Game-Art-HQ

Conker’s Bad Fur Day drawn by Isabelle “CPTBee” Carron

Conker’s Bad Fur Day has always had a special place in my heart as it’s pretty much the game that steered little ol’ me to become who I am today. I feel like I’d be a totally different person without it, honestly.

See, I first got to know the game when I was around 7 years old. My friend had the game and would always play it whenever me and my sister went to visit. Of course I had a small idea that the game wasn’t for kids like me, but I saw the cartoony graphics and didn’t really care (and I kinda got a thrill out of the “edgy” scenes, like I was a grown up now).

Then came the fateful day. My parents finally got me and my sister our own N64 for Christmas, and later in the summer for my birthday my dad brought me to the flee market and had me choose a single game. I remember it clearly; I had a choice between two games: Ocarina of Time or Conker’s Bad Fur Day. If anyone ever played Life is Strange then you know there are moments where you have to make a big decision and everything slows down to a halt and goes out of focus – yeah, it was kinda like that. I almost – ALMOST – had Ocarina of Time be my childhood game like everyone else. I got into the series later on of course so it worked out fine, but in that moment I went with the game I was more familiar with, which I don’t regret a single bit!

Thankfully because it was the flee market the game didn’t come with the box so my dad had no way of knowing it was for adults (hehehe).

And that’s how my childhood was ruined. (Or made better?? Yeah, let’s go with that.)

Haybot from Conker’s Bad Fur Day drawn by Fischhead

“This piece took me a lot longer than it should have because I agonized over little details when the work is 90% complete XD
I learned a few new techniques during this project that will be a big help on several other unfinished works/commissions.

Love it or hate it, Conker was a defining title in the N64’s library. I remember being excited for the game when it was Twelve Tales,
but I’m glad it evolved into BFD, purely for how memorable it is. For some reason, Haybot’s “time to wander around” quote has
always stuck with me, so I decided to illustrate the big guy for the console’s anniversary.”

~

Description for his take on Mighty Poo and also Conker’s Bad Fur Day itself by LukeTheRipper:

“Whew, this one sure took a while, even more since I actually had to redo it from scratch at some point. Thought I’d try something a tad different here, play a little with perspective and how much I can use the tribals without the art getting completely messed up. Hope it looks clear enough, and since it was bigger than most of my other works, I would really appreciate some feedback here. Anyways, rant time.

Well, this was a sort of guilty pleasure for me. I can’t really say I liked the system or respected it. For me, someone who grew up with NES and SNES, the N64 was the definition of wasted potential. Sure, it did have some great titles, but just imagine, that if not for Nintendo’s stupid-ass decision, THIS could have been the next ultimate console. The NES was the ultimate console of its time, the SNES was the ultimate console of it’s time (yeah, the Genesis had some really amazing titles, but couldn’t quite match the SNES, and keep in mind I actually place Sonic above Mario, so that’s saying a lot)… and then this… heh, just imagine a console that would combine both the great titles that N64 had AND Playstation’s vast library, THIS could have been it… so yeah, that is “wasted potential” as far as I’m concerned.

Some might hate me for saying that, but N64 was in fact inferior to PSX when it came to games, sure, it had some really outstanding titles, but the thing is, PSX had almost everything N64 had while having so much more. N64 had Super Mario 64 and Donkey Kong 64, which were great 3D platformers, but PSX had Crash, Spyro, Croc and many more, and many of them vastly superior to both of these, N64 had Ocarina of Time and Majora’s Mask, but PSX had Brave Fencer Musashi, Soul Reaver and Alundra, which were just as good (get over it people!), N64 had Mario Kart 64, but PSX had Crash Team Racing which was a huge improvement over the MK formula, N64 had Goldeneye 007 and Perfect Dark, but PSX had Quake 2 and Medal of Honor: Underground, the list goes on. On the other hand, while PSX had many great RPGs, fighting games, racing games (actual racing, not kart racing/car combat), survival horrors, puzzle games, shooters (both TPS and FPS), all of which were somewhat present on N64 but with mediocre titles which could not stand to PSX’s library, or did not have a single game at all…

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these games are bad, I do admit those are some really great titles. It’s just that as a whole, the N64 couldn’t really compete here. And when the price of both the console (almost 3 times as much as PSX when it came out in my country) and games for the console (around 1,5-2 times more than PSX games), it just cemented its second place spot.

Though while N64 didn’t have many things present on PSX, it did have a few things the PSX did not have. One of those is Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Try as I might, I can’t recall PSX having a game quite like this one. It’s not about the graphics or gameplay, the graphics were good, but pretty generic for the N64, and the gameplay was pretty much the same as Banjo-Kazooie, pretty much on the same level as Mario 64 but ways behind Donkey Kong 64, it’s the unorthodox (to say the least) humor and design that really makes Conker stand out.
And to think the game was meant to be yet another colorful platformer for the system, hehe, sure, it still has some bright colors typical for such games, but splattered all over with blood red, puke green and diarhea brown.
So yeah, Conker was meant to be a tie-in title with Banjo-Kazooie, both sharing the same universe, and possibly having some interaction or expanded world with many characters, but when banjo was out… well, despite it being a great game and scoring some really great reviews, it was nothing more than a Mario 64 with a different character, the two games looked alike, played alike, and felt too much alike. That is why, Rare decided to withhold Conker’s release and tweak the game so that it would be different enough. Back then, it felt like Duke Nukem Forever, it was repeatedly announced and cancelled, but it was constantly being worked on, even the title changed a few times during development.
Then one day, Conker was finally out… and damn was it unexpected XD what we got was so different on so many levels… it was mind-blowing to see a game with so much gore, violence, swearing, sexual innuendos and the dirtiest humor possible, and to top it off it was released on a Nintendo console… the same Nintendo that seemed to take some sadistic pleasure from cutting all content it deemed “disturbing”. Heh, needless to say, this game was a shock to behold and was sure to remain in our memory forever.

So, about the piece itself… I’m pretty sure this is the crappiest piece I’ve ever done XD The game has no shortage of unique and memorable characters and enemies, but the Great Mighty Poo who is the first boss of the game certainly stand out among ’em. I mean, it’s literally a piece of shit… a huge-ass, opera singing piece of shit… I gotta say, while the battle wasn’t too difficult, it certainly raised the WTF factor a few levels, hence, given the chance of doing a Conker fanart for the project, it was the first thing that came into my mind.

Also worth noting, is that while Conker got an HD remake for the Xbox, the game looks nothing as good as it did on N64. Sure, it had better graphics, but the overall design has lost ALL of its original “charm” and the animation was just… “lacking” compared to the original, this is very evident during this boss battle, not only does GMP now look more like clay than actual shit, they even censored some of the words in his opera song… I mean, Micro$soft actually censored something that NINTENDO left intact… talk about a sad development XD”

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