It’s been so long since Conker’s Bad Fur Day hit the N64 that many may have forgotten that Rare initially announced the project as Conker’s Quest. Meant to be more in line with Rare’s then-contemporary output, Conker’s Quest was set to be the debut game of everyone’s favorite alcoholic squirrel with a decided less adult-oriented tone. I don’t have the strongest memories of it since I was only nine when it was originally revealed, but the Video Game History Foundation has stumbled upon a treasure trove of new information.
Thanks to contributions from Carolyn Rauch and Doug Lowenstein, the founders of the International Digital Game Association (which would later morph into the Entertainment Software Association), thousands of documents and hundreds of tapes from past E3’s have now been made available for browsing via the VGHF. As the title of this article highlights, that includes new high-quality footage of Conker’s Quest that cleanly highlights an older build of the game.
While it is only around 90 seconds long, there are some key takeaways here. For one, a lot of the animations from this older build wind up appearing in Conker’s Bad Fur Day. For two, it seems Conker had a bit more attitude even in this early stage than you would have expected from a Nintendo character. None of the levels are even remotely close to what launched in the final game, but it’s clear that Rare made the right call by shifting towards an M-rating. From this footage, I don’t see what truly differentiates this from Banjo-Kazooie. You just happen to have a single character instead of a team.
There is way more information and documents available on the VGHF website than I can mention here. You can find a landing page by clicking this link, which will take you to a website called “Revisit E3 Like You’ve Never Seen it Before.” I’m sure in the coming weeks as people comb through all of this, we’ll find even more revelations from ancient games.
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
