Conker's Bad Fur Day Retexturing

[Toast Siege]

I am not sure if I agree, or not. Part of the look, I am sure, comes from the low quality textures of the original, but I believe some of it was deliberate. Something about the texture work reminded me of Brer Rabbit, or at least those old children's books with water color illustrations. Getting too much detail or contrast within the textures may destroy some of this atmosphere, that you were playing through a bed time story gone horribly horrible awry.

I've never really thought about whether it was the game's art style (one of them, anyway). I guess it might be possible, but so many of the N64's games had this horrible "mud" look that was just completely ugly.
I'd assumed it had something to do with the hardware; texture blending or something like that (since I didn't recognize anything like it on Playstation), but now I can see that it was the result of poor art design, specifically, not enough contrast on the textures throughout. This could be a feature of CBFD (ie, intentional - like you say about creating a storybook-gone-wrong look), but another facet of CFBD's art was to appear to be just another hammy Mario 64 ripoff; in other words, to look like Banjo Kazooie, and then to suprise the player with the occasional spurt of blood, feces, or breasts.

 

[Nin_10_Dough]

um Toast Siege, do you even like the game? In a sense, all 3d platformers are a Mario64 ripoff. I don't know how Playstation textures compare to N64, I can't get a good look at them on Playstation, they jump around too much .

 

[Toast Siege]

Yeah, I think the game's great, but CBFD itself isn't the the same as Mario 64. I'm sure you can tell what I mean by "Mario 64 ripoff," especially when I cite Banjo-Kazooie as an example. I know Mario 64 is a 3D platformer (some say it pioneered it, even - Tomb Raider was first, however), but when I use this term, I actually mean the sort of cliché collect-a-thons that we've seen many times over. Banjo-Kazooie was pretty bad in this respect (Several of Rare's other games, including DKC, are also of the same genre, but in that case it was before Mario 64) and in my opinion, the over-cartoonyness of BK made it worse.
I'm not a big Rare fan, and you might already know that CBFD was first intended to be a follow-up to the 1999 Gameboy game Conker's Pocket Tales (CBFD came two years later) known as "Twelve Tails: Conker 64." Now it may not suprise you that this game looked like it would turn out just as every other Rare platformer: think CBFD as we know it, except with an "Everyone" rating instead of a "Mature" one. I was only ever interested in this game after the 'makeover.' Before then it was apparent that it would just be Banjo-Kazooie with squirrels. I like the game fine, I'm just very glad it didn't turn out like BK.

About Playstation:
I don't even think that console could handle blending. Of course with modern emulation, it's very possible, but you could definitely see the individual pixels that made up the textures in a Playstation game (played on a Playstation). And yeah, that jumpiness problem makes the games look terrible even the newest PCs.

Also, I just want to say that these screenshots are hot. (CLICK)
Normal-mapping hot. Likely above anything anyone would be able to do with just texture replacement.

(Sorry for writing too much.)

 

[Clements]

I personally loved Banjo-Kazooie much more than CBFD. When I played the game back in mid-1998 (this was before Ocarina of Time was out) there were few other games that even touched this game in terms of graphics and music, and there were not many other 'collect-a-thons' around on the N64 other than SM64 at the time. The game was quite fun for me. 'Cartooniness' has never bothered me in a game.

CBFD had a lot of sections that were poorly thought out and not fun to play (Rock Solid, Underwater blades to name but two) and you keep losing health from falls, and was too linear. The humour was the only thing that drove me on, even then it wasn't always funny.

 

[Nin_10_Dough]

ugh, those blades. I felt no guilt when using save states there.

I never finished Banjo-Kazooie. I do remember finding it annoying looking for things. Back then I was very impressed with the visuals of the game. I might go back and play through it.

Live and Reloaded looks great, considering I am a fan or the original. Too bad I don't have an Xbox.

 

[Googol]

Similarly, I also liked Banjo-Kazooie. You are looking from a viewpoint of one who has seen all the modern games, and also from one who had seen wayyy too many collect-a-thons. Like Clements said, there weren't really many collect-a-thons back then, so the game felt semi-original. Plus, it was actually good, which helped it out quite a bit.

I do kind of find it funny that people complain that DK64 ruined the Donkey Kong franchise, when in fact it was pretty much the same thing in 3D. However, it did have more flaws (e.g. the lack of a team-mate, too much like BK...) which contributed to the view.
And I find Mario64 a lot more cartoony than Banjo-Kazooie - not that that's a bad thing!
On-topic: great textures, Djipi. The original feeling of the game is not completely intact, though. Maybe, like others have suggested, you could keep the trademark "muddiness" of the game in certain places.

 

[Toast Siege]

No, even then games like Conker 64 (pre-CBFD) were being branded by the media as 'Banjo-Kazooie with squirrels.' Maybe the part of Conker's Bad Fur Day I liked the most was the idea behind it. At that time, it really seemed like Nintendo wouldn't ever slip out of this rut (in my opinion, at least) they were in: every one of their games being targeted at one market - 13 years of age or under. Banjo-Kazooie didn't do anything to change this, of course, and, well, I guess it's true that cartooniness isn't my problem with it, (I meant to type "over-kiddiness," actually - I know it's not a word) but the fact that every single character in the entire game is irritating is the main factor for me here.
If BK uses humour, I've yet to locate it - maybe in the dialogue, which uses stereotypical British humour (ie, people say mean things to each other for no reason) which I'm not a fan of. And before anyone says anything about this, CBFD's writing was different. Could've been better, of course, and as for linearity, not all games are designed to be infinitely replayable. I don't think they should be, either.
However, CBFD doesn't resort to the stuff BK pulls (Most levels amount to, "Screw around here for a while. You can leave here when you collect 80 XXXs, and you beat the game when you get 60 of YYY. Collect x number of ZZZs to change into an ant. There are also 7 WWWs to find if you want all the YYYs!") which artificially lengthens the game. Mario 64 didn't even have this much crap to collect. The entire game just struck me as terribly unoriginal. That is my opinion, and I can see lots of people don't agree, but I'll stop talking about BK for now.

One more thing: Banjo-Kazooie less cartoony than Mario 64? You can't be serious. Also, no one's complained about DK64 here, dude.

 

[Clements]

Regarding collectibles: I wouldn't say the note doors or jigsaws "artificially" lengthen the game, since they are integral to the game. SM64 would be lame without the star and key doors since you have no goal to achieve. Something like the sea in WW is what I'd consider artificially lengthening the game since it serves no other purpose.

And if you think about it:

Jiggys = Power Stars
Notes = Yellow Coins
Jinjo's = Red coins
Mumbo Tokens ~ Transformation caps
Banjo Statue = Green Mushroom

Only the honey combs I can't find an equivalent in SM64 for, since in SM64 there was no way to lengthen energy. Hardly that much more stuff to collect. SM64 even had more coins (over 2000 coins versus 900 notes) and more power stars (120 stars versus 90 jiggies) than the equivalents in BK, so if anything, SM64 had more stuff to collect, if you could be bothered to try to get the 120 stars and most of the coins that is (you need 1500 coins for the 120 stars). SM64 was more optional, as in you could be lazy and miss off 50 stars to complete it, in BK you needed to finish almost all to get to Grunty. I think this was a good thing, since it was more challenging as a result.

 

[Googol]

One more thing: Banjo-Kazooie less cartoony than Mario 64? You can't be serious. Also, no one's complained about DK64 here, dude.

Oh, I am serious. This is my serious face.
Attachment 1 is Mario64, first level, practically the first thing you see in it.
Attachment 2 is B-K, first level, practically the first thing you see in it.
Which looks brighter, simpler, and generally more "cartoony"? Mario 64, methinks.
I'm not doubting that B-K is cartoony - it definately is. It's just less cartoony than Mario 64.
And about the DK64 thing - I wasn't bashing you or anyone else on the board about that, it's just that your mention of how Collect-A-Thon-y DKC was kind of reminded me of that. No problems there.
Clements said pretty much everything else I wanted to say, so his post will sum up my ideas on that as well.

 

[I_love_Link]

While I admit this is completely subjective, I think Mario64 looks more cartoony. It's mostly cos of the textures though.

 

[mongo51983]

I'll also have to agree, the backgrounds on Banjo are more realistic than Mario 64.

 

[Toast Siege]

Regarding collectibles: I wouldn't say the note doors or jigsaws "artificially" lengthen the game, since they are integral to the game. SM64 would be lame without the star and key doors since you have no goal to achieve. Something like the sea in WW is what I'd consider artificially lengthening the game since it serves no other purpose.

Alright, but that's what I mean when I say it lengthens the game. It's like if in Mario 64 they wouldn't allow you to fight Rainbow Bowser until you collected all the stars (puzzle pieces)

Jiggys = Power Stars
Notes = Yellow Coins
Jinjo's = Red coins
Mumbo Tokens ~ Transformation caps
Banjo Statue = Green Mushroom

Eek. When you put it that way, Banjo-Kazooie seems even less original than it did before you said this. By the way, if you want to get specific, there are still things like Red Feathers, Gold Feathers, Eggs, Mole Hills, in other words they're making you collect x of a certain thing in order to achieve something (flight, invincibility, etc.), where as in Mario 64, of course you would only need to find one of them. Also, in that respect, the transformation caps are more like the things I mentioned. I guess Mario 64 had nothing really like the Mumbo stuff, then. Still, it's just more to collect (the Mumbo tokens), and I've always hated that.

Pitchurs

Well of course Mario 64 has simplistic graphics, but everything in Banjo-Kazooie could have been taken from any saturday-morning cartoon (characters, names, dialog, villans, music - it goes on...). There's not much realism outside of perhaps the game's graphics (and that's relative to Mario 64).

I guess this is the "heated BK debate" topic, now?

EDIT: Spelling

 

[jdsony]

I also fully enjoyed Banjo Kazooie. It's probably my favorite game on the N64. While it is similar to Mario 64 in gameplay, they made it more cohesive, complete, and immersive. The textures were the most organic looking I had seen at the time and the variety of levels was great and the music superb. While I understand why some people wouldn't like that type of game it in no way is only for kids.

Early platformer games your goal is to get to the end of the 2D plane. When 3D came along that just wasn't as interesting anymore so they added things to collect but not just collect, explore and discover. The beauty was though that you didn't "have" to collect everything. You could just get the bare minimum to get through to complete the game. I guess it depends on what type of gamer you are. I don't like getting things for free in games, I'm the type that prefers to unlock things by completing specific goals. So many times I've played a semi modern game through and there was nothing else to do. I remember trying to beat Tekken 3 with all the characters to get all the endings while most fighting games offer you no real purpose to play (the fun factor wears off when you've played the hell out of a genre).

On a topic related note. I think the ground should have no grain and look darker and less detailed. Like mud. Great work on the text.

 

[aibrubusfosusej]

geez, this isn't even about retexturing conker anymore, is it? now it's just a competition of cartooniness between mario and banjo-kazooie! but this thread has kind of been filed away, has djipi just given up now or what? We need some closure!

 

[koolkarts]

Is this project also dead? And has Djipi figured out how to rip XBOX textures?

 

[Kerber2k]

Just forget about this one Koolkarts. Its way better if you just own a XBOX, and play Conker Live and Reloaded. Djipi should probably put his efforts into somthing that wont be re-released untill Revolution, and then we will all feel stupid, because I have a feeling they will just make us buy what we have already created here in our High resolution texture utopia.

 

[koolkarts]

Hey Djipi, you are looking for a new project rite? How about you resume the work on this one? Many people loved this game, and would love to see the game retextured, especially by a talented artist like you

 

[Djipi]

Koolkarts , i always WORK on this project

 

[Teton]

The post holding the lamp in the very first picture looks weird. Otherwise this is beautiful.

 

[64fanatic]

Woah

Sweet!!! I didn't think you were still working on it

That looks VERY good.