00:00I am the Great Mighty Poo, and I'm going to throw my shit at you.
00:09Welcome to Mojo Plays, and today we're taking a look at 10 things you may not have known about Conker's
00:16Bad Fur Day.
00:18Let's go for a ride.
00:20Before we begin, we publish new videos all week long, so be sure to subscribe to Mojo Plays and ring
00:26the bell to be notified about our latest videos.
00:30Growing Pains
00:38Despite what the game turned out to be, Conker's Bad Fur Day was originally planned to be yet another 3D
00:45platformer aimed towards players of all ages.
00:48Initially, the game was called Conker's Quest, and it was announced alongside Banjo-Kazooie.
00:53While critics were impressed with the animations and visuals, there was much concern over the game looking too much like
00:59Banjo-Kazooie, as well as Nintendo's own Super Mario 64.
01:07A year later, the game was re-revealed as 12 Tales Conker 64, and came with new ideas.
01:15However, the sentiment remained the same.
01:17It looked too much like everything else.
01:20After much debacle behind the scenes, Rare's staff member Chris Seaver suggested taking the game into a new direction, an
01:27edgier and more adult direction.
01:30Okay.
01:31Now this is what I call a platform game.
01:34Spoofing Saviors
01:49Throughout Conker's Bad Fur Day, our favorite red squirrel goes through a number of experiences that, as we know, are
01:56direct spoofs of a plethora of movies.
01:58The Terminator, Alien, and Bram Stoker's Dracula are the more obvious ones, and although some may look at these as
02:05cheap gags, these spoofs were very important to the game's development.
02:17The staff found the spoofs to be an excellent source of inspiration for music, jokes, level design, and more.
02:24So, the gags here have more purpose than just for laughs.
02:28Weapons, maybe?
02:30Oh, cool.
02:32Let's see now.
02:34Art imitates life.
02:36Ah, press B.
02:37Press B.
02:39Oh, yeah.
02:40The light comes on.
02:41Ah, and it makes this nice ting.
02:43Right there, ting nice.
02:45Speaking of the game's comedy, Conker's Bad Fur Day hides a handful of inside jokes in an almost similar vein
02:52as Banjo-Kazooie.
02:53According to Seaver and some of the other staff, some characters were based on actual encounters they had with people
03:00in real life.
03:01For example, the King Bee is based on a homeless person that Seaver ran into who shouted at him,
03:08In my country, I'm a king.
03:10In my own country, I'm a king.
03:13Birdie the Scarecrow is named after a rare employee who was known for having a pretty impressively big beard.
03:20Beardie?
03:21You haven't got a beard.
03:22No.
03:24Birdie.
03:25Birdie's noticeable need for Mepsi packs is also a joke towards a rare employee who was known to drink a
03:31lot of Pepsi Max.
03:32T-O-T-S. Throw out the script.
03:39What'd you do that for?
03:40Dumb s***.
03:42Yeah, yeah, dumb s***.
03:43Just from the way lines are delivered, one may ask if the story was phoned in and made on the
03:49fly.
03:50Well, yeah, pretty much.
03:52One of the most impressive aspects of Conker's development was how almost the entire game's story was built off of
03:59improvised dialogue between Seaver and composer Robin Beanland.
04:04What?
04:05Well, you look like you could do with a little extra, my boy.
04:09The only way they kept track of it was with some notepads.
04:12The process was so chaotic that software engineer Sean Pyle created an entire programming language that allowed alterations for the
04:20game to be made on the fly.
04:22Other words, a simple change would have taken several minutes to adjust everything.
04:27Brian, this looks like it needs a little bit more hands-on control.
04:31Manifesting movie magic.
04:33Business is business.
04:36Adios.
04:40Pyle's program was not the only time custom software needed to be made specifically for Conker's Bad Fur Day.
04:47Cutscenes were far more elaborate in animation, audio, visual detail, timing, camera work, and the like.
04:54Unfortunately, this was way too much for Rare's own cutscene editor to handle to the point where the team would
05:00have to sit through every single cutscene just to see a minor change made for a later scene.
05:07Now where is it?
05:08Oh, just follow the signs.
05:10Oh.
05:12To save time, software engineer and voice of the great Mighty Poo himself, Chris Marlow, programmed a custom cutscene editor
05:20that soon made the process significantly easier.
05:24Who'd have thought a good little squirrel like you could destroy my beautiful flagginess?
05:29The many voices of Seaver.
05:31Yeah.
05:32Dash.
05:33Right.
05:34As most fans know, Chris Seaver is the voice of Conker and provides the voice for several other characters in
05:41Conker's Bad Fur Day.
05:42But you've heard Seaver's voice acting chops before and after the Red Squirrels misadventure.
05:48For instance, Seaver was the voice actor for Gruntilda across all three of the main Banjo-Kazooie games.
06:00Going a layer deeper, he was also the man behind the maniacal laugh for Spinal in Killer Instinct and its
06:07sequel.
06:08But what you may not know is that Seaver would go on to voice Peppy Hair and Slippy Toad in
06:14Star Fox Adventures, the last Nintendo game Rare worked on before they were acquired by Microsoft.
06:24A new meaning of mallet space.
06:32When working in animation, developers have to come up with all kinds of tricks to pull off certain visual effects.
06:39Well, Conker alone has over 2,000 animations, 15 of which are dedicated to remaining idle.
06:46In order to make some of these work without seeing an N64 get set on fire, maybe,
06:52Marlow had to mess with joints and rigging in unconventional ways.
07:00For example, Conker's Game Boy is attached to his foot while his frying pan is secretly attached to his wrist,
07:08scaling up in size only when Conker is attacking.
07:11There was even a whistling animation that was planned for him until it nearly broke the entire game.
07:16It was removed, but by the time the fix was made, Conker's Bad Fur Day was already printing cartridges.
07:25What a day that was.
07:34After several long years of constant change in direction and scrambling to get the game out,
07:40Conker was finally going to have his own game.
07:43Fortunately, one more hitch had to occur in the final stretch.
07:47During the testing and certification phase, which was required to obtain Nintendo's seal of quality,
07:52Nintendo's testers in Japan found a problem where players could make it to the spooky chapter without dying,
07:59thus making Greg the Grim Reaper's introduction make absolutely no sense.
08:05Bloody undead. Un-bloody-dead.
08:08This was because none of the staff at Rare thought any player would have been able to make it to
08:13that chapter
08:13without dying at least once.
08:15And so, they had to go back and force the cutscene to play before the beginning of the spooky chapter,
08:22just in case somebody made it there without dying.
08:25That's it. Piss off.
08:27It's what I'd call a bad fur day.
08:31So I stood there and said, hey, Bowser, how you doing there?
08:34Mate, I waved over, and I was there.
08:39This thing came out of the shite.
08:42And I thought to myself, oh no, I'm getting out of here.
08:45The marketing for Conker's bad fur day was rather secretive and, dare we say, a bit scandalous?
08:51Despite the strong relationship between Rare and Nintendo,
08:54Nintendo of America did not bother giving the game any attention whatsoever,
08:59unlike the corporation's other branches.
09:01In order to market the game and divorce Conker from Nintendo and Rare's usual family-friendly games,
09:07Media Network Starcom launched a marketing campaign involving competitions at college fraternity parties,
09:13risque video ads online,
09:15and even condoms and urinal mats with Conker's cheeky face printed on them.
09:21Is it safe, I wonder?
09:24Let's find out.
09:26Despite this unorthodox tactic in marketing, Conker's bad fur day was a commercial flop,
09:31selling only 55,000 copies within a month and failing to garner any amount of profit.
09:37It didn't help that the game was printed on very expensive 64 megabyte cartridges
09:42in order to accommodate the large amount of storage needed for the game's audio.
09:46Well, asses to you then.
09:49I gotta watch out for myself.
09:50The grass is always greener, sometimes.
09:53Well, there I am.
09:57Conker the king.
09:59As Conker's bad fur day has gained and maintained notoriety,
10:03there have been a few attempts at bringing Mr. The Squirrel back in some way.
10:08Of course, there was the controversial remake in 2005, Conker Live and Reloaded,
10:13which made the game pretty, somewhat, but more censored.
10:25After that, there were plans for a multiplayer spinoff called Conker Getting Medieval,
10:30except Conker was never going to be in the game.
10:32So that got chucked out the window along with the anti-gravity chocolate.
10:36Then there was the planned sequel, Conker's other bad fur day,
10:40which would have seen Conker try to avenge his girlfriend, Barry.
10:51Years later, after that got cancelled,
10:54there was the expansion for Project Spark, Conker's Big Reunion,
10:58which got cancelled midway through development.
11:00We can't finish an episodic DLC if the online-only base game no longer exists, you know?
11:05And the last time we saw Conker was 2016's Young Conker.
11:11We don't talk about Young Conker.
11:13That ain't Conker, that's a rat.
11:15We'll ask the work on the cover to get those blueprints.
11:19Maybe one of these days, our rodent friend will make a return in a promising way,
11:23perhaps with better backing from Microsoft, but, you know, that's wishful thinking.
11:28You can't capture context-sensitive magic as easily these days.
11:32Ha! Good. Psychology.
11:34Oh, it works with these animals.
11:35Did any of these facts surprise you?
11:37Let us know down in the comments,
11:39and don't forget to subscribe to MojoPlays.
Comments