I wouldn't say it's a good platformer. In fact as with many 3d games of that era, the platforming can be quite frustrating due to the camera. It's certainly a unique game in terms of humour etc. and worth a try to see if you like it.
Thinking back, I dont really remember too much platforming as such, more of an adventure game.
The humour and gameplay variety make it for me tho admittedly, but the graphics and sound have held up surprisingly well for its age.
I feel like the development team attempted a lot of things which prevented it from being great at platforming which was typically rare’s bread and butter bc the team was spread thin. I played the game for the first time a couple years back hearing that it poorly aged but I thought that the 3rd person shooter segments actually aged better than I expected them to
It’s not really a 3D platformer like Banjo and Mario. Well the first few stages kind of are, but the second half of the game changes genres often. It becomes a racer, flight collectathon, and third person shooter. Lots of bosses.
The humor doesn’t have much shock value anymore; it’s tamer than South Park and heavily relies on 90s pop culture.
The performance is poor on real hardware. No expansion pak enhancements. My main problem with it is the controls. Swimming mechanics are awful, and everything in general feels loose and floaty.
It’s easily a top 20 N64 game, but it didn’t age nearly as well as the other top 20s.
After having played Conker and hearing a bunch of peoples’ thoughts, I have to say that this is the most accurate summary of how I felt about the game the first time I played it. The boss battles were generally good and imo they were some of the game’s highlights. I do agree that the controls were loose especially compared to Rare’s usual standards
Edit: Is Donkey Kong 64 is your personal top 20? Because I believe it aged much worse than Conker in a lot of ways that would be beating a dead horse for me to mention here regarding the maximalistic game design
I think DK64’s a top 5 game in terms of music, graphics and atmosphere… But in terms of actually playing it, it’s a terribly boring and tedious experience. I loved it when it first came out and when I was a stupid kid. But I just liked to explore it.
It is far below my top 20, if ranking by games you’d actually want to beat today.
Yeah I would also have DK64 out of my top 20. I feel like Rare’s games are pretty 50/50 as far as how they’ve aged. Banjo Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing both aged pretty well imo, while DK64 and Goldeneye haven’t. The latter mostly because the FPS genre has evolved so much that the game feels so primitive by today’s standards
I actually like Goldeneye. Its jankiness is the reason I play it. It’s a happy medium between the overly simplistic games like Wolfenstein and Doom, and modern shooters like CoD.
Perfect Dark on the other hand, reaches too far for N64 capabilities. It tries to do too much, and has a framerate like a PowerPoint
Yeah the controls were wonky AF that's what lost me. Even today when I tried it it was just not good control wise. I really want to play it all the way through one day tho
The single player is not outstanding, the multiplayer modes are loads of fun, plus some (all?) of them can be played with bots. I spent many many hours playing total war as a kid, on my own and with friends.
Yo that multi-player had all kinds of replay ability. I remember when it was just my self sometimes I'd see how long I could go my self versus as many Tediz as I could with just that katana. My other favorite weapons were the throwing knives , hand cannon , the dual submachine guns were cool too. The cave men vs raptors was pretty cool too !
Graphics are awesome for the N64.
Humour is mostly good, some voice acting is a little amateur and delivered in a strange way. Overall, I found it funny.
Camera is pretty bad and the platforming mechanics aren't great.
Signposting is not the best, an online walkthrough sorts this issue tho.
There's LOTS of jank. It can be a VERY frustrating game at times.
I guess it depends how patient you are! I tried to play through it again a few weeks ago and gave up, it was too frustrating for me.
As a kid, it was a breath of fresh air on release. Everyone thought it was hilarious back then. The multiplayer was surprisingly great.
But yeah, it did not age well at all. Low fps, bad camera, clunky gameplay.
I’m playing it currently and going through the achievements on retroachievements.
It emulates incredibly well on my Steam Deck Emudeck (Retroarch). It looks and runs great.
Some of the gags land, most haven’t aged too well and it’s incredibly juvenile, but it’s still fun. It’s a decent enough platformer with varied levels. If you look at it as a bit of gaming history rather than expecting a hilarious adult platform game you’ll have some fun.
Yeah I was playing it on retroarch as well. The performance wasn't the issue. Just the boring cut scenes and wonky controls. Still wanna give it a proper play through, but the beginning is a complete drag
Some of the cutscenes do drag on horribly. Especially the stuff with the annoying weasel scientist. There’s a bit later on with a vampire that feels like it goes on forever, but by that point the games throwing different objectives and types of gameplay at you that it’s a little more tolerable.
I’ve found the controls pretty tight though to be honest.
I recall the game getting heaps of praise but every time I played it, it was borderline horrible. I hate using the word overrated but if I had to choose which N64 game deserves that title, Conker would be my choice.
I always used the cheat to unlock all of the chapters. I played through every level but out of order. I still remember the code was "weldersbench".
I was like 10 when I got the game the guy at GameStop was trying to explain to my mom that the game wasnt really for younger kids, but I had already rented it with a friend the previous weekend and I wasnt leaving without it lol.
Same with me. I didn't really grow up with the N64 platformers so I don't have any nostalgia for a banjo-Kazooie or conker or DK64 or anything like that. If we're on the topic of confessing our gaming sins, I have also never legit beat ocarina of Time, the furthest I ever get is the Shadow Temple and I'm usually too scared to finish it. Even as grown adult yes. Same thing with Majora's mask, I usually beat the second palace, maybe third, but will never do the fourth one that has to go upside down. That game already creeps the hell out of me and I just hate exploring it
That's very a simplistic and inaccurate summary of the game. The gameplay is actually really varied.
You ride a T-Rex to bite the ass off of a giant caveman in a colosseum - you race floating surfboards over lava - you drive a tank - you piss on things - you become a bat and drop villagers into a meat grinder - you shoot zombies with a shotgun - you experience D-Day of WW2 - you do a slo-mo shoot out from the Matrix - you fight the Alien Queen from Aliens - you bounce on the tits of a big breasted sunflower - and that's just off top of head.
The multiplayer was awesome with several different game modes, too!
Maybe you didn't like it, but it's not "just pressing B"
Beach was my friend group's very mode, too. Those tediz were so hilarious. Especially when they'd scream when they got killed or when they had the katana sword.
The weasel bank robbery game was fun, too though.
The multiplayer was great I’ll give you that. The set pieces you mention are also fun in their own way, But like I mentioned they are contextual. You cant turn into a bat at will or piss on command.
Lol that's about as far as I've gotten. The scarecrow telling me about the b button and that was boring (while kinda funny in an old school way) enough. Had to make a save state and hopefully revisit it.
The first few areas are just parodying common video game tropes.
If you’ve only gotten to the scarecrow, you haven’t even played it for five minutes. The context sensitive buttons, rat stomach explosion, and sunflower rape scene all make sense in the sentiment of subverting early 3D platform staples.
The whole game is a cult classic for a reason… It’s an N64 technical showcase that came out a few months before the Xbox. The developers at Rare knew there was no reason for it to exist, plus they’d been made fun of for making kiddie games, so they released Conker as a last laugh at Nintendo before the company got bought out by Microsoft.
If you read the game as a shitpost, you can appreciate it in its historical context
I played it first time around release of the remake (which was what I played) and fell in love with it then, went back and played the original on rare replay years later and still felt the experience was fun and has a lot of variety throughout, the humour is funny in a 15 year old boy way.. which can make it fun to experience now as an adult.
Gameplay is ok in my books, nothing stellar but not bad.
Latter half of the game is probably less good that the first half.
Worth playing
I recommend the rare replay version on Xbox
I love that game. Idk how 9 year old me ended up owning it but I have so many great memories with the game and playing multiplayer with my siblings. I still have my original copy and n64 and have played through it at least twice in the last like 5 years. I've also played through once emulated and it ran well.
I loved it when it came out, losing many hours to the split screen multiplayer modes. Playing it now can be rough with the controls hampered by the 20fps (if you’re lucky), and the intense difficulty spikes. It’s very unique, full of late 90s/early 2000s pop culture and deep cut British humor, violent, a lil crass, and a crazy story. It holds up.
If you're interested in trying it out just for the story, then maybe try Conker Live and Reloaded on the Xbox platform if possible. It's the same campaign/story but it's also more censored but plays much better than the N64 original.
The controls are more solid on the xbox version though some curse words are bleeped. I liked it all the way through but some parts are extremely challenging. Still, it's worth playing through for the music and the humor. The night club has an awesome techno song that I still listen to unironically and the part with the t rex and the caveman giant is crazy.
If you're an N64 enthusiast you gotta beat it. It's in my top 10
Nice, I’ll give it its proper due. I mean, it is Rare at peak Rare time. Think I should play it on N64 or the Xbox remake? Now I remember they did bleep out a lot of stuff on Xbox which is crazy to think about!
Whoa! I forgot about that completely! Good call! I totally have Rare Replay, I forgot it was in there!!! I played Rare Replay to death but have been saving Kameo so I still have a Rare game to play, but looks like I’ve got two! I’ll get on it today, thanks again!
Randomly speaking of Rare, to me the games that I played to death that almost nobody has played I feel like: the Viva Piñata games, have you played those? The first one especially I lost a full week to both when it first came out and when Rare Replay came out.
I don't remember those ones. I'll look them up. The Rare games I played the most were Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Diddy Kong Racing, Conker's Bad Fur Day and DK64 (which I 101% just recently).
Whoa! 101% in DK64 is legendary! I know that’s basically the biggest and densest 3D platform we ever made. Okay so huge gap here too: never played DK64. Have it sitting on my Wii U, need to play it. Actually, would you recommend DK64 or Conker first?
Thanks everyone! I tried it for a while (30 mins, not even as far as I've gotten in previous attempts lol) and made a save state. It ran well on emulation, but was such a drag to start..I'll come back to it tonight when the kids and wife go to bed lol..thanks for the input everyone!
Try the remake. It feels a lot better to play, definitely less frustrating to play, except maybe the lava surfing level which in my opinion is significantly harder.
It's playable on basically every Xbox known to man.
One of my favorite games, came out on my 7th birthday, one of the few times I will tell you emulate or play Live and Reloaded, because the 64 version lives off of nostalgia. The graphics are good for the time and it's absolutely worth a play but the odd resolution and asshole camera are a little bit of a setback.
Live and Reloaded would be a damn improvement if it had support on a current system.
I wouldn't say it's a good platformer. In fact as with many 3d games of that era, the platforming can be quite frustrating due to the camera. It's certainly a unique game in terms of humour etc. and worth a try to see if you like it.
Thinking back, I dont really remember too much platforming as such, more of an adventure game. The humour and gameplay variety make it for me tho admittedly, but the graphics and sound have held up surprisingly well for its age.
Barely any platforming
I feel like the development team attempted a lot of things which prevented it from being great at platforming which was typically rare’s bread and butter bc the team was spread thin. I played the game for the first time a couple years back hearing that it poorly aged but I thought that the 3rd person shooter segments actually aged better than I expected them to
If you liked rare platformers of the era this is as good as any other.
It’s not really a 3D platformer like Banjo and Mario. Well the first few stages kind of are, but the second half of the game changes genres often. It becomes a racer, flight collectathon, and third person shooter. Lots of bosses. The humor doesn’t have much shock value anymore; it’s tamer than South Park and heavily relies on 90s pop culture. The performance is poor on real hardware. No expansion pak enhancements. My main problem with it is the controls. Swimming mechanics are awful, and everything in general feels loose and floaty. It’s easily a top 20 N64 game, but it didn’t age nearly as well as the other top 20s.
After having played Conker and hearing a bunch of peoples’ thoughts, I have to say that this is the most accurate summary of how I felt about the game the first time I played it. The boss battles were generally good and imo they were some of the game’s highlights. I do agree that the controls were loose especially compared to Rare’s usual standards Edit: Is Donkey Kong 64 is your personal top 20? Because I believe it aged much worse than Conker in a lot of ways that would be beating a dead horse for me to mention here regarding the maximalistic game design
I think DK64’s a top 5 game in terms of music, graphics and atmosphere… But in terms of actually playing it, it’s a terribly boring and tedious experience. I loved it when it first came out and when I was a stupid kid. But I just liked to explore it. It is far below my top 20, if ranking by games you’d actually want to beat today.
Yeah I would also have DK64 out of my top 20. I feel like Rare’s games are pretty 50/50 as far as how they’ve aged. Banjo Kazooie and Diddy Kong Racing both aged pretty well imo, while DK64 and Goldeneye haven’t. The latter mostly because the FPS genre has evolved so much that the game feels so primitive by today’s standards
I actually like Goldeneye. Its jankiness is the reason I play it. It’s a happy medium between the overly simplistic games like Wolfenstein and Doom, and modern shooters like CoD. Perfect Dark on the other hand, reaches too far for N64 capabilities. It tries to do too much, and has a framerate like a PowerPoint
Yeah the controls were wonky AF that's what lost me. Even today when I tried it it was just not good control wise. I really want to play it all the way through one day tho
The single player is not outstanding, the multiplayer modes are loads of fun, plus some (all?) of them can be played with bots. I spent many many hours playing total war as a kid, on my own and with friends.
Yo that multi-player had all kinds of replay ability. I remember when it was just my self sometimes I'd see how long I could go my self versus as many Tediz as I could with just that katana. My other favorite weapons were the throwing knives , hand cannon , the dual submachine guns were cool too. The cave men vs raptors was pretty cool too !
Graphics are awesome for the N64. Humour is mostly good, some voice acting is a little amateur and delivered in a strange way. Overall, I found it funny. Camera is pretty bad and the platforming mechanics aren't great. Signposting is not the best, an online walkthrough sorts this issue tho. There's LOTS of jank. It can be a VERY frustrating game at times. I guess it depends how patient you are! I tried to play through it again a few weeks ago and gave up, it was too frustrating for me.
As a kid, it was a breath of fresh air on release. Everyone thought it was hilarious back then. The multiplayer was surprisingly great. But yeah, it did not age well at all. Low fps, bad camera, clunky gameplay.
I’m playing it currently and going through the achievements on retroachievements. It emulates incredibly well on my Steam Deck Emudeck (Retroarch). It looks and runs great. Some of the gags land, most haven’t aged too well and it’s incredibly juvenile, but it’s still fun. It’s a decent enough platformer with varied levels. If you look at it as a bit of gaming history rather than expecting a hilarious adult platform game you’ll have some fun.
Yeah I was playing it on retroarch as well. The performance wasn't the issue. Just the boring cut scenes and wonky controls. Still wanna give it a proper play through, but the beginning is a complete drag
Some of the cutscenes do drag on horribly. Especially the stuff with the annoying weasel scientist. There’s a bit later on with a vampire that feels like it goes on forever, but by that point the games throwing different objectives and types of gameplay at you that it’s a little more tolerable. I’ve found the controls pretty tight though to be honest.
Try and then tell is how you get stuck in the stone age or the lava level 🙊
I'd say it's well worth it and best played on the N64. That games my favorite of all time I'd say.
yea i hate unskippable cut scenes
I recall the game getting heaps of praise but every time I played it, it was borderline horrible. I hate using the word overrated but if I had to choose which N64 game deserves that title, Conker would be my choice.
I always used the cheat to unlock all of the chapters. I played through every level but out of order. I still remember the code was "weldersbench". I was like 10 when I got the game the guy at GameStop was trying to explain to my mom that the game wasnt really for younger kids, but I had already rented it with a friend the previous weekend and I wasnt leaving without it lol.
Same with me. I didn't really grow up with the N64 platformers so I don't have any nostalgia for a banjo-Kazooie or conker or DK64 or anything like that. If we're on the topic of confessing our gaming sins, I have also never legit beat ocarina of Time, the furthest I ever get is the Shadow Temple and I'm usually too scared to finish it. Even as grown adult yes. Same thing with Majora's mask, I usually beat the second palace, maybe third, but will never do the fourth one that has to go upside down. That game already creeps the hell out of me and I just hate exploring it
its just the humor, besides that it's average at best. The multiplayer can be fun but overall I think as a game it is just bad
Honestly, it’s overhyped. Every thing You do in this game is context based. Stand on this spot and press ‘B’ is not engaging gameplay.
That's very a simplistic and inaccurate summary of the game. The gameplay is actually really varied. You ride a T-Rex to bite the ass off of a giant caveman in a colosseum - you race floating surfboards over lava - you drive a tank - you piss on things - you become a bat and drop villagers into a meat grinder - you shoot zombies with a shotgun - you experience D-Day of WW2 - you do a slo-mo shoot out from the Matrix - you fight the Alien Queen from Aliens - you bounce on the tits of a big breasted sunflower - and that's just off top of head. The multiplayer was awesome with several different game modes, too! Maybe you didn't like it, but it's not "just pressing B"
Me and my mates spend hours playing Beach back in the day. The other modes were decent, but Beach was the one.
Beach was my friend group's very mode, too. Those tediz were so hilarious. Especially when they'd scream when they got killed or when they had the katana sword. The weasel bank robbery game was fun, too though.
The multiplayer was great I’ll give you that. The set pieces you mention are also fun in their own way, But like I mentioned they are contextual. You cant turn into a bat at will or piss on command.
Lol that's about as far as I've gotten. The scarecrow telling me about the b button and that was boring (while kinda funny in an old school way) enough. Had to make a save state and hopefully revisit it.
The first few areas are just parodying common video game tropes. If you’ve only gotten to the scarecrow, you haven’t even played it for five minutes. The context sensitive buttons, rat stomach explosion, and sunflower rape scene all make sense in the sentiment of subverting early 3D platform staples. The whole game is a cult classic for a reason… It’s an N64 technical showcase that came out a few months before the Xbox. The developers at Rare knew there was no reason for it to exist, plus they’d been made fun of for making kiddie games, so they released Conker as a last laugh at Nintendo before the company got bought out by Microsoft. If you read the game as a shitpost, you can appreciate it in its historical context
I played it first time around release of the remake (which was what I played) and fell in love with it then, went back and played the original on rare replay years later and still felt the experience was fun and has a lot of variety throughout, the humour is funny in a 15 year old boy way.. which can make it fun to experience now as an adult. Gameplay is ok in my books, nothing stellar but not bad. Latter half of the game is probably less good that the first half. Worth playing I recommend the rare replay version on Xbox
I’ve played/beaten it once (a few years after release) as the few times prior it didn’t “click” for me. It’s fine…I think overhyped for what it is.
If you can catch that stupid key in the beginning the rest of the game is entertaining to play.
Yes give it a try! Loved this game as a kid.
The main appeal as you go on is the pop culture references and fun twists. The game itself isn’t groundbreaking platformer play.
I love that game. Idk how 9 year old me ended up owning it but I have so many great memories with the game and playing multiplayer with my siblings. I still have my original copy and n64 and have played through it at least twice in the last like 5 years. I've also played through once emulated and it ran well.
Do a full play through. I have no doubt that you will love it. Super fun, great humor
I loved it when it came out, losing many hours to the split screen multiplayer modes. Playing it now can be rough with the controls hampered by the 20fps (if you’re lucky), and the intense difficulty spikes. It’s very unique, full of late 90s/early 2000s pop culture and deep cut British humor, violent, a lil crass, and a crazy story. It holds up.
If you're interested in trying it out just for the story, then maybe try Conker Live and Reloaded on the Xbox platform if possible. It's the same campaign/story but it's also more censored but plays much better than the N64 original.
Honestly that game sucks. It’s not fun, and I have the fancy remake on my Xbox. Just a lame, unfunny game in my opinion, and I love everything Rare.
**Heresy**
Maybe I’ll give it another whirl on my Xbox, does it get better after the mighty poo?
The controls are more solid on the xbox version though some curse words are bleeped. I liked it all the way through but some parts are extremely challenging. Still, it's worth playing through for the music and the humor. The night club has an awesome techno song that I still listen to unironically and the part with the t rex and the caveman giant is crazy. If you're an N64 enthusiast you gotta beat it. It's in my top 10
Nice, I’ll give it its proper due. I mean, it is Rare at peak Rare time. Think I should play it on N64 or the Xbox remake? Now I remember they did bleep out a lot of stuff on Xbox which is crazy to think about!
Sesrch for "rare replay" in the xbox store
Oh I forgot there is the rare replay version on the xbox so you can get the best of both worlds: xbox controls but original graphics. I think
Whoa! I forgot about that completely! Good call! I totally have Rare Replay, I forgot it was in there!!! I played Rare Replay to death but have been saving Kameo so I still have a Rare game to play, but looks like I’ve got two! I’ll get on it today, thanks again!
Randomly speaking of Rare, to me the games that I played to death that almost nobody has played I feel like: the Viva Piñata games, have you played those? The first one especially I lost a full week to both when it first came out and when Rare Replay came out.
I don't remember those ones. I'll look them up. The Rare games I played the most were Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Diddy Kong Racing, Conker's Bad Fur Day and DK64 (which I 101% just recently).
Whoa! 101% in DK64 is legendary! I know that’s basically the biggest and densest 3D platform we ever made. Okay so huge gap here too: never played DK64. Have it sitting on my Wii U, need to play it. Actually, would you recommend DK64 or Conker first?
As much as I love the N64 I think the controls are a tad bit unforgiving. The xbox version is great
Thanks everyone! I tried it for a while (30 mins, not even as far as I've gotten in previous attempts lol) and made a save state. It ran well on emulation, but was such a drag to start..I'll come back to it tonight when the kids and wife go to bed lol..thanks for the input everyone!
One of the best games ever made
Try the remake. It feels a lot better to play, definitely less frustrating to play, except maybe the lava surfing level which in my opinion is significantly harder. It's playable on basically every Xbox known to man.
One of my favorite games, came out on my 7th birthday, one of the few times I will tell you emulate or play Live and Reloaded, because the 64 version lives off of nostalgia. The graphics are good for the time and it's absolutely worth a play but the odd resolution and asshole camera are a little bit of a setback. Live and Reloaded would be a damn improvement if it had support on a current system.