The Untold Truth Of Conker's Bad Fur Day
At the time of its release, Conker's Bad Fur Day was already a surprise. It was a platformer starring a foul-mouthed squirrel who drank a lot, and that squirrel embarked on some highly suspect escapades in a very adult-themed world. That wasn't the kind of thing kids were used to playing back in 2001, and it especially wasn't a game anyone expected to see on the Nintendo 64. Wasn't Nintendo the company that kept all the little kiddies away from mature content?
Somehow, someway, developer Rare got the nod to go ahead and make Conker's Bad Fur Day as over-the-top as possible. To this day, Bad Fur Day still holds a place in the hearts of a lot of gamers. If you're a fan of the title, you may think you've played through every nook and cranny of it, and have heard every single story about what went into making it. There are some things about Conker's N64 outing, however, that you may not be aware of.
Here's the untold truth of Conker's Bad Fur Day.
Bad Fur Day nearly got a sequel
Conker's Bad Fur Day was a late Nintendo 64 release, coming out in March 2001 just months before Nintendo launched the GameCube. The game was fairly well received and maintains a Metacritic score of 92 to this day. Strangely, though, the Conker franchise never got another mainline entry aside from Live and Reloaded, a remake of Bad Fur Day for the original Xbox. That's not to say one couldn't have happened, however — in fact, the man behind Conker thought it could have.
Chris Seavor no longer works at Rare, having departed in 2011 after the company reportedly went through a round of firings. Back when Nintendo still owned Rare, though, Seavor was the man who took a harmless platformer starring a squirrel and transformed it into an unapologetically adult classic. According to what Seavor told Eurogamer, Rare could've very well made a Conker 2 for the Xbox 360, giving fans another adventure starring the lewd rodent. As Seavor put it, however, "I was really against that because I just couldn't face spending another two years on a game we'd already spent a year and a half on." Instead, the O.G. Xbox got Conker: Live and Reloaded.
Some of Bad Fur Day had to be censored
Conker's Bad Fur Day is a mature-rated video game. Playing through it, one might believe that Rare was given the go-ahead to do anything it wanted. There are all sorts of naughty jokes, scenes with sexual innuendo, and more curse words than you can shake a stick at. It might be tough to imagine that any content actually had to be censored in Conker's Bad Fur Day, but according to a designer on the game, that was indeed the case.
In a since-removed interview with Gamika (via Kotaku), former Rare designer Chris Seavor elaborated on the cuts. "Stuff in CBFD did get censored, whole cutscenes in fact," Seavor told the outlet, "but on reflection [I] could see how some people might be offended." There were apparently Pokemon in the game that Nintendo wanted taken out, and a joke made "at the expense of the KKK" that got the boot.
If you think Conker's Bad Fur Day was crossing all sorts of lines when it came out in 2001, remember: it could've gone even further.
One of the devs sang in the game
When making Conker's Bad Fur Day, the team at Rare was nothing if not creative. Those in charge tried to make sure everyone's talents were used to the best of their ability, and that included those who could sing. In an interview with Splice Today, programmer Chris Marlow talked about how he got into the business of games, and shared some fun stories about the making of Conker's Bad Fur Day. One anecdote he shared that some may not know: he wasn't just a developer on the project, but he also voiced the opera-singing Great Mighty Poo.
"Yes, Chris Seavor and Robin Beanland—our on-team musicians—both knew I performed in opera," Marlow told Splice Today. "Chris always knew to leverage the talents of his team members, and came up with an idea of a boss who'd sing opera." From there, Marlow apparently got to work on the lyrics, while Beanland came up with the music. "We recorded it in an afternoon," Marlow said. Judging by the results, it was an afternoon very well spent.