Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. In today's editorial, we'll be addressing a profound question, one that has generated a wide variety of opinions, especially in recent years: are video games art?
Of course, there's no right or wrong answer to this
question, at least in my opinion. By its own nature, art is subjective- it's
meant to be interpreted individually. Yes, video games are simply multimedia
entertainment designed to be sold and consumed, but what about the stories they craft? The emotions they evoke?
The messages they convey? And this isn't even including the vast amount of
creative design involved in crafting levels, backgrounds, character models,
etc.
Either way, as I see it, yes, video games are art. If they
aren't then neither are books, movies, or paintings. And anyone who believes
otherwise is entitled to their own opinion, but all I ask you to do is play a
few games in the Metal Gear franchise and you just might change your mind. But anyway,
what does any of this have to do with Conker's Bad Fur Day, you ask?
In the mid 90s, Rareware was an innocuous company best
known for games like the Donkey Kong Country Trilogy on Super Nintendo and
Banjo-Kazooie on Nintendo 64. They also had a harmless little kiddie game on
the Game Boy Color called Conker's Pocket Tales about a cute little squirrel
who had to rescue birthday presents. Conker also appeared as a playable
character in the similarly fun-for-all Diddy Kong Racing on the N64, but
besides that he hadn't done much else yet.
Then, in the year 2001 Rare shocked the entire gaming world by releasing Conker's Bad Fur Day, turning that cute little squirrel into a foul-mouthed drunkard who pissed on things, bounced on top a sunflower with enormous breasts, and fought a giant sentient mound shit that sang opera. Well then.
The typically child-friendly Nintendo unofficially disowned
the game and it was slapped with all kinds of warning labels stating that it was not
meant for anyone under the age of 17. It was released pretty late in the N64's
life cycle as the Gamecube was right around the corner, so it was sort of
quietly shuffled under the rug and never heard from again (that is, until it
was re-released with graphical upgrades for the Xbox three years later).
However, despite the multitude of sophomoric humor and the fact that it was
pretty much commercially ignored when it was first released, some people might
not realize that underneath everything, it is a truly great game. It cleverly
mocks the biggest tropes of both the industry and pop culture in general at the time by placing such cute and
cuddly characters into violent, grotesque scenarios. It's hilarious and
scathingly self-aware. It has fantastic graphics for its time. And it has a
surrealist nature throughout- you'll constantly be asking yourself, did I
really just do that? Did I just play a game where I had to get a cow to shit
into a hole, smash a gigantic talking boiler's brass testicles between two
bricks, and cause a rat to explode by feeding him too much cheese?
You truly will not believe that you're in a boss battle with a pile of shit that's singing opera.
It happens over and over again, from the beginning to the
very end. But still, it's a blast. It's incredibly diverse- one minute you'll
be shooting zombies and vampire bats in a graveyard dressed like Van Helsing, the next you'll be riding a velociraptor fighting a giant neanderthal caveman. And
perhaps more importantly than anything, it pushed the boundaries of what was
acceptable, not only in a Nintendo game but in a video game in general. It's
absurd, it's crazy, and it's the kind of fun you wish would turn up more often
in video games. You can tell the developers didn't give much a damn about being
censored; their collective id ran wild and they just threw the Banjo-Kazooie
formula in a blender with some filth, alcohol and poop jokes- and out came
Conker's BFD.
However, what I want to talk about the most is the ending of
the game. The sobering moment when all the fun stops and suddenly, you're left
alone in the darkness wondering what the hell just happened. But let's talk
about the story first.
Conker the Squirrel is living a care-free life with his, uh,
well-endowed girlfriend Berri- often
ditching her to hang out and get drunk with his buddies at the local bar. One
night after a particularly lengthy bout of drinking, Conker drunkenly wanders
off into the wilderness and gets lost. When he wakes up the next morning with a
hangover that would slay a moose, he realizes that he has no idea where he is and
must find his way home. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to him, the evil Panther King is
trying to enjoy a glass of milk when he notices that his table stand is missing
a leg, and because of this he keeps spilling his milk. In order to remedy the
problem, he needs a red squirrel that would perfectly substitute for a missing
table leg, and Conker fits the bill quite nicely.
And...that's the whole plot. Along the way Conker also
completes plenty of odd jobs to score some money for no real reason other than
the fact that he wants to be rich, searches for Berri, and falls in and out of
crazy situations on an adventure to find his way home. It might seem like the
game lacks focus, but it's done so by design; the hilarious thing about the
evil Panther King is that Conker doesn't even know who he is or ever hears
about him at all until the last 10 minutes or so of the entire game, at which
point he learns that he's been hunted the entire time. And even then, it's
pretty irrelevant.
In truth, the King's top scientist has been pulling the
strings the entire time in a quest for world domination, and in a stunning
twist he kills the Panther King by causing an alien monster (straight out of
the movie Alien, mind you) to burst out of the King's chest, killing him before
he even lifts a finger to fight Conker. Before he dies, however, the King
orders a mob boss known as Don Weaso to execute Berri. He obliges, mercilessly
mowing her down with a machine gun before your very eyes. After his love dies in his arms, Conker does battle with the alien (once
again, in a mech suit straight out of Aliens), but just before the alien can
land the final blow...
...the game soft locks. Conker is left aware, however, and
realizes that there's been a massive game-breaking glitch left in the game that
the programmers have overlooked. In a fourth-wall breaking moment, Conker asks
if there's any developers available to help solve the problem. He finds one,
who also grants him access to a large katana in exhange for not telling anyone
that the game has been released with a huge glitch left in it. When the
developer restarts the game, Conker slays the beast once and for all and
everything is well and good again- however, Conker suddenly realizes that he's
all alone. Everyone is dead, including Berri. Conker frantically begs for the
developer to come back and resurrect Berri, but to no avail. At that moment,
every minor character you've interacted with over the course of the game comes
bursting into the throne room, cheering at the death of the evil King and
declaring Conker the new king of all the land.
Conker laments that he hates every obnoxious character and
that he doesn't want any of it, but nobody listens- he's the king now and he's stuck in that position forever. As the camera pans in on Conker in the
throne, surrounded by annoying characters he never liked to begin with yet completely alone at the same time, the following
monolouge plays:
"So, there I am. King. King of all the land. Who'da
thought that. Heh, not me. I guess you know who these guys are now, 'cause I
certainly do. I don't wanna know them. And yep, I may be king, and have all the
money in the world. And all the land, and all that stuff. But you know...I
don't really think I want it.
I just wanna go home. With Berri. And, I don't know, have a
bottle of beer. Hmm. (Heavy sigh)....it's not gonna happen. It's true what they
say, the grass is always greener. And you don't really know it is you
have....until it's gone. Gone. Gone....."
The game fades to black, and over the sound of thunder and
rain an extremely melancholic tune plays as the credits roll. And
that's it. There's a brief scene at the end of the credits where Conker has a
drink at the bar alone which was meant to tease a potential sequel, but to make
things even sadder, this sequel never saw the light of day and Conker simply
faded into video game obscurity. But forget about that- what I want to talk
about is the ending.
It's...perfect. It's beautiful. And in my opinion it's art
in its purest form, as far as video games are concerned.
It presents such a deep contrast to the goofy nature of the rest
of the game, but it's really the only way that such an unconventional game
could've ended, I think. I'm a pretty firm believer in the sentiment that if
you want to make a truly profound statement in the medium of your choosing, you
need to do something that nobody sees coming. You need to defy conventions and
tropes and hit your audience hard with the unexpected. Nobody would expect such
a serious, depressing ending coming from a game where earlier there's an
objective to get drunk and piss on things. And that's the wonderful, yet
horrible thing about it- it's exactly what you wouldn't be expecting, and not
in a good way.
The rug is torn out from underneath you and you go from
laughing your head off to a feeling of utter emptiness. You're reminded that no
matter how good things feel sometimes, not every story has a happy ending. It's
a kick in the face for everyone who spent the whole game giggling at poop and
pee jokes.You're repeatedly shocked by the absurdist nature throughout the whole game and keep wondering what the hell they're going to throw at you next, and by the time you get to the ending all you can do is speculate on how they're going to top all of the insane things you've just been through. However, nothing can prepare you for having all of that thrown out the window at the last second in favor of one of the most depressing endings ever for a video game. And this isn't even mentioning the fact that Conker has mostly been a greedy, self-centered dick to everyone, including his girlfriend, for the entire game. We're meant to empathize with him in those last moments, but at the same time we realize that maybe he actually is paying the price at the end as he stews in misery.
It's all of the irony that hits you the hardest, especially when you realize
that you've been playing this generally lighthearted spoof game that suddenly
took a dark twist in the end. You don't know how to feel anymore. You're lost
and confused, just like Conker himself. It wasn't supposed to end like this,
you tell yourself. But it did, and the game gives you one last unexpected "I can't
believe it" moment. And that, to me, is the mark of video game art. Thanks
for reading.
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