first solo Adventure was the Conker’s Pocket Tales.

Conker, it must be stressed, had always been, prior to the release of Bad Fur Day, family-friendly and so Conker’s Pocket Tales wouldn’t have been shocking in that context. Looking back on it though and the shift in the character is so stark one could be forgiven for thinking it was a completely different one.
In Pocket Tales, Conker is just a normal platformer hero for the time. That is to say, he is a good little guy trying to save his girlfriend after she’s stolen by an evil acorn, The Evil Acorn.

It has puzzles, it has bosses, and it’s a standard collectathon adventure game. But in being standard, it did itself no favors critically. It averaged 55 on GameRankings and didn’t really perform well outside of Nintendo-focused magazines as Nintendo64 the magazine gave it five stars, as did Planet Game Boy.

So, after one game that didn’t really set the world on fire, Conker’s 3D game—still languishing in development—was being retooled. And in its final retooling, from Twelve Tales: Conker 64 to Conker’s Bad Fur Day, it was filled to the brim with dirty jokes. Conker had fallen from being a little cutesy, family-friendly character to a foul-mouthed, fourth-wall-breaking figure, more akin to Deadpool than Mickey Mouse

This game proceeded fill its every orifice with something either irreverent or adult or frankly just completely disgusting.

A game notorious for being notorious.

Conker’s Bad Fur Day is often spoken of as a game that Nintendo didn’t want and nearly banned from being sold. While it is true that Nintendo didn’t do much in the way of marketing, the game still launched on their console, amassing its cult following despite being on the most family-friendly console of its generation.

Nintendo didn’t market it well because of its raunchy subject matter, offensive humor, and general lack of tact in many aspects of the game.

For, despite being another Rare collectathon, it was filled with all manner of debauchery that just wasn’t really in line with the Nintendo brand—so much so that people wondered how the game managed to sneak onto the Nintendo 64.

The game was much more akin to a South Park episode than any of the 3D contemporary games it competed with. And while the game didn’t do well sales-wise, it had an impact unlike any other at the time. Because, the thing about a game that is edgy, offensive, and inappropriate—but looks like it’s for kids—is that when a little kid gets their hands on it, stories about it spread by word of mouth like wildfire. And people loved it whether or not they were the right age to be playing it.

Critically, this game did amazing, especially in comparison to its predecessor. While Pocket Tales couldn’t seem to find an audience, Bad Fur Day boasts, at the time of writing a 92 on Metacritic, which is universal acclaim. The problem was, not too many people played it. Despite it’s critical reception being positive Bad Fur Day didn’t sell well only moving 770,000 units worldwide —and that kind of thing happens when you have no marketing because you’re selling an adult game on a family-friendly console. In comparison, more traditional 3D platformers made by Rare performed substantially better, as Banjo and Kazooie sold 3 million and DK64 sold around 5 million.

To be clear, if Conker had stayed a family-friendly franchise, there’s no guarantee it would have found its footing or even be remembered today. Being the edgy, dirty, offensive platformer is what made Conker a name within the gaming space. But that came at a cost—its publisher, Nintendo, didn’t want anything to do with the project. Because it’s an adult game. You can’t exactly market an adult game in the same comic books, magazines, or channels where Nintendo was marketing Mario, Yoshi, or even Super Smash Bros.

And after his first appearance on the console, Conker basically disappeared from the gaming landscape

Conker, Post-Fur Day

The Conker franchise suffered because Conker’s Bad Fur Day, despite strong reviews, didn’t sell well. Rare struggled and ultimately had to be bought out by Microsoft. The idea was that working under a more mature gaming company would spell a revival for Conker—because on Xbox, Conker could be as edgy as anyone wanted it to be. This was a platform where they could do whatever they wanted. They could finally make the real Conker’s Bad Fur Day.

Instead, the game featured more censorship despite being marketed as “live” and “uncut.” And while the name was misleading, the re-release still performed well—not as well as the original, but still respectable. After all, it was just an upscaled version with better graphics, not an entirely new game.

But Conker’s cultural capital has waned over the years, and that’s because Conker has never really been able to get out of its own way. The franchise is only truly notable for being the cute character who says bad words and makes poop jokes—and nobody wants to be the company selling that. Which sucks for Conker, because the series does its job well. It knows how to do references. It knows how to do parodies. It knows how to time its humor, write its songs—it does everything a good game should.

Unfortunately, it just doesn’t seem like the Conker franchise will ever be strong enough to support more games or projects. Keep in mind, Conker was discussed for new projects as recently as 2015’s Conker’s Big Reunion or 2016’s Young Conker—but nothing materialized. And really, how could anything come at this point in time?

Conker was shocking when it first came out, and people were not ready to be shocked.

But now, 20 years into the franchise’s existence, with only two real projects released—three if you want to count the re-release—Conker seems stuck in a purgatory of never being truly forgotten, but never really being allowed to live.

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