This is not the swearing, substance abusing and violent little squirrel we all know from the N64, however, as achievements in retroarch noted, they had much of the same music in it though. Like The Great Mighty Poo song in 8bit.
This feels like a kid's version of Conker, which is a pretty bad idea imo, but also, it feels like this is a story of the stuff he had to deal with which led to Conker's Bad Fur Day such as how almost everyone he interacts with is an Acorn, including the evil one that kidnaps his girlfriend, a evil black squirrel that ruins your name violent plants that what to eat you and all kinds of villains who want to pick on this poor squirrel who just wanted to enjoy his birthday with his girlfriend. You even have to recollect all of your presents! It's one thing to steal the gifts, but to scatter them all over the place? That's just a different level of petty evil.
The style of gameplay is similar to Zelda in the perspective with some mild platforming which makes things annoying when you don't have a weapon until, after speaking to the Acorns, you go to the windmill to get yourself a slingshot. From this you progress to different worlds but obtaining different keys, having a semi-open world kind of vibe to it, though that's mostly to hide the gifts all over the place.
This game was clearly aimed at little kids and it feels like it, but in the same way of insulting young minds by having a very flimsy story to explain the events and motivate the player. In regards to gameplay, it's still solid so I can't say it's a terrible game in that way, but it is pretty boring and certain mini-games are non-optional and I was stuck for sooo long with one where I had to get a boat part, which you need to make a boat and race against your doppelganger! It took me way too long to finish this game and it shows in the video below, however, it still wasn't my worst experience of Cringetober. It was the last official game I had planned for Cringetober, however, I did add two more that'll be coming out soon which I added to Cringetober retroactively. Fallout 76 and Overwatch 2. Games I dislike for personal reasons.
Gameplay/Stream
This feels like a kid's version of Conker, which is a pretty bad idea imo, but also, it feels like this is a story of the stuff he had to deal with which led to Conker's Bad Fur Day such as how almost everyone he interacts with is an Acorn, including the evil one that kidnaps his girlfriend, a evil black squirrel that ruins your name violent plants that what to eat you and all kinds of villains who want to pick on this poor squirrel who just wanted to enjoy his birthday with his girlfriend. You even have to recollect all of your presents! It's one thing to steal the gifts, but to scatter them all over the place? That's just a different level of petty evil.
The style of gameplay is similar to Zelda in the perspective with some mild platforming which makes things annoying when you don't have a weapon until, after speaking to the Acorns, you go to the windmill to get yourself a slingshot. From this you progress to different worlds but obtaining different keys, having a semi-open world kind of vibe to it, though that's mostly to hide the gifts all over the place.
This game was clearly aimed at little kids and it feels like it, but in the same way of insulting young minds by having a very flimsy story to explain the events and motivate the player. In regards to gameplay, it's still solid so I can't say it's a terrible game in that way, but it is pretty boring and certain mini-games are non-optional and I was stuck for sooo long with one where I had to get a boat part, which you need to make a boat and race against your doppelganger! It took me way too long to finish this game and it shows in the video below, however, it still wasn't my worst experience of Cringetober. It was the last official game I had planned for Cringetober, however, I did add two more that'll be coming out soon which I added to Cringetober retroactively. Fallout 76 and Overwatch 2. Games I dislike for personal reasons.
Gameplay/Stream
The game starts out very rough with your only attack being the stomp which is annoyingly difficult to hit with and not be hit by an enemy. Plus you're immediately running into enemies that take 3 hits to kill. Additionally, the game lets you know the Forest Guardian is to the north east. It is actually not as straightforward as that, you need to venture south and make your way back up.
Once you have the slingshot the game is actually a lot more enjoyable. It's still challenging in ways, but not bad. I actually had a good time with Vultureville and its surrounding area. The addition of the scuba mask was neat. Krow's Keep wasn't a bad level either, although it is never explained in-game how to jump multiple tiles. Presumably that was in the manual, so not great, but understandable and I was honestly having a good time and rating at 6/10.
Then you hit the Mako Islands. First up was the coconut shooting game, which was pretty not great, but manageable. The hurdles became plain unfair though. I'm not sure if because I emulated it added time, but who in their right mind thought an alternating, vigorous, button mashing 36 second long minigame was a good idea? If you even slightly slow down, Honker pulls ahead of you. If you are slow to start, Honker is off the screen almost immediately and you've lost. I'm fine with a challenge, and even usually fine with a button masher, but if you aren't registering at full speed immediately, you lose. That's not a challenge, that's bullshit. I had to quit here because my hands couldn't handle the mashing any longer.
I apparently made the right choice because this was not the only race like this on Mako Islands and you cannot leave a level until you have all of its presents. This bumped the game down significantly for me. Button mashing being a requirement to progress through a game is just not good design in my opinion and I have no intention of returning to Pocket Tales now. I honestly can't believe that was a thing for a Game Boy Color game of all things as well.
Once you have the slingshot the game is actually a lot more enjoyable. It's still challenging in ways, but not bad. I actually had a good time with Vultureville and its surrounding area. The addition of the scuba mask was neat. Krow's Keep wasn't a bad level either, although it is never explained in-game how to jump multiple tiles. Presumably that was in the manual, so not great, but understandable and I was honestly having a good time and rating at 6/10.
Then you hit the Mako Islands. First up was the coconut shooting game, which was pretty not great, but manageable. The hurdles became plain unfair though. I'm not sure if because I emulated it added time, but who in their right mind thought an alternating, vigorous, button mashing 36 second long minigame was a good idea? If you even slightly slow down, Honker pulls ahead of you. If you are slow to start, Honker is off the screen almost immediately and you've lost. I'm fine with a challenge, and even usually fine with a button masher, but if you aren't registering at full speed immediately, you lose. That's not a challenge, that's bullshit. I had to quit here because my hands couldn't handle the mashing any longer.
I apparently made the right choice because this was not the only race like this on Mako Islands and you cannot leave a level until you have all of its presents. This bumped the game down significantly for me. Button mashing being a requirement to progress through a game is just not good design in my opinion and I have no intention of returning to Pocket Tales now. I honestly can't believe that was a thing for a Game Boy Color game of all things as well.
The game has a Game Boy version as well, locked on the same cart in fact, but I played the Game Boy color version.
Mostly notable as a historical novelty and a glimpse into what Conker could've been if Twelve Tales released as expected. Also, shockingly unfun. Despite having literal years of extra development time, there are a lot of little things that feel unfinished, like hit detection, animations, and dialogue. Lots of mean design decisions, like encouraging revisiting areas but not allowing players easy ways of looping more linear stages. Conker actually looks pretty rough here; the Game Boy already struggled to conker the DKC sprites with the Donkey Kong Lands, but very little of the 64-bit character's appeal or even readability translates to the rasterized 8-bit sprites.
There are a few decent ideas, though. Vultureville and the Mako Islands are easy highlights for the whole experience. The Evil Acorn's final gauntlet is a fun idea, as is facing off against Waldorf repeatedly throughout Krow Keep. The mini-games tend to be basic, but they're generally a nice reprieve from the core gameplay loop.
Mostly notable as a historical novelty and a glimpse into what Conker could've been if Twelve Tales released as expected. Also, shockingly unfun. Despite having literal years of extra development time, there are a lot of little things that feel unfinished, like hit detection, animations, and dialogue. Lots of mean design decisions, like encouraging revisiting areas but not allowing players easy ways of looping more linear stages. Conker actually looks pretty rough here; the Game Boy already struggled to conker the DKC sprites with the Donkey Kong Lands, but very little of the 64-bit character's appeal or even readability translates to the rasterized 8-bit sprites.
There are a few decent ideas, though. Vultureville and the Mako Islands are easy highlights for the whole experience. The Evil Acorn's final gauntlet is a fun idea, as is facing off against Waldorf repeatedly throughout Krow Keep. The mini-games tend to be basic, but they're generally a nice reprieve from the core gameplay loop.
I'd develop a drinking problem, too, if this was my first game.
Played this game out of a curiosity for what the hell it is. It's basically a strange remnant of the game Conker's Twelve Tales, the game Conker's Bad Fur Day was going to be until someone at Rare was like "hey guys, you see this South Park show? crazy stuff".
If I'm being honest, I think I would have preferred Twelve Tales over what we ended up getting, so I was very curious to see what this game could contain, for that reason and for the fact that no one talks about it. I mean, people were crazy about Rare during this era, why would this game just get totally wiped from our collective memory?
Conker's Pocket Tales is not a platformer, despite you having a very bad jump and even worse ground pound. Due to it's top-down perspective, world layout, NPCs, and progression in the form of completing certain objectives in order to unlock other areas, this game has more in common with Zelda than any Rare game at the time, mixed with some elements of Collect-a-thon. It could be considered a top-down Banjo-Kazooie in some ways, which Rare would eventually go on to do on the GBA.
The story is that Conker was having a birthday party until a horrifying acorn man shows up, kidnaps his girlfriend Berri, and steals all his presents. This made me assume that acorn men were the villains of this game, until I eventually had to talk to an acorn man and I learned this is a world where most of the people living in it are either acorn men or some form of beast trying to kill you. There's also Conker's rival Honker, but he's trying to kill you so I would put him in the latter category. Conker and Berri are basically the only squirrels around here, it's scary actually.
As for the actual game, it's Zelda with no mechanics. The only weapon you have for all the way up until I gave up (about halfway) is a slingshot that takes a long time to shoot, so you will get attacked by the enemy before you get the chance to hit them. There are also enemies you can only ground pound, and the perspective of the game and the timing of the move itself makes it incredibly frustrating to do this. The pause menu is full of slots that I never got to fill throughout playing the game, so no switching items to take care of some enemies faster or solve different puzzle.
In fact, every puzzle I encountered was some version of "push these boxes" or "press these switches in the right order through trial and error". There are some areas that require platforming, and those are a nightmare every time. Sometimes there are side areas that you can check out to find extra presents, and that's fun because it starts to feel like a real game, but then you accidentally run into an enemy because you couldn't have possibly seen them coming due to the size of the screen.
This game is stingy with health, and I believe it may be because of the fact that you can save anywhere, and when you restart the game you will start exactly where you saved with the same amount of collectables. But when you die, you are forced to watch the logos and intro again before getting back to the game's start menu, a process that feels longer every time it happens. The most egregious part of this opening you are forced to watch over and over again is that it makes you select you language again??? Does the game just, forget the language I speak when I die???
Of course it's very easy to die due to the circumstances I described previously, and also because the nature of these very chunky pre-rendered sprites is that it's hard to tell when something is close enough to hit you. This means a lot of watching that opening, and telling the game, yes, believe it or not I don't actually want to start playing the game in German after dying. The sprites in general just don't look great, nothing about this game really does. The faces of the acorn people give me some joy in how goofy they are, but I don't understand filling the world with acorn men instead of, you know, other cute animals. These acorn men also all have the same dialogue, just a generic message on where to go next. I'm not exaggerating, I mean it's literally the same message from each NPC, which is insane. Isn't part of the joy of these games finding weird NPCs and what they have to say about some bullshit? Unless they're part of a quest, they just spout the exact same message each time.
I don't know, I guess I gave this 1 star instead of a half star because if I was forced to finish game, I could probably do it and it wouldn't be the worst possible thing. But yeah, game isn't good, don't know why I wrote so much about it. Conker has a rival named Honker.
If I'm being honest, I think I would have preferred Twelve Tales over what we ended up getting, so I was very curious to see what this game could contain, for that reason and for the fact that no one talks about it. I mean, people were crazy about Rare during this era, why would this game just get totally wiped from our collective memory?
Conker's Pocket Tales is not a platformer, despite you having a very bad jump and even worse ground pound. Due to it's top-down perspective, world layout, NPCs, and progression in the form of completing certain objectives in order to unlock other areas, this game has more in common with Zelda than any Rare game at the time, mixed with some elements of Collect-a-thon. It could be considered a top-down Banjo-Kazooie in some ways, which Rare would eventually go on to do on the GBA.
The story is that Conker was having a birthday party until a horrifying acorn man shows up, kidnaps his girlfriend Berri, and steals all his presents. This made me assume that acorn men were the villains of this game, until I eventually had to talk to an acorn man and I learned this is a world where most of the people living in it are either acorn men or some form of beast trying to kill you. There's also Conker's rival Honker, but he's trying to kill you so I would put him in the latter category. Conker and Berri are basically the only squirrels around here, it's scary actually.
As for the actual game, it's Zelda with no mechanics. The only weapon you have for all the way up until I gave up (about halfway) is a slingshot that takes a long time to shoot, so you will get attacked by the enemy before you get the chance to hit them. There are also enemies you can only ground pound, and the perspective of the game and the timing of the move itself makes it incredibly frustrating to do this. The pause menu is full of slots that I never got to fill throughout playing the game, so no switching items to take care of some enemies faster or solve different puzzle.
In fact, every puzzle I encountered was some version of "push these boxes" or "press these switches in the right order through trial and error". There are some areas that require platforming, and those are a nightmare every time. Sometimes there are side areas that you can check out to find extra presents, and that's fun because it starts to feel like a real game, but then you accidentally run into an enemy because you couldn't have possibly seen them coming due to the size of the screen.
This game is stingy with health, and I believe it may be because of the fact that you can save anywhere, and when you restart the game you will start exactly where you saved with the same amount of collectables. But when you die, you are forced to watch the logos and intro again before getting back to the game's start menu, a process that feels longer every time it happens. The most egregious part of this opening you are forced to watch over and over again is that it makes you select you language again??? Does the game just, forget the language I speak when I die???
Of course it's very easy to die due to the circumstances I described previously, and also because the nature of these very chunky pre-rendered sprites is that it's hard to tell when something is close enough to hit you. This means a lot of watching that opening, and telling the game, yes, believe it or not I don't actually want to start playing the game in German after dying. The sprites in general just don't look great, nothing about this game really does. The faces of the acorn people give me some joy in how goofy they are, but I don't understand filling the world with acorn men instead of, you know, other cute animals. These acorn men also all have the same dialogue, just a generic message on where to go next. I'm not exaggerating, I mean it's literally the same message from each NPC, which is insane. Isn't part of the joy of these games finding weird NPCs and what they have to say about some bullshit? Unless they're part of a quest, they just spout the exact same message each time.
I don't know, I guess I gave this 1 star instead of a half star because if I was forced to finish game, I could probably do it and it wouldn't be the worst possible thing. But yeah, game isn't good, don't know why I wrote so much about it. Conker has a rival named Honker.
Conker when he was more into mescaline than alcohol.
This game isn't really that much home to write about. It's a really innocent and cutsey platform game that's serviceable - but it doesn't contain any of the charm of Rareware's other titles. Conker works as basically a stereotype of a cutesy character where everything is all nice and happy - except from the evil Acorn King who has stolen all of his birthday presents and kidnapped his girlfriend Berri.
Most of this is just derivative mini-games and confusing lay-outs and collect-athons that are much more repetitive because they lack the vibrancy of Rareware's Nintendo 64 titles. It's also way more family-oriented than the later Conker entries which adds an additional humour and poignancy to Conker's adult years where he would go heavily into self-destructive tendencies.
Worth it as a curiosity, but it's just not a very good game.
This game isn't really that much home to write about. It's a really innocent and cutsey platform game that's serviceable - but it doesn't contain any of the charm of Rareware's other titles. Conker works as basically a stereotype of a cutesy character where everything is all nice and happy - except from the evil Acorn King who has stolen all of his birthday presents and kidnapped his girlfriend Berri.
Most of this is just derivative mini-games and confusing lay-outs and collect-athons that are much more repetitive because they lack the vibrancy of Rareware's Nintendo 64 titles. It's also way more family-oriented than the later Conker entries which adds an additional humour and poignancy to Conker's adult years where he would go heavily into self-destructive tendencies.
Worth it as a curiosity, but it's just not a very good game.
this game is so cute
Pros: A big adventure game for the little handheld, with cute music and fun minigames. Interesting little puzzles and challenges, all in a top-down 2D perspective. Also of course, this is Rare, so it was pretty to look at with its CGI ACM graphics. And another plus, this is actually two games in one! If played on a Game Boy Color, your adventure is different, some mechanics and minigames completely different as well, than if you play it on a regular Game Boy/Super Game Boy. Only bummer, is there's only room for saves for one way of playing at a time. So after you finish it on GB, play it on GBC, good for replay value.
Cons: It's a bit stiff, movement-wise. Some of the areas don't feel really well designed either... but, what did me in the most here, were the minigames on Mako Islands... God, one of them, I think it was a race, had you alternating pressing left and right, or maybe it was A and B, either way, I didn't know what blisters were until playing this game. Literal pain.
What it means to me: This game, was a game my dad bought for my brother and I... but before getting it, he gave us a choice, it was either Conker's Pocket Tales, or the new Star Wars game on N64, which was a more expensive game that was more popular for all the kids at the time... Nah, we're going with Conker, baby!! And never regretted that choice. Fuck Star Wars.
Cons: It's a bit stiff, movement-wise. Some of the areas don't feel really well designed either... but, what did me in the most here, were the minigames on Mako Islands... God, one of them, I think it was a race, had you alternating pressing left and right, or maybe it was A and B, either way, I didn't know what blisters were until playing this game. Literal pain.
What it means to me: This game, was a game my dad bought for my brother and I... but before getting it, he gave us a choice, it was either Conker's Pocket Tales, or the new Star Wars game on N64, which was a more expensive game that was more popular for all the kids at the time... Nah, we're going with Conker, baby!! And never regretted that choice. Fuck Star Wars.
It's conker except not as cool and quite clunky to play. Does give you a taste for what Conker 64 could have been like.
this is the closest thing we'll get to a playable incarnation of twelve tales and that makes me sad
also why does this get so brutally difficult at the end
also why does this get so brutally difficult at the end
I love the part of the game where Conker - the small bushy-tailed and big-eyed child of this game that collects presents and attacks by using a slingshot - walks into some dude's house and he's like "Hey Conker, some cuddly furry animal that looked like you took out a revolver and shot me to death, I'm dying right now" and then Conker is arrested and put in a jail cell for murder.
Did I mention this dude that gets murdered is a giant talking acorn? Probably should've mentioned that. Anyways, Conker watches one of those giant cartoon acorns bleed to death from a gunshot wound in this game. Shit, if that happened to me when I was a kid just trying to star in a run-of-the-mill Game Boy game, I'd start drinking heavily too.
Did I mention this dude that gets murdered is a giant talking acorn? Probably should've mentioned that. Anyways, Conker watches one of those giant cartoon acorns bleed to death from a gunshot wound in this game. Shit, if that happened to me when I was a kid just trying to star in a run-of-the-mill Game Boy game, I'd start drinking heavily too.