Announced at the commemoration of Sonic’s 25th anniversary, Sonic Mania (Headcannon/PagodaWest Games, 2017) is a side-scrolling, two-dimensional platformer in the spirit and style of Sonic’s original 1990s outings. Headed up by Christian “Taxman” Whitehead, in collaboration with notable members of the Sonic fangaming community, Sonic Mania sets out to be the true sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles(Sonic Team, 1994) that Sonic fans have been clamouring for for over a decade. Sonic Mania opens almost exactly the same way as Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (ibid), with Sonic and Tails flying in the Tornado towards Angel Island. Sonic’s bad luck with the floating haven continues as he immediately runs into a group of Eggrobos who unearth a mysterious gemstone (the Phantom Ruby), which blasts them all through space (and, possibly, time) back to the Green Hill Zone, where the Eggrobos have been transformed into more powerful variants, the Hard-Boiled Heavies.
The Phantom Ruby empowers the Hard-Boiled Heavies.
From there, Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles (whose encounter with the Eggrobos takes place as they flee with the Phantom Ruby) must travel through twelve zones in pursuit of Doctor Eggman, battling his Hard-Boiled Heavies, in their quest to obtain the seven Chaos Emeralds and put a stop to them wreaking havoc with the Phantom Ruby. Players can choose to play as Sonic, Tails, or Knuckles in a solo adventure or team-up as Sonic and Tails in two-player simultaneous mode. Each character plays differently but exactly as they did in Sonic 3 & Knuckles; Sonic is the fastest and can perform a Drop-Dash, where he instantly drops into a Spin Dash attack, Tails can fly and swim for a limited time (in a welcome twist, solo players using Sonic and Tails can command Tails to fly and then have him carry Sonic around), while Knuckles has the shortest jump, can glide, and can bash through certain breakable walls that the other two characters can’t. As in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, playing as Knuckles will take players on slightly different paths and even involve battling slightly different bosses. As always, players must collect Golden Rings to survive enemy attacks and hazards, break open monitors to acquire shields (the Water, Fire, and Electricity variants also afford Sonic the ability to bounce, blast, and double-jump, respectively), enter Bonus Stages stylised like Sonic 3 & Knuckles’s Blue Sphere stages by passing checkpoints with over twenty-five Rings, and leap into hidden Giant Rings to enter Sonic the Hedgehog CD(Sonic Team, 1993) style Special Stages.
Make no mistake, the Special Stages are no push-over!
In these Special Stages, players must collect Blue Spheres to increase their speed but also collect Golden Rings to add to the strict time limit in order to chase down a UFO holding a Chaos Emerald. Mastering these stages is the game’s hardest challenge as turns are tight, time is extremely limited, hazards are plentiful, and the UFOs do not give up their prize easily. If you try to get cute and run in the opposite direction, you’ll find yourself out of luck as the programmers thought of that and it’s basically impossible. The first thing you’ll notice when playing Sonic Mania is that it is simply gorgeous to look at; the attention to detail is staggering. Backgrounds and environments are vibrant and colourful, full of life and little details that long-time fans will delight in spotting. The game features eight zones lovingly recreated from classic Sonic titles but expanded and given additional gameplay twists and mechanics, many derived from other Sonic gameplay mechanics (for example, Stardust Speedway features the pulleys from Marble Garden Zone, Flying Battery Zone is amalgamated with Wing Fortress Zone, and Mirage Saloon Zone features the Tornado as in Sky Chase Zone). In the case of the Mirage Saloon Zone, the programmers derived the aesthetics from cancelled desert levels from Sonic the Hedgehog 2(Sonic Team/SEGA Technical Institute, 1992) and Sonic CD.
Dust Hill and Desert Dazzle are finally realised.
The fan service doesn’t stop there, though. Chemical Plant Zone features a boss battle ripped straight from Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine (Compile/SEGA, 1993). Also, Sonic not only races against Metal Sonic in the Stardust Speedway Zone once more, but also has to battle an endless army of Silver Sonic’s from the Master System/Game Gear version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (SEGA/Aspect, 1992).
I certainly didn’t expect this inclusion!
Finally, in perhaps the greatest piece of fan service I have ever witnessed, players will encounter and battle against Fang the Sniper/Nack the Weasel, Bean the Dynamite, and Bark the Polar Bear, three characters long missing from the franchise since 1996. Fans have been literally begging to see these three characters return to the franchise though, up until now, the best we got were some brief homages in Sonic Generations(Sonic Team, 2011). To be fair, their depiction in Sonic Mania looks to be more of an illusion created by the Heavy Magician Hard-Boiled Heavy but the joy I felt upon seeing these three finally return, in glorious sprite form, cannot be understated; the fat little ten-year-old in me was literally geeking out right there.
Fang/Nack, Bean, and Bark make their welcome return at last!
Sonic Mania features numerous endings, with the best ending obviously coming once players have collected all seven Chaos Emeralds. Blue Sphere bonus stages award players with either a silver or a gold medal which unlock additional bonus features (Sonic 3 & Knuckles’s Insta-Shield, Sonic CD’s Super Peel-Out, “& Knuckles Mode” to allow players to play as Sonic and Knuckles, Tails and Knuckles, or even Knuckles and Knuckles(!), a Debug Mode, and a Sound Test). Unfortunately, you are not allowed to save your progress when using these bonus features, which is one of the game’s biggest flaws.
A love letter to the past.
Another is the plot. Honestly, there isn’t much more plot here than there was in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, with the gist of it being expertly told through in-game animations. However, given that this game takes place a short time after Sonic 3 & Knuckles, it makes no sense for Angel Island to be floating on the ocean again. It was also a bit of a contrivance to see the Phantom Ruby being unearthed on Angel Island, a place already known for being home to the Master Emerald; I would’ve preferred to see it be discovered in one of the new in-game locations.
Play as Knuckles and Knuckles…and be rescued by Knuckles!
Furthermore, not every zone ends with an in-game transition to the next, making for a jarringly inconsistent experience at times as the Hard-Boiled Heavies disappear from the plot mid-way through the game. Finally, I can’t be the only one a bit annoyed to see Green Hill Zone and Chemical Plant Zone so soon after their recreations in Sonic Generations; I would’ve liked to have seen more emphasis on Emerald Hill Zone and maybe Mystic Cave Zone (possible with some Underground Zone and mechanical influences) and, while I loved seeing Lava Reef Zone return, the programmers maybe missed a trick by not incorporating some elements from Marble Zone and Sonic 2’s Hidden Palace Zone here. These really are very minor issues, though, as the game plays flawlessly; the controls are just as tight and reliable as they were in classic Sonic titles. There are no cheap deaths or bottomless pits here (well, very few…I only ever fell down maybe two, actually) and the game is exhilaratingly fast and extremely fun to play, while also being very challenging. The ways in which classic zones are remixed add a new layer to the game as even seasoned veterans like myself cannot be sure of what they’re going to encounter. Every boss battle involves a bit of strategy; there is far more to each encounter that just bouncing on Eggman’s head. Honestly, Sonic Mania is a must-buy not just for long-time Sonic fans but for anyone who enjoys beautiful graphics, crisp controls, and a fun, challenging gameplay. From the Sonic CD-inspired animated introduction to the eye-wateringly exquisite graphics and attention to detail in every single element of the sprites and backgrounds, to the remixed levels and soundtrack, Sonic Mania delivers on every single level. Finally, after over a decade of waiting and enduring lacklustre attempts at recapturing Sonic’s classic gameplay, SEGA have done the smartest thing they ever could and handed the keys to a group of developers with a real love and passion for the franchise and Sonic Mania exudes that from every aspect of its presentation.
Sonic the Hedgehog turned 26 this week so I figured it was only appropriate for a very special edition of Game Corner to celebrate the legacy of everyone’s favourite supersonic blue hedgehog. I know that Sonic isn’t exactly as relevant or anywhere near as popular as he used to be but, there was a time back in the nineties, when Sonic the Hedgehog was the videogame icon and the character, and his franchise, have significantly impacted my life over the years. Growing up, I went through many phases where I had franchises and characters I gravitated towards; first it was Thomas the Tank Engine, then Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and so on, alongside superheroes from DC Comics (mainly Batman, Superman, and Green Lantern) and Marvel Comics (primarily Spider-Man, the Incredible Hulk, and the Fantastic Four). However, my first real memories of truly latching on to a franchise and taking it as my own were with my first experiences with Sonic the Hedgehog.
The first Sonic videogame I ever played, and owned, was Sonic the Hedgehog(SEGA/Ancient, 1991) for the SEGA Master System. I remember playing the game for the first time and being struck by the colourful imagery, the addictive tunes, and the simplicity of the gameplay. I used to play that game all the time; one time, my friend came over and struggled to get past the first boss, so I offered to beat it for him and ended up getting further than I ever had before at that point, all the way to the final boss of the game. Sonic on the Master System had many features that were markedly different from its more graphically-impressive counterpart on the Mega Drive; Chaos Emeralds were cleverly hidden throughout the games Zones, for example, and the game also featured three Zones not seen in the Mega Drive version and, with the exception of the first boss, it also had completely different boss battles as well. I didn’t have quite the same experience, or have quite the same love, for Sonic the Hedgehog 2(SEGA/Aspect, 1992) on the Master System. Sonic 2 was much harder than its predecessor, with Chaos Emeralds hidden in stupidly-difficult places and a gameplay mechanic whereby you had to collect all five before facing the robotic Silver Sonic or else you’d never get to see the good ending. Unlike the first game, though, Sonic 2 had a rather complex cheat code involved the second player’s controller, which I’m not ashamed to say I would utilise to overcome this issue.
It was around about this time that I acquired a sample of Fleetway’s Sonic the Comic series, which had one-page teasers of the full issue’s stories. The first issue I got was issue two, which I still have, and I got issues here and there throughout the first year of its run before subscribing to it on a fortnightly basis. A few years ago I was able to fill in the gaps in my collection and have managed to collect every single issue bar the last two, which is good for me as the comic was unfortunately cancelled after a long series of reprints. However, the series is being continued at Sonic the Comic – Online. I don’t remember the exact year (it must have been 1992 or 1993) but, after some cajoling, I was able to convince my parents to upgrade me to the SEGA Mega Drive purely based on pictures and reviews of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Sonic Team/SEGA Technical Institute, 1992). I got the game, and the console, as a Christmas present and it tided me over for quite some time; I remember getting into trouble because I’d finally defeated Doctor Robotnik’s Death Egg Robot and wanted to watch the final cutscene and credits of the game rather than go eat dinner.
After picking up Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic Team, 1991) I was set; from that moment on, I bought every Sonic game I could for the consoles I had. I never got a Mega-CD, so I didn’t play Sonic the Hedgehog CD (Sonic Team, 1993) until many years later on PC and, now, PlayStation 3 so, for many years, my absolutely favourite Sonic game was Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles(Sonic Team, 1994). We all know the story; Sonic 3 was too big, too complex to be one game so, to save time and make more money, SEGA split it into two, releasing Sonic & Knuckles six months later. The Sonic & Knuckles cartridge would “lock-on” to Sonic 3 (and Sonic 2, or any other Mega Drive cartridge) to unlock the full, complete version of the game. For me, Sonic 3 & Knuckles was a game-changer; it introduced me to my favourite character of the franchise, Knuckles the Echidna, and topped everything its predecessors had done. You could play as Sonic, Miles “Tails” Prower, Knuckles, or Sonic and Tails simultaneously. Each had different paths to take, fought bosses differently, and had a unique ending. The game was bigger, brighter, faster, and more action-packed than its predecessors and had way more options, enemies, power-ups, and replay value. I was absolutely hooked! Then dark times came for SEGA; the failure of the Mega-CD, 32X, and Saturn spelled the beginning of the end of the company. As videogame developers began entering the 32-bit era, I switched to the Nintendo 64 rather than the Dreamcast or Sony’s PlayStation. This was still at a time when parents couldn’t afford to get you every console going; just like back when I used to have to go around to my friend’s house to play the Super Nintendo (SNES) and he would have to come to mine to play the Mega Drive, so to did I opt for the N64 over the Dreamcast or PlayStation. The PlayStation was nothing to me then. It had no iconic characters, no games I was familiar with, and no-one I knew had a Dreamcast so I went with the popular option.
This meant that I didn’t play Sonic Adventure (Sonic Team, 1999) or Sonic Adventure 2 (Sonic Team USA, 2001) until they were re-released on the Nintendo GameCube. Sonic Adventure 2: Battle (ibid) became my new favourite Sonic title, with its crisp 3D graphics, over-lapping narrative, and exciting, fast gameplay variety. Sonic Adventure 2 allowed me to play as Eggman for the first time (by this time I had begrudgingly accepted SEGA’s global acknowledgement or Robotnik’s original Japanese name) and introduced the angst-ridden Shadow the Hedgehog who also became a favourite of mine (he’s like Sonic….but dark!) Sonic Adventure DX: Director’s Cut (Sonic Team, 2003) actually proved even better (it feels like a bigger, more exciting game despite being a bit less pretty to look at and a bit buggier than its sequel) and came with unlockable ports of the Game Gear Sonic titles, allowing me to fill some gaps in my collection. From there, I’d have to say that I actually preferred Shadow the Hedgehog (SEGA Studio USA, 2003) over Sonic Heroes (Sonic Team USA, 2003) simply because it’s a better, more polished videogame. Shadow gets a lot of hatred because Shadow uses guns and vehicles when, to be fair, he doesn’t really need to and the title was, arguably, dark for the sake of being dark. However, I really enjoyed the shooting mechanics; the weapons were varied and ran out of ammo pretty fast (and were also entirely optional) so you can just used the patented Homing Attack instead. The storyline, while a bit convoluted (aliens? Really?) was fun to play through and to see all the many (and many) different endings to the game. The soundtrack and final boss were fantastic, as well, and the game just controls a lot better than Sonic Heroes, which always feels like you’re running on ice!
Of course I also played the variousSonic titles on the Nintendo Gameboy Advance. A personal favourite of mine was Sonic Battle (Sonic Team/THQ, 2004), which featured a really long and decent story with multiple characters and options and a simple, yet addictive, fighting, level-up, and gear system. However, things took a sharp turn for the worst with Sonic the Hedgehog(Sonic Team, 2006). By this point, I had switched over to the PlayStation 3 after everyone raved about how great the PlayStation 2 was (ironically, everyone was now raving about how great the Xbox 360 was…). I bought Sonic ’06 knowing it had gotten bad reviews, having heard all the negative press, but steadfast in my commitment to the franchise. Despite some stumbles along the way (Sonic 3D: Flickie’s Island (Traveller’s Tales/Sonic Team, 1996), for example), Sonic had never steered me wrong and I’d always found something to enjoy in every Sonic title I played.
Unfortunately, Sonic ’06 was a pretty dire title; while I don’t hate it as much as some segments of the fandom, the loading times were stupidly long, the sudden, jarring shift to a real-world aesthetic was a strange choice and the camera and controls could hinder you at some really awkward and frustrating moments but there were some good things about the game. It looked amazing, for starters, had a great soundtrack, lots of variety in characters and gameplay, and told a unique and surprisingly deep story for a Sonic title. Probably the worst thing for me were the Mach Speed sections, where Sonic would speed off at a stupidly fast pace and become impossible to control; these were the sections that gave me the most grief and sucked away my lives. The rest was…okay, I guess. I really hate seeing people online bash this game with images and videos of Sonic casually just walking around a loop; when you actually play the game, you’re moving too fast to do stuff like that so you have to be intentionally looking for it. A similar thing irks me when people criticise Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode I(Dimps/Sonic Team, 2010); when I played the game, I did so at a fast pace and threw myself into the action. I didn’t just stop and walk to test and bitch about the physics; normal gamers don’t do that (or, at least, they shouldn’t because videogames are made to be played, not bug-tested!)
Anyway, unfortunately for me, Sonic ’06 made such a negative impact that SEGA decided to strip everything back. While this resulted in some incredible titles, likeSonic Unleashed(Sonic Team, 2008), Sonic Colours(ibid, 2010), and Sonic Generations(ibid, 2011) it came at a price. Sonic videogames were now about Sonic and Sonic alone; you couldn’t play as Tails, Knuckles, Amy Rose, or any of his other cast of characters. We went from Sonic alone, to adding Tails, then adding Knuckles in the first three/four titles, to six playable characters, right back to just one. Even in polished, sleek, incredibly fun titles like Sonic Unleashed and Sonic Generations, you’re limited to playing as Sonic or another version of Sonic (the Werehog, who could’ve just as easily been Knuckles, or Classic Sonic, respectively). Another by-product of this was that abilities and gameplay mechanics afforded to Sonic’s friends now became a part of his move-set. Although this had been happening since Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Colours (and, later, Sonic: Lost World (ibid, 2015)) made it abundantly clear that you don’t need to play as Tails to fly or swim or as Knuckles to glide, climb, or bash through walls because Sonic now has either default moves or power-ups that let him do all of those things.
The plus side to this is that it seemed like SEGA were finally getting their act together; after being forced to pull out of console manufacturing and focus on software, and the massive screw up that was Sonic ’06 , SEGA, and Sonic Team seemed to have rediscovered the formula that made Sonic such a popular and exciting franchise. Then they shot themselves in the foot with Sonic Boom, which was initially presented itself as a complete rebranding of the Sonic franchise, with all-new character designs and a streamlined, refreshed continuity. Then, SEGA backpedalled and said it wasn’t a reboot but a spin-off series. So instead of having one worldwide brand, they now had Modern Sonic (the taller, older-looking one who used Boost gameplay), Classic Sonic (the chubbier, 2.5D version of the character), and Boom Sonic (with sports tape!) all co-existing at the same time. This was also alongside the Archie Comic series which, until recently, had been publishing consistently for over twenty-five years. Although it began as a strange amalgamation of the Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) cartoons made by DiC in the nineties, Archie’s Sonic comics had since incorporated aspects of the videogames and become a huge, unwieldy lore all unto their own. Recent lawsuits and shenanigans had seen the comics undergo a dramatic reboot which simplified the continuity and brought the comics closer to the videogames, only for SEGA to suddenly undergo an identity crisis with Sonic Boom.
After Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric (Big Red Button, 2014) was a critical and commercial flop, rivalling only SONIC for its bugs and issues, the Boom franchise seems too be dead in the water except for the criminally underrated and highly amusing all-CGI cartoon series that accompanied the videogames. throughout the nineties, I used to watch Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog on Channel 4 on Sunday mornings religiously. It was bright and colourful and fun, even if it was hardly anything like the videogames. Then, one day, I tuned in and it was suddenly all different; the cartoon was darker, populated by all-new characters, and nothing like what I’d been watching before. Initially I was upset and confused, but I quickly grew to love SatAM even more than Adventures. It was darker and more serious, had a truly horrific Doctor Robotnik, and was also smarter and sleeker. Then it ended on a massive cliffhanger and shifted tone once again to Sonic Underground in 1999. By this time, I was a bit older and wasn’t watching cartoon as much and, although I liked the action and animation, Sonic Underground was just way too different for me. So, growing up, I was used to all these different interpretations of Sonic; these days, though, it seems a lot of kids can’t seem to grasp the concept of multiple versions of popular characters. Yet, Sonic Adventure did a great job consolidating Sonic’s conflicting interpretations into one unified brand image only to somehow drop the ball with it.
To me, Sonic Boom should have been a complete rebranding of the character. People moaned about the redesigns but they actually aren’t that bad; I didn’t mind Knuckles’s redesign at all (though I’d rather he was smarter) and all the characters are exactly the same despite looking different. Plus, the Sonic Boom cartoon is amazing; it’s smart and actually laugh-out-loud funny with its self-referential humour. Plus, the episodes are really short s it’s easy to watch over and over. As for the future, it appears as though SEGA and Sonic Team are getting back on track. While Sonic Boom continues to air, future videogames in the franchise appear to be dead; this has actually negatively affected the upcoming Sonic Forces(Sonic Team, 2017), at least for me. Forces is apparently set in a time when Eggman has finally conquered the world, causing Modern and Classic Sonic to team up once again to stop him. There’s also the option to create your own character which, while exciting, seems to have pushed Boom Sonic out of the title (the custom avatar uses an energy beam similar to the one seen in Sonic Boom, lending credibility to custom character feature having replaced Boom Sonic). However, we’re also finally getting a brand new 2D Sonic title that will hopefully be the true Sonic 4 I’ve been wanting since Sonic 3 & Knuckles. As I said, I enjoyed Sonic 4 (Episode II was the much better experience of the two parts, though) but, for me, a true Sonic sequel should offer more than one playable character. The upcoming Sonic Mania(Headcannon, PagodaWest Games, 2017) finally returns Tails and Knuckles as playable characters and appears to be a lovingly-crafted piece of nostalgia for fans of Sonic 3 & Knuckles with its massive, tiered Zones, huge bosses, and gameplay variety. At the same time, there’s apparently going to be a live-action/CGI hybrid Sonic movie coming out in 2019; I’m a big fan of Sonic the hedgehog: The Movie (Ikegami, 1996) and feel its past time for a new Sonic film (although I’d rather it was all CGI).
Summer of Sonic, 2010
Sonic the Hedgehog has been a part of my life since I was about six years old; that’s nearly twenty-five years now. I went to SEGA World in London when I was a kid and got to play Sonic the Fighters(SEGA AM2, 1996) and SEGASonic the Hedgehog(SEGA AM3, 1993), which ended up being really special as those titles became extremely rare. I went to Summer of Sonic in London in 2010, where I got to play Sonic 4, see Crush 40 perform live, and mingle with many other Sonic fans. Not only did I put together my own series of sprite comics, not only do I even have Sonic tattoos I also wrote over 20,000 words about the development, rise, and fall of both SEGA and Sonic and all about how the cartoons have changed and shaped the videogame canon as part of my PhD. For me, there is no greater videogame icon than Sonic the Hedgehog. He was faster, more expressive, more action-packed than his counterparts; his videogames had more variety and depth, a larger cast of characters, and far more appeal and replay value. He inspired not only a slew of 2D platformers starring attitude-ladened anthropomorphic protagonists, not only one of the fiercest and most competitive marketing wars in the videogame industry, but also me to be more creative and to write and draw about the things I love. So bust out the Mega Drive, blow the dust out of your cartridges, and stick Sonic 3 into Sonic & Knuckles and celebrate the legacy and impact of what I consider to be the greatest videogame icon of all time.
Similar to Banjo-Tooie(Rare, 2000), Conker’s Bad Fur Day (Rare, 2001) is an action-platformer originally released near the end of the Nintendo 64’s lifespan that I had planned on picking up back when it first came out but, due to a combination of having no money and other priorities at the time, I was never able to. I remember borrowing a copy and briefly playing it but nothing concrete; since then, I had trawled Amazon and eBay to try and find a copy, only to find it reaching extortionate prices as one of the rarest and most expensive Nintendo 64 titles even in an unboxed state. In 2005, Microsoft released a prettied-up remake for the Xbox 360 which I planned to get once I bought the Xbox One. Luckily for me, however, the title was including in the Rare Replay (Microsoft Studios/Rare, 2015) collection and, after sixteen years of waiting and anticipation, I was finally able to play this elusive title with high hopes of an experience comparable to that of its predecessors, Banjo-Kazooie(Rare, 1998) and Banjo-Tooie.
Boy, was I disappointed.
In Conker’s Bad Fur Day, you assume control of an anthropomorphic, beer-drinking red squirrel named Conker who, after a particularly bad night of drinking and debauchery, attempts to stumble home to his girlfriend, Berri. However, the Panther King’s side table is missing a leg and his lackey, Professor Von Kriplesac, suggests using a red squirrel as a substitute; thus, Conker is not only beset by the Panther King’s minions but also a series of increasingly daft missions and side quests, and the search for wads of cash that are dotted about the land. Although the overworld and scope of the game feels smaller than Banjo-Tooie, the concept is similar; Conker traverses a large overworld, which provides access to a number of sub-worlds, in which he must complete a number of side quests and missions to be awarded with cash. Once Conker has accumulated enough cash, he can access other worlds and the game expands further. Each world allows Conker to perform new actions and afford him different abilities, but he cannot carry these over into another world (for instance, in one world, Conker wields a shotgun to dispatch zombies, but he cannot use this weapon in the overworld or in other areas). There are also numerous times throughout the game when Conker can utilise a context-sensitive pad to open up new areas or reach the ever-elusive cash.
Conker’s Bad Fur Day utilises a life system, which is a bit of a step back from Banjo-Tooie, which gave the player unlimited lives. Conker has to grab squirrel tails in order to gain extra tries at beating the game but, once they run out, it’s game over and you have to start again from the last save point. Conker’s health is measured in segments of chocolate, which can be found dotted around every level of the game. However, this is where the game’s most glaring issue lies; Conker is probably the weakest videogame protagonist ever. Conker takes damage when he falls from anything higher than a couple of steps (meaning that a fall from a great height will result in instant death more often than not), chocolate segments are few and far between, and there’s no way to expand or enhance his life bar. There are numerous times when Conker either takes double damage or dies instantly from one shot, making the game feel very cheap and frustrating as it’s not so much a question of player skill and more the fact that Conker is so incredibly weak, especially compared to Banjo and Kazooie.
Conker’s basic controls are fluid and smooth; Conker runs, jumps, swims, and can hover in the air by spinning his tail like a helicopter all with the same grace and poise you expect from a Rare title. Conker’s main enemies whenever he is performing these basic platforming actions are the camera, which swings around wildly and is oddly intrusive, and the fact that Conker can easily slip from paths and walkways; without the ability to grab ledges, it’s far too easy to fall to your doom. However, it’s when you gain access to his additional abilities where the game’s flaws begin to really rear their head. When Conker receives the aforementioned shotgun, you have a choice between using it from a third-person perspective (which makes it difficult to aim) or from a first-person viewpoint (where the controls are reversed, slow, and clunky). Similar to the forced first-person shooting segments from Banjo-Tooie, any time Conker has to use guns really brings the game down and makes for some of the most frustrating parts of the game; Conker reloads too slowly, has terrible aim, and the shooting is annoyingly bad from a company that perfected first-person shooting in GoldenEye 007(Rare, 1997) and utilised a far better third-person shooting mechanic in Jet Force Gemini (Rare, 1999). Honestly, I expected much better from Rare after they proved they can do first- and third-person shooting and action platforming a lot better in their previous titles. The fact that all these elements are so poorly implemented in this game really makes it difficult to play through and to enjoy.
However, Conker’s Bad Fur Day has many elements that are enjoyable; the game looks and sounds amazing, with some of the wackiest and strangest anthropomorphic characters you’ll ever encounter (Conker encounters a talking pot of paint, an opera-singing giant turd, mafia weasels, and battles a Xenomorph, amongst other things). Heading into this game, I was fully aware of its mature content; blood bursts from enemies as they are blown apart, characters swear every other word, and the game definitely isn’t taking itself seriously at all. To my surprise, Conker isn’t actually the foul-mouthed character I expected heading into the game. He’s a drunkard (the opening moments have you controlling him as he stumbles about and pees everywhere) and a greedy little git (he attacks wads of cash with a frying pain and stuffs them down his shorts with reckless abandon) but it’s actually the other characters he meets that swear and provide most of the mature content.
Conker’s Bad Fur Day is also, to its detriment, an oxymoron; the game has a lot of variety but also way too much repetition. So, one minute you might be gunning down wasps, rolling balls of poo into a giant turd mountain, or retrieving objects to fulfil your missions but you can guarantee that if you have to do these things once you’ll have to do them again, anywhere from three to five times. It gets extremely frustrating to have to repeat these actions so many times, especially while fighting the controls; for example, in the first level, Conker has to find some cheese for a mouse. You have to find three pieces of cheese and each one has to be collected separately and also find five bees to pollinate a sunflower (which you later have to use to bounce to a wad of cash but good luck getting the timing of the bouncing right and, when you do get the timing right, the controls fight you so you miss the ledge and fall from a height high enough to cause you significant damage!)
Seriously, this damn sunflower took me the better part of forty minutes to get past!
Similarly, there’s a part where you have to scare some cows into pooping to access a new area. To do this, you have to trick a bull into hitting a target, jump on the bull, and scare the cow. Once it’s pooped, you kill the cow and another waddles out, and you have to repeat this again twice more. There’s an even worse task in the Rock Solid disco. Conker has to get drunk, stagger around, and pee on a rock monster so it turns into a ball, then roll it into an opening. You then have to roll it along a narrow path, hope you don’t fall off, and onto a switch to rescue Berri. You then have to do this twice more and, if you don’t get enough pee on the rock monsters, they pop up and attack you. Things like this are so incredibly tedious and laborious tasks that get old and frustrating very quickly. Later on, Conker gets transformed into a vampire bat and must poop on some villages to stun them and then carry them to a meat grinder. The controls make all this extremely difficult and annoying to pull off, especially considering how often you have to repeat the task. Things only get worse in the It’s War! Chapter; in a parody of Saving Private Ryan (Spielberg, 1998), Conker joins the war against the Nazi-like Tediz. While this makes for some of the game’s most amusing and controversial moments, it is also host to easily the absolute worst part of not only this game, but maybe any game I’ve ever played.
After defeating the boss, Conker has a limited time to navigate through tight corridors full of laser trip wires; if you touch the wires, explosives go off and cost Conker at least two pieces of health. At various points, Tediz will also attack Conker with bayonets, forcing you to switch to the awkward first- or third-person shooting perspectives to attack them. Once you make it through these obstacles, though, you get locked in a room full of Tediz who start shooting at you; you get about two seconds to whip out a bazooka before you’re blown to pieces. The only way to succeed is to try and try and try again and again to master the trip wires and the Tediz in the corridor so you get through flawlessly and have all of your health for this final shoot-out to give you a gnat’s wing of a chance to positioning yourself properly to shoot all the Tediz. There’s no health in this areas, no chance for error, oh, and, also, if you shoot your bazooka too haphazardly then you’ll blow yourself up!
Good luck getting through this crap without the fifty-lives code!
However, for every bad part of the game, there are positives; the boss battles are amusing and interesting, the worlds are full of life an activity (although there’s far less to collect than in the Banjo games), and the storyline is very funny and tongue-in-cheek. Ironically, though, the final area and final boss is perhaps the easiest part of the game. In a shocking twist, Berri is killed before Conker’s eyes and a Xenomorph bursts out of the Panther King. Conker has to (clunkily) beat the Xenomorph down and then throw it into an airlock (three times, naturally…). As the Xenomorphs moves in for the kill, the game locks up; Conker breaks the forth wall to get the programmers to help him out and wins the day, but forgets to get Berri brought back to life. Conker ends up being crowned the new king and sits, disenchanted and annoyed, surrounded by the characters he has helped out throughout his little quest (all of whom he hates). Conker’s Bad Fur Day is a beautiful and challenging game…but it’s so damn frustrating and annoying! I don’t mind a challenge but this game takes it to another level! There is absolutely no hand-holding and no quarter given; this would be fine if the controls and camera didn’t work against you all the time and if Conker wasn’t so weak. I wouldn’t mind repeating some of the tasks you have to do if they were actually fun by the third time; once, maybe, but having to repeat some many laborious tasks really gets annoying very quickly. The boss battles are all multi-layered and challenging, though a lot easier than the platforming and puzzle-solving aspects of the game. The humour is crude, rude, and hilarious at certain points; it’s obvious that Rare were having a lot of fun just pushing the envelope and doing whatever they wanted in this title.
However, it also feels like they’re openly mocking the player and purposely implanting terrible gameplay mechanics; that must be the case as I know they can do better action platformers, better first person shooters, and better third person shooters. The game also has a tacked on multi-player component which involves these shooting aspects, however I’ve not played it and have no urge to given how bad the controls are for these parts of the game. And that’s the summary of it all, really. I have no urge or desire to ever play this game again, and that’s really disappointing to me. I loved the Banjo games and everything they did; I love a good, bright, fun action platformer and I’m all for variety and trying now things…but this game just has far too many negative points for me to ever hold it in as high regard as I do Banjo-Kazooie or even Banjo-Tooie, which is a massive personal disappointment for me.
To reach Gruntilda, Banjo and Kazooie had to traverse a variety of worlds and collect a multitude of items, the most important of which were Jiggies – which were required to access new worlds and climb higher up Gruntilda’s castle. The game was a huge success for Rare, heralding a number of successes for the company on the Nintendo 64, and has been a personal favourite of mine for nearly a decade now for its charming aesthetics, catching music, amusing characters, and vibrant worlds.
One of gaming’s most unique duos.
Back in 1998, Rare developed an incredibly intricate and amusing platform videogame called Banjo-Kazooie. The game starred a slightly slow, but very helpful, honey bear named Banjo, who first featured in Diddy Kong Racing in 1997. Banjo, humorously garbed in bright yellow short-shorts, carried around his friend and counterpart – a Breegull named Kazooie – in a blue back-pack. Together, the two were tasked with rescuing Banjo’s kid sister, Tooty, from the evil witch Gruntilda, aided along the way by Bottles, a short-sighted mole who teaches the two their attacks and abilities, and Mumbo-Jumbo, a shaman who transforms the duo into other forms to aid their quest. In 2000, Rare finally produced a sequel, Banjo-Tooie, which was released near the end of the Nintendo 64’s lifespan and has consequently become one of the rarest and most expensive videogames around, even when bought unboxed. As a result, obtaining a copy has been a goal of mine for years, ever since I briefly played it in 2001, and in 2013 I was finally able to procure a copy and play the game through to completion. Of course, since then, the title (alongside the original and many of Rare’s top titles from the area, before, and beyond) was given a high-definition remaster that I later picked up as part of Rare Replay for Xbox One.
Grunty is back and out for revenge!
Banjo-Tooie picks up two years after Gruntilda’s defeat. Trapped underneath a giant boulder, she summons her sisters, Mingella and Blobbbelda, to free her so she can avenge her defeat. Now little more than a skeleton, she destroys Banjo’s house, killing Bottles, and prepares a special ray gun that will suck the life out of the planet and restore her physical form. Eager for another adventure and desiring revenge for he death of Bottles, Banjo and Kazooie head out to travel new worlds and put the witch to rest once and more all. The first thing to note about Banjo-Tooie is how much bigger it is than its predecessor. Not only can players run around Spiral Mountain (the tutorial area from the first game) and re-enter the mouth of Gruntilda’s Castle, the player can explore and travel through an all-new overworld that is intricately connected to the playable levels in the game. For instance, rather than opening up worlds to enter in a central hub as in the previous game, the players go from one hub to the next following the path of Gruntilda’s digging machine through a huge overworld. Whilst exploring each level, the player can open up shortcuts to other levels, the most obvious being Chuffy the Train, but other sluiceways, tunnels, and paths also exist which connect one world to the next and allow players to traverse what now feels like an entire world rather than an enclosed space.
Jamjars has some new moves to teach Banjo and Kazooie.
The main aim of the game is still to collect loads of items, but the actual task is much less tedious. Previously, the player was awarded for collecting each world’s 100 musical notes, but the number you collected reset every time you left a world and re-entered it. Now, the number carries over, and they are a lot easier to find and collect. Jiggies, however, are found in a multitude of ways, as before, with each world now being home to a formidable boss battle which will test Banjo and Kazooie’s new skills. Speaking of which, Bottles’ brother, Jamjars, is on hand to teach the duo additional moves. While Banjo and Kazooie are capable of every move from the last game bar one (Banjo’s bear swipes are absent), Jamjars loads the player up with a variety of new eggs to shoot at enemies (which becomes a focal point in the game during its many first-person-shooter sequences), the ever-handy Grip Grab that allows Banjo to hang on to ledges, and the ability to have Banjo and Kazooie separate from each other to tackle switch-based puzzles. Mumbo now becomes a secondary character, as players use his magic to access unreachable areas and acquire Jiggies, while Humba Wumba’s spells are used to turn the duo into new forms, which are new required for a multitude of Jiggy-based tasks and even to conquer certain bosses.
Banjo-Tooie has many secrets and collectables.
One of the greatest things about Banjo-Kazooie was its many secrets, most of which were meant to be accessed in Banjo-Tooie through a unique “Stop and Swap” feature that, theoretically, would have seen players swap one cart for another to unlock new content. Though this feature was eventually dropped, the ever-mysterious Ice Key and Secret Eggs return in this game, now used to unlock new moves and the awesome Dragon Kazooie, though the full extent of this feature would not be made accessible until the Xbox 360 HD remixes. Banjo-Tooie also features a multiplayer mode, allowing for up to four players to take part in Goldeneye 007-like deathmatches and other modes that, honestly, I haven’t played but I imagine are similar to the same multiplayer modes seen in Conker’s Bad Fur Day. Like The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, Banjo-Tooie features many recycled characters and character models, as characters encountered in the previous game return to aid or hinder the duo at various points.
It’s all about the story…except when it’s not…
In the end, playing Banjo-Tooie was an awesome experience, but a couple of things let it down for me. Firstly, why remove Banjo’s bear swipes? This seems like a nit-pick, but I expected Banjo to have the attack when he goes solo and he never acquires it, meaning that he is limited to his Pack Whack move. Second, when you acquire a Jiggy, Banjo and Kazooie no longer go into a cute little celebration animation. The Jiggy is simply collected and you move on. While I don’t necessarily mind this, as the lack of the celebration means you don’t get any wasted momentum, it kind of makes acquiring Jiggies mean a lot less as the characters no longer seem to care. Next, the game takes a long time to get started – the opening cutscene is quite long and, at various points at the game’s beginning, the action cuts to a cutscene that shows Gruntilda’s plan in motion. Then you never hear anything of her plot until the final boss, which is pretty jarring – Gruntilda uses her restoration ray once and you never hear anything of it again, so the threat seems diminished and an afterthought by the conclusion. You also never confront her two sisters, which seemed a given, though the addition of a boss for each level kind of made up for that.
There’s a bunch of new transformations to play around with.
Certain other aspects are a bit tedious as well; before, when you tried to exit a level as a transformed Banjo and Kazooie, Mumbo’s magic would automatically wear off. Here though, you must return to Wumba to transform back into the duo to exit – similarly, Mumbo and either character alone cannot exit levels and must switch back to do so, which can get a bit tedious. There’s a ton of backtracking in this game, which can be frustrating but it’s great to see how characters and events in one level can affect and influence the other, so I didn’t mind this too much and it didn’t really feel like it was padding the game out, more that the world was big and interconnected, so backtracking is more like a given. Also, in comparison to the first game, the ending felt a little limp and the overall game time seemed less – I finished the entire game in just under 25 hours, whereas I remember working on Banjo-Kazooie for a long time, but that may have just been rooting around for more secrets and such.
My Rating:
⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4 out of 5.
Great Stuff
In the end, the game is a masterful example of how to make a great action/platform title – colourful worlds, great music, amusing characters, loads (and loads) to do, see, and collect, great controls (flying and swimming can be a bit testy, as before, however), and a pretty simple premise. Games like this aren’t really made much anymore – once you beat videogames these days, there’s not much incentive to pick up and play again, but in the Banjo titles there’s always more to do. As the Nintendo 64 copy is quite expensive, I recommended Xbox owners download both titles (or purchase Rare Replay) and play them to death and think themselves lucky to be able to experience the full games.
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