Believe it or not, I consider the silly drunk squirrel game an arthouse project.
Let me state first that I normally have no interest whatsoever in this game's brand of humor. I have never liked South Park, and I can only take Family Guy in small doses. Actually, I've always been a bit surprised how much I like this game, since I enjoyed it enough to run through it in full three times - more than any other Rare game I've played to date. Part of it is my personal connection - I have a fond memory of my mother surprising me with this game as a birthday present my first year of college, since I'd hyped up the game's notorious reputation for her. I played part of the game for my roommate, a guy who'd grown up with Banjo-Kazooie but had never heard of this game, and I remember him being shocked that "They're swearing!!!!" Fun game to surprise people with.
But that's only part of it. A lot of it comes from the journey the game took to become what it is now. It's a well-known story, but for those who don't know - Conker was conceived of as a Tex Avery-style mascot for Rare, but with the runaway success of Banjo-Kazooie, his game's original incarnation (Twelve Tales: Conker 64) was seen as an also-ran of Rare being its kiddy, cutesy self. Development stalled for many years, long enough that the team behind the companion release (Conker's Pocket Tales) was able to finish their work twice over. Frustrated by the lack of forward momentum, Chris Seavor pitched a crass, parodic take on the original Twelve Tales, and Conker became the little bastard we know today.
Consequently, the end product is colored by the accumulations built up over 5-6 years of development. So many of the misanthropic, ill-mannered jokes read as the team taking the piss (sometimes literally) on all of their development struggles to date. There are all sorts of meta nods, like how the baby dinosaur that Conker sacrifices would have been Berri's companion in Twelve Tales, or the condensation of the expansive movesets from Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 into a generic all-purpose Context Sensitivity Zone, or the key collectable being completely unimaginative wads of cash.
I think that's the start of what makes the game more than just its crass jokes. Like, there's no subtext to Marvin the freakin' mouse critter in Barn Boys; the humor really is just an absurdist punchline rooted around the arbitrary sexism of metal crates that exist as obstacles, and gibbing a flatulent rodent. It's not funny to me because I find those jokes funny; it's funny because of who's telling the jokes and why they're telling it. Rare's pissed off and indulging in some dadaist humor that brings into question the underpinings of what a video game is. Like, why the hell not field a quest by a sentient block involving a cheese farm?
The other half of the equation on its surface level is its referential humor. And I'm not gonna pretend that there is something inherently deep about a video game referencing Bram Stoker's Dracula or Jaws or anything. It is funny, seeing the opening to Saving Private Ryan recreated with adorable squirrel characters getting mowed down, up to and including a grey squirrel retrieving his own severed arm. But I do think that for as inherently ridiculous as its plot cul-de-sacs are, the fact that Conker (the game) treats them as a single continuous narrative lends itself some cumulative weight. Like the speech at the end of "It's War!" is certainly genre work, but that doesn't make it any less poignant. To say nothing of how it all piles up in the ending, and how narrative weight comes crashing back down even in spite of Conker (the Squirrel's) fourth wall awareness.
It's been said before, but Bad Fur Day is much stronger as a third-person shooter than as a platformer. Credit where it's due, the creators realized this and left most of the actual mechanical challenges for the game's Night segments, with the only real speedbumps during the Day portions being "Barry's Mates", Bomb Run", and "Mugged". I also think BFD is very smartly-paced for its variety format, pivoting just when things start getting tedious. Nothing is really given time to overstay its welcome (though "It's War" probably runs a little long, and the final boss, while a fun throwback to Mario 64, is surprisingly fiddly for how simple it is).
And, like, when the game isn't deliberately looking like crap, it looks amazing. You can kind of tell that Conker's model got way more attention than anyone else looking at it side-by-side with the others in multiplayer, but that's not a bad thing. Rare wanted a Screwy Squirrel mascot, and boy did they get it. It's absolutely astounding to think that Super Mario 64 and Conker's Bad Fur Day exist on the same console.
I think, to loop back around to the main point, my love for Conker, and why I consider it an arthouse game, is because of its surprisingly unique place as an auteur project for its place in the gaming landscape. These days auteur games are less of a surprise, with directors' influence being more visible in their work. But for Rare and especially for Nintendo (indirectly, since Ninty was just a publisher, but implicitly since the two were joined at the hip), it feels like it comes out of nowhere. So much of what I see in Bad Fur Day comes from where Rare was at in their company history. There's something poignant in that ending, knowing that this was the end of Rare's heyday on the SNES and N64. Maybe not their last game with Nintendo, but the last major release to have its own clear identity. A swan song, sung in and by scat.
Let me state first that I normally have no interest whatsoever in this game's brand of humor. I have never liked South Park, and I can only take Family Guy in small doses. Actually, I've always been a bit surprised how much I like this game, since I enjoyed it enough to run through it in full three times - more than any other Rare game I've played to date. Part of it is my personal connection - I have a fond memory of my mother surprising me with this game as a birthday present my first year of college, since I'd hyped up the game's notorious reputation for her. I played part of the game for my roommate, a guy who'd grown up with Banjo-Kazooie but had never heard of this game, and I remember him being shocked that "They're swearing!!!!" Fun game to surprise people with.
But that's only part of it. A lot of it comes from the journey the game took to become what it is now. It's a well-known story, but for those who don't know - Conker was conceived of as a Tex Avery-style mascot for Rare, but with the runaway success of Banjo-Kazooie, his game's original incarnation (Twelve Tales: Conker 64) was seen as an also-ran of Rare being its kiddy, cutesy self. Development stalled for many years, long enough that the team behind the companion release (Conker's Pocket Tales) was able to finish their work twice over. Frustrated by the lack of forward momentum, Chris Seavor pitched a crass, parodic take on the original Twelve Tales, and Conker became the little bastard we know today.
Consequently, the end product is colored by the accumulations built up over 5-6 years of development. So many of the misanthropic, ill-mannered jokes read as the team taking the piss (sometimes literally) on all of their development struggles to date. There are all sorts of meta nods, like how the baby dinosaur that Conker sacrifices would have been Berri's companion in Twelve Tales, or the condensation of the expansive movesets from Banjo-Kazooie and Donkey Kong 64 into a generic all-purpose Context Sensitivity Zone, or the key collectable being completely unimaginative wads of cash.
I think that's the start of what makes the game more than just its crass jokes. Like, there's no subtext to Marvin the freakin' mouse critter in Barn Boys; the humor really is just an absurdist punchline rooted around the arbitrary sexism of metal crates that exist as obstacles, and gibbing a flatulent rodent. It's not funny to me because I find those jokes funny; it's funny because of who's telling the jokes and why they're telling it. Rare's pissed off and indulging in some dadaist humor that brings into question the underpinings of what a video game is. Like, why the hell not field a quest by a sentient block involving a cheese farm?
The other half of the equation on its surface level is its referential humor. And I'm not gonna pretend that there is something inherently deep about a video game referencing Bram Stoker's Dracula or Jaws or anything. It is funny, seeing the opening to Saving Private Ryan recreated with adorable squirrel characters getting mowed down, up to and including a grey squirrel retrieving his own severed arm. But I do think that for as inherently ridiculous as its plot cul-de-sacs are, the fact that Conker (the game) treats them as a single continuous narrative lends itself some cumulative weight. Like the speech at the end of "It's War!" is certainly genre work, but that doesn't make it any less poignant. To say nothing of how it all piles up in the ending, and how narrative weight comes crashing back down even in spite of Conker (the Squirrel's) fourth wall awareness.
It's been said before, but Bad Fur Day is much stronger as a third-person shooter than as a platformer. Credit where it's due, the creators realized this and left most of the actual mechanical challenges for the game's Night segments, with the only real speedbumps during the Day portions being "Barry's Mates", Bomb Run", and "Mugged". I also think BFD is very smartly-paced for its variety format, pivoting just when things start getting tedious. Nothing is really given time to overstay its welcome (though "It's War" probably runs a little long, and the final boss, while a fun throwback to Mario 64, is surprisingly fiddly for how simple it is).
And, like, when the game isn't deliberately looking like crap, it looks amazing. You can kind of tell that Conker's model got way more attention than anyone else looking at it side-by-side with the others in multiplayer, but that's not a bad thing. Rare wanted a Screwy Squirrel mascot, and boy did they get it. It's absolutely astounding to think that Super Mario 64 and Conker's Bad Fur Day exist on the same console.
I think, to loop back around to the main point, my love for Conker, and why I consider it an arthouse game, is because of its surprisingly unique place as an auteur project for its place in the gaming landscape. These days auteur games are less of a surprise, with directors' influence being more visible in their work. But for Rare and especially for Nintendo (indirectly, since Ninty was just a publisher, but implicitly since the two were joined at the hip), it feels like it comes out of nowhere. So much of what I see in Bad Fur Day comes from where Rare was at in their company history. There's something poignant in that ending, knowing that this was the end of Rare's heyday on the SNES and N64. Maybe not their last game with Nintendo, but the last major release to have its own clear identity. A swan song, sung in and by scat.