Conker: [Remixed] & Reloaded

For those of you who were playing games about five years ago, you may remember the first truly controversial game that came out for game consoles since "Mortal Combat." This game is Rare's one and only "Conker's Bad Fur Day." For those who don't know what "Conker's Bad Fur Day" is, what it isn't is a typical platformer. When it was first unveiled to the public back in 1997, it was a cute little platformer that we knew very little about. A year later it was shown as "Twilight Tales: Conker 64." This time around we got more information about the game, but we were far less impressed. The problem was that earlier that year, Rare released their big hit "Banjo-Kazooie" to the world, which was a cute, simple game that mainly revolved around you exploring lush, Disney looking worlds while collecting gold puzzle pieces.

Likewise "Twilight Tales: Conker 64" was a cute, simple game that mainly revolved around you exploring lush, Disney looking worlds while collecting gold acorns. The games were too similar to each other, and Rare could tell that one of their potential franchises had just lost a lot of interest right there and then. Instead of canceling the game though, Rare decided to re-work the game as a hard-core, violent, perverted, M rated game known as "Conker's Bad Fur Day." When the game was shown off a couple years later, people were shocked at what they saw. There was violent, bodies blowing up, this squirrel getting drunk and urinating on people, course language (some of which was bleeped out), movie parodies (most of which were from R rated movies), and a Disney like musical sequence where you fight The Great Mighty Poo.

This certainly was not the same game we saw the previous year, and this new Conker drew controversy from parents and family control groups. When the game was released there were protests in the form of news stories, stores like Wal-Mart and K-Mart didn't carry the game, even Nintendo themselves went the extra mile to make it so that this game was sold only to adults (it wasn't even featured in any of their Nintendo Power magazines). While the game drew in some controversy, it was also a brilliant game, that featured many funny (British) humor, it was the first game to combine several different game genre's together (platformer, FPS, even some kart racing), and it was the first game that made a strong case that games could still be worth owning even if it was only around 10 to 15 hours.

I remember playing it at the time, and being shocked at how a game that looks so much like a Disney cartoon could be so much like "South Park." One thing that was strange was that tons of the language was bleeped out. I guess the language was bleeped out because Nintendo didn't want the AO rating, but it was okay since the bleeping (much like on "The Osborns") just made the game funnier. When Microsoft announced that they bought Rare and would be bringing a remake of "Conker's Bad Fur Day" would be released for XBox I was giddy. It made me even more happy when I found out that this XBox version of Conker was being titled "Conker: Live & Uncut," as this would suggest maybe Microsoft would go all the way with the title.

Well, it doesn't look like this is going to happen anytime soon. Not only is most of the foul language bleeped out, but Microsoft took out even MORE of the bad language then was originally removed! Of course, this doesn't really bother much that much about the remake, it's actually the camera that is the biggest problem, in that the camera is much better then the problematic camera for the Nintendo 64 version of Conker. In that version you couldn't control the camera, where you can control the camera in the XBox remake, yet the camera is still complete garbage. But camera and language bleeping aside, the whole point I'm TRYING (and failing) to make is that Conker is back in the picture, and frankly, the shock value just isn't there anymore.

These days games like "Manhunt," "Halo," and the oh so popular "Grand Theft Auto" is in the controversy spotlight. Which means despite the fact that Conker is still an adult game that looks like a kids game, Conker just isn't as edgy as he used to be. Since there has been talk about the edgy content in this game since previews of the remake first surfaced, I have to wonder whether or not this game will achieve the sales Microsoft wants it to in order to establish Conker as a huge game franchise. A pity too, as future installments of this franchise could have been even more daring and hilarious then "Bad Fur Day" was. Oh well, I guess we'll have to make do with what we've got (which isn't really a bad thing when you get down to it).