Twelve Tales: Conker 64

Lore & Background

Twelve Tales: Conker 64 was originally conceived as a cheerful, storybook-style platformer for the Nintendo 64. Rare planned to feature Conker alongside several other animal characters, each with their own themed worlds and abilities. The game was publicly shown at trade events like E3 in 1998, where it was presented as a colorful, collect-a-thon adventure reminiscent of Banjo-Kazooie. However, development was troubled by the team's dissatisfaction with the generic direction and the crowded market of similar platformers.

In Their Own Story

In a sun-dappled forest of oversized mushrooms and candy-colored trees, Conker the squirrel dreams of a grand adventure. He meets a rabbit who juggles acorns, a mole who sings opera, and a hedgehog who paints rainbows. But as the camera pulls back, the colors fade to gray, the music warps into a drunken dirge, and Conker wakes up in a tavern, muttering, 'That was a weird dream.' The cheerful world of Twelve Tales is lost, replaced by the hangover of Bad Fur Day.

Reader's Guide

Twelve Tales: Conker 64 was first announced in 1997 as a family-friendly platformer. By 1999, Rare's team became dissatisfied with the project's lack of originality and the market being flooded with similar games. The decision was made to scrap the family-friendly direction and rework the game into Conker's Bad Fur Day, a mature-rated title filled with crude humor, alcohol references, and pop culture parodies. This drastic shift was driven by the team's desire to create something unique and to take advantage of the N64's lack of content restrictions. The original Twelve Tales was never released, but its legacy lives on in the form of its infamous successor. The cancellation is often cited as a bold creative risk that paid off, as Conker's Bad Fur Day became a cult classic. The lost prototype has been a subject of fascination for fans, with some assets and footage surfacing over the years.

Did You Know?

• The 'Twelve Tales' title referred to the twelve chapters planned for the game, each starring a different animal character.
• Rare's internal frustration with the project's generic direction led directly to the creation of Conker's Bad Fur Day.
• Some character models and level concepts from Twelve Tales were later repurposed into other Rare games, such as Donkey Kong 64 and Banjo-Tooie.