Conker’s Bad Fur Day originally released on the Nintendo 64. A few years later, a remake of it was released on the Xbox called Conker: Live & Reloaded. Flash forward to Rare Replay on Xbox One and a remaster of the N64 original was included in the collection. Today’s task is do my best to talk about these two alternate versions, compare them to the original I’ve already reviewed a couple times now, and ultimately give recommendations on the audience for each iteration. Also I want to focus a little bit more on the multiplayer as I didn’t go into it much in those original reviews. So grab a beer, get comfy, and join me on a journey through Conker’s Bad Fur Day again… and again.

Even though it came out later, let’s start with the Rare Replay version of Conker’s Bad Fur Day. So this version is, for the most part, the exact same as the Nintendo 64 version, so there aren’t too many notable differences. Unsurprisingly the few references to Nintendo have been removed like the “presented by” and the chainsaw on the N64 logo. Right away you may notice the visuals look much more crisp, which I’m guessing is just an upres of the original aasets as the entire game is still in 4:3 aspect ratio. There also seems to be less motion blur which helps to see underwater especially. Along with that, the framerate is consistent here due to the system being powerful enough not to dip in high detail or high action segments. This makes controls a bit tighter and more responsive, most notably the end boss fight, but it also seems to alter the timing in the curscenes and their word bubbles since they were designed with the slowdown in mind. The button icons in speech bubbles has been changed to the new controller but the voice lines have not, though they seem to have higher quality versions of the original voice lines and audio in general so everything sounds a bit more clean. The only real downside, other than maybe the adjustment period to the different controller, is the music. The music seems a bit quieter in the mix, which is nice to hear sometimes, but a bit too quiet in others. Also I found an odd glitch where sometimes pausing the game would make the music continue playing, and unpausing would start a second instance of the same music. It only happened a few times, though.

Now the mutliplayer mode is unchanged, but I feel like in the past reviews I only barely mentioned them, as well as barely played them. The Rare Replay version has milestones for playing the modes a bit anyway, and Live & Reloaded has a lot more to look at for multiplayer, so I wanted to at least touch on this a bit more. So there are a few different modes you can play on with friend and/or bots. There’s a standard deathmatch mode that’s a free-for-all on different levels each with their own characters and weapons drops. Just get the most kills. You can also adjust the setting for basically every mode to limit by lives, score, or time, which can alter the strategy. Total War is a team deathmatch where both sides try to get the most kills. There’s also a chemical bomb you can steal from the enemy base and bring to the sewers to kill everyone outside the sewers without a gas mask, but sadly it kills your own team as well so unless you’re playing with humans to coordinate, maybe stay away from those. Colors is a capture the flag mode with both teams trying to get the other’s flag back to their base to score. Capturing a flag resets all players into their bases before going again. Beach features asymmetric gameplay where he Tediz are stuck inside their base limited to rockets, gun turrets, and sniper rifles. Their objective is to kill enough of the invading villagers trying to cross the border to safety. The villagers are trying to run past deadly fire to get enough people to the exit points just below the Tediz base. They are unarmed but can pick up adrenaline pills for a temporary speed boost. There’s also a switch on a hilltop that, if pressed, will set off an explosion and kill everyone in the base for some temporary cease fire. Tank is a free-for-all deathmatch battle in tanks with a few powerups like a shield, a scope, speed boost, and upgraded ammo. There’s also a chemical bomb in the middle of the playing field. If you bring it back to your starting point a timer will count down, the doors to all bases will close, and anyone caught in the gas storm will die. Heist has a more unique setup of free-for-all singles or duos with four differently colored teams. Your goal is to run to the center, grab the money, and bring it back to your appropriately colored vault. If you’re hit while carrying the money, you’ll drop it and it’ll start hopping its way back to the center. Get the target amount of money bags back to your vault to win. Raptor is another asymmetric mode where you play either as the raptors or the cavemen. The raptors are trying to kill cavemen or bring them back to their nest to feed the baby, which will score one and two points respectively. The cavemen are trying to grab raptor eggs from the nest and bring them back to the frying pan in their base to score two points or just kill raptors for one point. You can only have two raptors max but many more cavemen. plus cavemen can use a few weapons while raptors have only their superior speed and close-range power. Highest score wins. And lastly, Race is simply that. A race. It’s based on the same lava jetboard race from the main game but allows more players and also includes powerups. You can grab boosts and rockets along the way, but the music and walking dinosaur are absent. Race A is the normal first lap route and Race B is the track with the moved gate. And sure, some of these modes feel more stacked than others, but upon replaying I was very impressed at just how much extra effort and content was put into the multiplayer. These modes are pretty well fleshed out compared to some others I’ve seen in predominantly single player experiences. It’s amazing to think they could even fit so much in! And the ability to change up the strategies and incentives and balance by altering the setup adds a layer of depth that will truly be appreciated by those that spent countless hours playing these modes. So I really wanted to give this some due praise, even if it’s still awkward and imperfect in many ways. The fact that you can still play alone with bots is something sorely missed in multiplayer modes for years now. Bring it back!

And now for our feature presentation. Conker: Live & Reloaded is much further redone. The visuals will instantly strike you as not only improved, but impressive even for original Xbox standards. Conker is very fury and that colorful outfit really pops. I think they probably just heavily altered the old assets to get them as close as possible to the original game structure, which would explain why it’s still in 4:3 aspect ratio. The music was re-recorded with real instruments but sounds very similar and is still a bit low in the mix. Voice lines have higher quality audio but a few were redone to accommodate new sections or button prompts. In fact, the Great Mighty Poo part was almost completely redone, and also more censored. The entire game is more censored actually, and that’s a shame for some of the jokes. I’ll admit I preferred the original Great Mighty Poo sound despite being lower quality, but these things don’t affect gameplay. And some of them are kind of nice changes, like more landscape details, scrolling text in word bubbles, and more visual effects for onscressn happenings. The areas leading up to Count Batula’s castle are particularly stunning in their redesign.

The gameplay, if anything, is notably improved. Better camera control, better auto camera, and tighter movement and platforming help immensely. There’s not moment of stutter when walking off ledges. Swimming is much easier to navigate along with giving you more air underwater. The bat section gives you a butthole cam for shitbombing and you don’t get knocked back by spears, though they seem to be a better aim this time around. D… does he have an eyeball inside his… nevermind, I don’t want it explained. The gun segments are massively improved with better ability to aim and the ability to jump with a gun out. It actually made killing zombies and Tediz fun! The main combat was changed to switching to a fight mode with B that pulls out a baseball bat with an over-the-shoulder view. You’ve got a one-two-three combo that kills most enemies on the third hit if you land it. It’s much faster and easier to use than the ol’ frying pan wind up frames. To go along with this new combat stance, a few areas have been expanded or altered to include enemies to wail on, adding more challenge and more to do to otherwise barren sections. There’s a new baby doll head zombie thing that pops up in a few spots to beat on too. There are way more zombies in the mansion to deal with now, but that’s almost welcome with how fun it is to kill them now. The Tediz base invasion also has more fighting outside before shooting off the lock. Crosshairs have been added to a few weapons too, like the throwing knives. The camera improvement is also very helpful for sections like climbing the wasp ladders and jumping atop the cog castle. Anyone that has struggled through the dance club in the original will be relieved that you can now walk around while relieving yourself, which makes it MUCH easier. And the final boss, while still difficult, has better response times in controls and automatically puts you in the center of the room for the tail swings.

However, not everything is an improvement. Some changes are kind of just odd. It’s nice that you get a bee counter and faster followers in the barn section, but only one of the bee placements has been moved to make it easier. The Great Mighty Poo’s corn sacrifies have been abridged to one piece per sections despite being easier to do with the improved controls. One of the pieces of chocolate in the mansion has been moved into the middle of the room in mid-air to catch your eye, but leaves only two on the upper ledge for when you’re playing later on foot. They also removed the eel section before clearing out the way to the war zone, not just having a switch to power the place instead. One of the cogs in the cog tower is now in the main room rather than in the same far room as another. And a few things are actually more difficult in this version. The caveman boss has a smaller window to go for his grapes. The lava jetboard race is harder to navigate because of the overly detailed visuals being hard to decipher at high speed along with a much less forgiving hitbox on the dinosaur legs. And you can’t shoot the submarine missiles once they reach peak height anymore. But still, that’s overall a much nicer and easier experience to go through than the clunky awkwardness of the original, and it looks pretty on top of it.

Now the mutliplayer here is completely different than the original game. The online is no longer available and I had no one to play with locally, so I’m basing this on playing with bots. You CAN play co-op or versus locally but the only options I could do are dumbots and ChapterX. All of these battles share the same basic mechanics of your characters and revolve around the war between the Squirrel High Command (SHC) and the Tediz. Each team has the same set of six character classes to pick from. The grunt is a standard soldier with a rifle and a self healing pack geared mostly towards taking out other units. The demolisher is armed with a bazooka to deal heavy damage to vehicles and barricades, along with a berserk mode to move faster in a pinch. The sneeker wields a katana and can cloak themselves temporarily. The thermopile shoots flames and acid to deny areas and cause damage over time. The long ranger carries a sniper rifle with a thermal scope ability and pistols. And the sky jockey only comes with a couple of pistols but can make up for it in the ability to create and pilot vehicles on the levels where this class is available. Each class also can get an upgrade that sometimes drops from random fallen soldiers in the field. The grunt gets a grenade launcher, the thermophile gets a laser, and so on. Also, while ammo for weapons is infinite, everyone is equipped with one grenade per life and a special ability that goes on cooldown when used. Most levels also contain terminals that can be used to create different vehicles, weapons, and devices depending on the level and current class selected. Anytime during a match you can change your class and respawn as the new one. There is no limit on the team composition of classes. For settings you can really only change the time, number of lives, AI difficulty, and the control presets though none of them are quite the same as in the main game.

Each map has an optional story briefing outlining the events of the war and also a short cutscene upon entering the map. The first map is Beach Dead where the SHC has to storm the beach and move into Tediz territory, destroying barricades along the way as the Tediz try to fend them off from the higher ground vantage points. The Tediz need to hold them off long enough to win while the SHC must ultimately breech to the to the Tediz base and defeat their leader mindlessly pacing in the back. The next map if Fortress Deux where both sides play a two flag capture the flag game, this time with vehicles and therefore also sky jockeys available. In Castle Von Tedistein both sides are fighting for control of control points in the form of floor buttons. Stepping on it changes its ownership and the first team to possess and hold all of the capture points long enough wins. A Bridge Too Narrow jumps events into the future so the aesthetic is a bit more futuristic. Once again this is a two flag capture the flag match with vehicles. Three Towers has both sides fighting for control of the titular trio of towers by pressing the button near the top of each. Control all towers long enough to win. Doon is another asymmetric scenario where the SHC must destroy all of the checkpoints to keep advancing and ultimately win while the Tediz must try and fend them off for the duration of the match. T.M.S. Spamono is a single flag capture the flag requiring you to capture the flag from the middle and bring it all the way into the goal on the other side near the enemy spawn point. At the end of each scenario a short cutscene will play based on who won.

ChapterX is basically just the first three maps described above except you must play them in order with preset settings. The point here is mainly to contain the full It’s War plot context. Beach Dead is the first assault that is meant to explain what happened to the professor’s legs. Fortress Deux seems pretty irrelevant to plot advancement though. And Castle Von Tedistein calls into question some of the continuity with the main game, but afterwards you get a unique cutscene for winning the campaign. Honestly, you might as well just stick to manually selecting the maps since you can look at the plot bits there anyway. The future war stuff also makes odd chronology questions arise, but don’t think about it too hard. Once again I’m blown away at how much care and effort was put in here. Not only did we get a fully dedicated remake improving almost everything in the original, but we got a totally revamped miultiplayer mode with online capability, bots for life beyond the servers, and a story!

So how do these versions compare to each other and the original? I think each one has its appeal. The original is really just for huge Nintendo 64 fans at this point. It’s so rare, expensive, and difficult to get working for anyone that doesn’t already have the hardware to begin with. the Rare Replay version is what I’d recommend to those curious to see what the original game was like but don’t want to spend a fortune on it, or for those looking to snag some N64 goodness on their modern TV. Even just for this one game alone, that’s still a much more reasonable price and accessible copy to come by if you already have an Xbox One or Series X/S. However, if you’re just looking for the best looking and most enjoyable version to play, go for Live & Reloaded. It can be played on Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S and the only real downsides are increased censorship and different multiplayer. In fact, having both Rare Replay and Live & Reloaded is a fun way to compare versions without costing a ton of money still. But overall, for general audiences, I think the visuals and control in Live & Reloaded make it the definitive recommendation. No matter what way you play it, this is an experience not quite like any other game and I’m very happy to have had such a fruitful time examining and re-examining this game over the years. It has been an important part of making me into the game critic that I am today. Thanks, Conker. The next drink is on me.