Scribes – April 11th 2001
Dear Great Mighty Poo,
First, I have to say how impressed I am with Conker’s BFD. It wasn’t just a bunch of shock value and no gameplay, which some people thought it would be. It has more variety than most games out there, and it certainly wasn’t Banjo-Tooie with swearing, as other critics have made it out to be. Okay, enough arse-kissing. It’s time to get to the part you’ve been waiting for… Questions!!
1. I’m glad to see that you’ve gotten around to updating Rare Life. Must’ve been a busy year for it to take you this long. Anyway, could you have a Rare Life thingy for the Conker game designer? If he’s as interesting as he makes himself out to be on certain Rare-related message boards, it should be some good readin’.
2. I’m guessing that Rare doesn’t have a very strict dress code. I mean, just look at Uncle Tusk and Mr. Pants. Please tell me that nobody else is that comfortable with their own body at Rare…
3. Did you know that the Nintendo Promotional Video (or NPV, as I’m calling it. That’s right, you’re not the only one with the power to abbreviate things like RPA and… wait, RPA is the only thing you’ve abbreviated… sorry for this overly long parenthetical statement) for Banjo-Kazooie was narrated by Jon Lovitz, a well-known American comedian?
4. How many e-mails per day do you get that are like “tell me STOPNSWOP or i blows up rare. hahahahahahahha!!!!!!!11!!”?
5. Is Jonathan Joanna’s brother? I asked this before, but you edited my question. If you do it again, I swear I’ll (La la la – Ed)… or at least in that general area. You can’t expect my (Dum de dum – Ed) to be (Sorry, what? – Ed), you know.
6. You know how people write in to Scribes, mentioning names like “After Dark” that they’ve read as rumors on websites, and so they think it instantly means that Rare is working on a game of the same name (and they’re probably right, too, dammit!)? Well, my RPA is based on the same idea, to show you just how carried away our imaginations can get with such rumors. So, how close is my picture to the “real thing”?
-Urkel
1. Let’s ask him, shall we? “Erm… no. Taking the p*ss out of people on Bulletin Boards and ‘being official’ about it are two completely different things. I wouldn’t be able to say fk and ct for a start. See what I mean?”
2. Tusk’s a barbarian, so it’s probably part of his cultural heritage and that. Whereas Mr. Pants is a made-up stick man and doesn’t really work here, so it’s not an issue.
3. One for the B-T designer: “Ah, but did you know that the original Banjo voice was narrated by Jimmy Tarbuck, a British comic genius responsible for the legendary Tarby’s Frame Game? Well actually it wasn’t, but it would have been funny if he did.”
4. Counting this one: 7,948.
5. Sorry? Didn’t quite catch that…
6. B-T designer again: “Did it not occur to you that we are aware of people desperately trawling websites looking for supposed new Rare titles? Who’s to say that we aren’t occasionally entertaining ourselves and throwing people off the scent by chucking in a couple of complete and utter made-up ones from time to time?
“Nice box art, by the way. Our artists are quite rightly quaking in their boots after seeing that beauty.”
Dear Scribes,
I don’t expect this to ever make it anywhere, but I am a humble Canadian who happened across a store today that sells imported British candy… most of which was precisely like what we have over here, except in mint versions. Why mint? WHY? I was, however, excited to find a pack of crisps… up until I discovered that they were ‘cheese and onion flavoured’. Again, I ask you… WHY? That can’t possibly taste good, neither in actuality OR as an artificial flavour.
Oh, and as a side note that has no relevance to you whatsoever, I attended a Medieval Tourney this eve. The Mexicans won.
Conker kicks arse. And that’s just my natural linguistics at work there, not some sorry attempt to save this email by adding the word ‘arse’ to it. I know that doesn’t work. Honestly.
Mike
Those Dark Age Mexicans, eh? Tricksy buggers at the best of times. I can’t see how anyone could find even the smell of Cheese & Onion crisps appealing, let alone the taste, but it seems a vast number of people do as it’s one of the three basic flavours over here (along with Ready Salted and Salt & Vinegar). But no – I’ll take Barbecue Beef Hula Hoops any day of the week. And we’re not really all that big on mints, so it must be a quirk of your fancy import shop…
Dear Editer (sic):
I would like to say something about Jet Force Gemini. ahem. SEQUEL!!!!!!!!!! Okay, I know, you are not now nor are you likely to ever make a sequel to this game, but I wish you would. I realize that either 1) tomorrow 2 million copies of the game would have to be sold unexpectedly or 2) the giant flaming arse would have to streak across the heavens commanding you to sequel it lest ye be Damned for all eternity, before you make a sequel, so I will take this time to get wanting a sequel out of my system.
This game was brilliant. The sheer immensity and grandeur of this title set it apart as the neer perfect game. It had so much I could hardly ask for more. This was no mere “Sorry, no Perfect Dark this year, please take this as a consolation prize.” No, indeed. From the British humor (a forerunner of BFD) to those glorious bouncing jigglies on Vela, it had it all. In fact, it was above the heads of most players. It was underappreciated in its day. It was so perfect that I now believe it to be a oneshot, so that it could never truly be sequeled.
And that’s my solution. The game was too good for a sequel. However, if I find anyone who bought a DK64 instead of JFG and therefore prevented a sequel, I will hunt you down and make you repent upon pain of death.
Thank You,
Scott Lochmoeller
I included this in the bunch of letters forwarded to the Blast Corps/JFG designer earlier today, and this is what he had to say: “I tried to think of ANYTHING even remotely funny or witty to say in reply to any of those and I just couldn’t… surely on a Friday afternoon the prospect of trawling through those letters must make you want to weep.”
And those were just the printable, Scribesworthy ones. You see? Nobody knows my pain. Still, er, thanks for the support and all that.
How are you gentlemen,
Somebody set up us the bomb.
Ah, enough of that… I’ve got a bunch of random questions about our buddy Conker for ya…
1. First and foremost, you mentioned everyone’s favorite comedy-knickers wearing survey guy would be in this game a while back. Does that still hold? Haven’t found him yet. Just a yes or no is fine…
2. Don’t you hate that your “representative” mentioned the “uncut version that no one will ever see” in an interview? Now the beta-Goldeneye jokers will have a new thing to croon over…
3. Just about everyone’s British in this game, yet the legal tender is American dollars… Tsk tsk… We would have lived with pounds…
4. Is Rodent a friend of Conker’s from some other game (never played Pocket Tales), or just one of his bar mates?
5. What elements of this game existed back in the Twelve Tales stages of the game that you modified for BFD? Stuff like the windmill, or story elements, characters, what have you…
Finally, we get to the heaps of praise…
I absolutely adore you guys for your work on this game. I mean, I could just give you a “Conker‘s dead good”, but that wouldn’t even come close to my feelings on the fantastic job you’ve done with this.
I particularly love the music and graphical mood settings. The Rock Solid club was fabulous (particularly Conker shakin’ his groove thang). The corridors under the Tediz base were scary and suspenseful. The spooky mansion was pants-wettingly scary and suspenseful. The music that plays during the Fire Imps thing (when you unzip) is hilarious…
During the boiler scene, you could have just used a frying pan, but no… You guys have standards. You made Conker pull out two huge pieces of cinderblock and made us FEEL that hit! Ow!
And, lastly, I won’t spoil it for everyone, but I love how you made last couple of areas “mature” and didn’t joke around all that much. Beautiful.
You guys are artists, really. I’m very excited to see what you can produce on the Cube. Thanks so much!
You have no chance to survive make your time,
Scott “CyricZ” Zdankiewicz
Let’s leave this one entirely in the hands of BFD’s team leader, for great justice:
“1) Sorry, but that was a lie. Maybe next time.
“2) Ha! The fun one can have with gullible people.
“3) Who’s ‘we’?
“4) He isn’t in any other game and he’s not really his mate. (Conker and Bucky used to bully him at school, but you don’t know about that yet.)
“5) Conker’s name… The windmill remained exclusively to provide me with the satisfaction of destroying it! Forget Twelve Tales, just forget it. It was never even nearly finished let alone released. FORGET ABOUT F*G TWELVE TALES!!!
“…glad you like it Cyric. I recognise that name from the Rarenet boards. Don’t expect me on there again anytime soon.”
Dear Scribetastic editor,
Be warned, I’m not funny. BUT, I just might be relevant so you might post this. Ah heck, who am I kidding. Have a nice read at least.
On my weekly visit to your site, decided to check your quote for the day/week/month/whatever and found “Fetch the machine that goes ‘ping'” for the Rarewhere banner.
So… did you get a lot of email declaring “I knew you liked Monty Python Leigh! Arse! Look at my RPA of my pingy machine!” or did no one notice, thus making me look like someone with way too much time on their hands?
Oh wait, a few legitimate things to say. Why didn’t the Perfect Dark team include more low-powered pistols in the game? Three variants of the Falcon 2 just don’t cut it! Oh well – I think I’m the only person that wanted more low-powered pistols. I hate to end a letter with criticism so I’ll say that Hacker Central is the best multiplayer mode ever conceived and thank you for not going overboard with the gore in Perfect Dark. Here’s hoping that if you are working on Perfect Dark 2, that you’re not going to emulate the gore-fest of certain PC games out there.
-Sparkchu (not related to Pikachu. Really.)
Not very many Py-thon letters at all, as it happens – and not a single related RPA. Don’t get me wrong, that’s a good thing.
As for the PD pistol ‘issue’, here’s some quality designer feedback: “Yeah, well we could have put a load of similar weapons in there, but there were weapons in danger of underuse as it was, so we didn’t. And we could have put a load of gore in the game but we would have got pilloried by the media for invoking Satan and seducing ‘normal’ children into violent behaviour, so we didn’t. And you’ll be pleased to know that Fluffy Dark 2 is in development in parallel with Perfect Bloodbath 2, thus catering for all possible markets and eventualities.”
Dear Scribes,
Pants, by e. e. cummings
Pants, List
less in the wind,
roa
ming w
ild in a breeze
with hat and
pie
Thank you,
Aaron
That’s beautiful. Especially that final, fleeting syllable, saturated with such an intensity of longing that it makes one’s heart ache.
Dear Scribes,
First of all, you should know better than this. The machine doesn’t go “ping”. It goes “bing”.
Second, I would like to know more about the supposedly forthcoming Perfect Dark TV-series. You know, the one produced by Goodman/Rosen in collaboration with 4Kids Entertainment. Is this true at all? And if so, is it animated or “real”? Should be interesting.
Third, I would like to point out to all the people out there who desperately want a Goldeneye beta that betas aren’t much fun at all. I collect beta copies of games, and have quite a few, but they’re mostly pants. Unfinished, unplayable and so buggy that you won’t get far into the game before the game crashes. That is, if you can get far into the game at all, since many betas lack most of the levels. In fact, the only reason to collect them is really to be able to brag about it to other collectors who don’t have anything better to do with their money.
Fourth, I would like to see a game that basically offends everyone. A game where you travel around the world, meeting heavily stereotyped, dramatically exaggerated representatives of the various countries. Like nasty, baguette-wielding Frenchies; maniacally self-centered Americans with enormous mouths; bongo-drumming, tap-dancing Kenyans with fat lips; miniscule, karaoke-wailing Japanese game-designers who impersonate Elvis on a regular basis; moustachioed Iraqis armed to the teeth; whale-killing Norwegians with bad taste in clothing; introvert Finns who dance the tango in their saunas, and so on. Please. Offend everyone. Make the ultimate non-politically-correct game. Mr. Pants could do well as the main character. Or perhaps John Cleese – he would probably love it.
– Thomas Ertresvåg
It goes ‘ping’.
TV series? First I’ve heard, and the same goes for the designer. You should probably try mailing one of the companies that you just mentioned, who are apparently ‘making’ ‘it’.
One important thing that you neglected to mention in your beta rundown is the fact that there is no beta version of GoldenEye. This can never be stressed enough (obviously, as people still haven’t shut up about it).
Tap-dancing pretty big in Kenya, is it?
Dear Leigh ‘Mr. Pants’ Loveday,
I don’t know if you could bother the Banjo team for this, but could we somehow get an enemy names list for ‘Tooie? ‘Kazooie had a cast list and an enemy name list, but ‘Tooie seemed to be missing an enemy name list. Did the Tooie team even bother to give all the enemies names? They deserve names just as much as the main characters do. Yeah… uh… that’s it.
– Yumblie
You want the moon on a stick, that’s what you want. Look, here’s the official (and unusually helpful) response:
“Of course all the baddies in ‘Tooie have got names. We just pass a sheet around the team and people suggest names, then we pick the best-sounding (i.e. least worst) ones. We even dragged in the great British public to help us name a few this time, as we were too lazy to do them all ourselves. Stolen straight from our heavily guarded archives is this original file, which (hopefully) lists all the characters’ names. Get whatever enjoyment out of it that you can.”
Potential spoilers in there for those of you that haven’t played through the entire game yet… consider yourselves warned.
Dear Scribes,
I think Conker’s BFD is an excellent game, it did to 3D platform games what GoldenEye did for FPS games. I did not like 3D platform games before Conker, I liked the side scrolling versions of Mario or Donkey Kong better then the 3D ones. Conker’s BFD is what the South Park game should have been like. It is funny as hell and has quality gameplay. I honestly believe Nintendo and Rare would be able to make the first quality porno.
I heard this rumor from an unreliable source but it still concerned me. It is that Jo would not be the main chacter you play as in Perfect Dark 2. I think as long as PD games are made that she should be the star of them, after all she IS Perfect Dark.
Scot Homlitas
“I always thought of Donald Sutherland as Hawkeye Pierce, but then when they made the TV series of M.A.S.H. he was replaced by Alan Alda.” Words of wisdom from the PD designer there. And if that doesn’t clear up the issue for you, I don’t know what will. Anyway, who said Scribes was an “unreliable source”?
We’ll keep you up to date on the porno.
Haven’t seen me for a while, have you?
I’ve been noticing the lowering quality of Scribes as of yet. Whilst Mr. Pants was funny back in the ‘day’, now he’s only funny when someone makes a game about him, or he’s shoved into one of your games. And every other letter has “Mr. Pants” in it. Remember when people hated the poor guy? Now he can’t walk the streets without someone trying to whap him over the head with something blunt and steal his pants to sell on the black market. And back in the “day” when I would read an edition, I would laugh many. many, many times. Now it’s only about twice per edition. So I ask all you readers, shut up about Mr. Pants already, before he loses all of his merit!
Now then, onto a stupid number list thing.
1. This may be considered old news, but many people were suprisingly offended by the use of “hell” in the DK rap. Well, they should be happy to know that it has been toned down since the original version. With my DK64 Beta (you heard me) I found out that the original line was “he can’t jump high, but this Kong’s one f—ing b-st-rd” and then trailed off into a number of racial slurs. However, one of it was censored as how I wrote it in this letter. So all you disgruntled parents be happy with what you have.
2. “The Fabled Panther King” has to be one of your best character names ever. Not as good as “The Evil Acorn”, but still…
3. I was going to say something about B-K and B-T‘s connection, but then noticed that this is rareware.net, not Rarenet’s message boards. Arse.
4. I’ve noticed the use of “Rar” many times in Banjo-Tooie. Exobyte, or just coincidence?
Crazy Albert
P.S.: My name’s Krunch!
Hope you’re enjoying this edition’s brand new Mr. Pants content!!! Laugh, you no good son of a…
1) I could well believe that.
2) Maybe one day we’ll do a tag team wrestling game and team up these two world-straddling supervillains.
3) So you said “Arse” instead. That’s as fitting as anything, I suppose.
4) Probably just Floyd’s subliminal impact on global language conventions.
Dear… Scribes… Guys… Yeah…
Well… I don’t expect this to be printed because it is NOT ABOUT MISTER PANTS. But it is about Banjo-Kazooie and Banjo-Tooie so maybe…
1. I have realized something… In BK when you get a Mumbo Token it sounds like EKKUM BOKKUM but it’s really EAT SOME BOKKUM! BOKKUM must be something that mumbo is advertising… When BT came out it was even worse… In Mayahem temple I heard EAT SOME BOKKUM EAT SOME BOKKUM EAT SOME BOKKUM IN YOUR ARSE in the music… EVIL MESSAGES! DIE MUMBO DIE!
2. Are there any sound files of characters talking I could use? That would be cool… I always wanted to analyze that…
3. In Grunty’s Lair in BK one of Grunty’s rhymes is: If you think I’m rather soft, I’ll be waiting in the loft. Okay… That’s just… scary… I don’t even want to know…
4. What is up with that ice cube family? I know they give you items but they one of the only characters in BT that do not get what they want…
5. Er… Was that B3 reference at the end of BT a joke or what?
HUH HEY FOLKS! SEE YA LATER!!!
– Ug Master
Look, I’ve printed it. Out of spite and that. And just to rub it in, I’ve pestered the Tooie lot into coming up with some responses. That’ll teach you, eh?
“1. No, it’s just EEKUM BOKUM, no mention of arses anywhere. A snippet of info you might be interested in is where the Mumbo phrase ‘OO-ME-NAKKA’ originates from. Let’s just say it was an affliction that our musician was suffering with at the time…
“2. No, the musician is on holiday (again).
“3. Ah yes, those rhymes. There’s quite a few ‘interesting’ ones in there. My personal favourite (which unfortunately didn’t make it past the censors) was ‘Your feathered friend, oh my word, About as useless as a turd.’
“4. No, but they got what they deserved. They were running a Hailfire Peaks timeshare scheme.
“5. Here’s how you find out. Step 1 – Wait a couple of years. Step 2 – See if Banjo 3 is out.
“Hey, did you know that ‘Ug Master’ is an anagram of ‘Turd Gamer’? Well, nearly.”
Dear Scribes,
In response to my answer to Megamanxxx’s letter, poster “The Buffaloon of Happiness” corrected my mistaken impression that the hovering crate (henceforth referred to as “the crate”) had no weight. I would like to retract my earlier statement and claim in fact that neither I nor my university have ever embraced the claim that the crate had no weight.
If by some oversight I myself or agents of my university have given the impression that we held the conviction that the crate possessed no weight, it was not an act by official sanction of the University or University College, and should not be taken as a view of the university as a whole.
Whilst my answers were offered in good faith, I did not volunteer precise information. And I say to you now, indeed I did post a reply that was not accurate.
In fact, it was wrong.
Furthermore, I would like to state for the record that I am deeply troubled by this inaccuracy and that the deposition court has treated my matter with extreme leniency and consideration. In lieu of the more usual University punishment of courtyard pubic-hair-plucking by a bevy of vestal drunken female Geordie attendants, I have decided to tender my resignation from the Mahrud Arabian Exotic Dancing and Physical Sciences Association forthwith and to retire from the Students’ Union. After the constabulary were alerted to my error and abuse of public office, I was further indicted on seven charges of traffic cone theft, five charges of public statue climbing, and eighteen offences of splitting an infinitive and/or manipulating an essay wordcount limit. All are true.
I am truly sorry for this misappropriation of trust placed in me, and in the Welfare Association of Northern Kinetic Energy Research Studies. I plan to resign from all public students’ union offices until this affair is resolved, and instead to go abroad.
This gives me great sadness as it will mean an immediate cessation of my sports association activities, my Socialist Society organizations, and my Northern Wildfowl Trust secretariat. Most of all, however, it will mean a severance of ties from my trusted and beloved mentor, Leigh Loveday, with whom I had hoped to enjoy a reciprocal catamitic nonPlatonic relationship with the aid of numerous blunt olive branches coated in honey.
Please respect my need for privacy and solitude, and do not try to locate me.
Yours more in sorrow than in anger,
BenjaminCJHu, c/o 8 Rue de la Merde, Bogotá, Colombia
PS Is it okay for me to get an extension on the essay? I’ve got a job interview with a businessman who wants me to take an empty case to Colombia and exchange it for another case that’s full of his favorite biscuits which you can’t get in this country.
Eeeuurrr! Blunt olive branches? Honey? Don’t you come anywhere near me, ‘Hu’. And you can keep your stereotypical student anecdotes, too (you should be trying to break the mould with hilarious new student japes, like turning one of the kitchen walls into a dedicated ‘Arse Wall’ plastered from top to bottom with cut-‘n’-paste anagrams of well-known product labels, each containing the word ‘arse’, much to the bewilderment/pity of your flatmates. Mind, that’d be a bit sad. Just as well I definitely never did it, or anything).
Anyway, that should mark the end of this particular thread, unless someone else writes in to contradict the person from the last Scribes who contradicted this bloke from the one before who contradicted the person from the one before who contradicted the person who made the original statement.
Let’s hope not, eh?
Sweet merciful crap, man,
You: “speaking for myself, I’ve just put 140 hours into FFVIII and enjoyed every minute of it.”
Are your days spent in unending pain and suffering? 140 hours into FF8 and you ENJOYED it? When you’re not updating the site and answering e-mails, are you hours filled with other employees walking by, reeling their foot back, and then rocketing it into your groin? How awful! Please note that this isn’t some anti-PS or anti-Squaresoft letter e-mailed in by some Nintendo fanboy. It’s just that… that… you can do so much better! Go grab some Planescape: Torment action and hunker down to the best goddamn thing ever. That is, unless you haven’t already. Which, if you have, YOU ENJOYED FF8?! And even if you haven’t, YOU ENJOYED FF8?! It simply boggles the mind…
Moop3
Well, I don’t care. I enjoyed it. I don’t have time to play many games these days, so the ones that I do play have to be good. And I actually preferred FFVIII to FFVII. Yeah, how’s about that for controversy? Eh? How’s about that?
The PD designer chips in at this point for no apparent reason: “Sweet, Merciful CrapMan sounds like a great character. I’m currently enjoying FF9 and, having played Planescape: Torment I have to say that it got tedious before I reached the end of the third disc (though I was enjoying it – I just thought I ought to play some other games)… it’s down to your own personal taste, I believe.”
Dear Scribes,
“Honestly. You’d swear we’d abandoned all development on other games, turned our backs on everyone under 18 and settled down to concentrate all our efforts on the Conker franchise. Ever heard of ‘diversity’? Maybe ‘catering for all tastes’?”
The main point I was trying to make was that this will sell mostly for people UNDER 18. Go to the newsgroups and do some research. I went to the GameFaqs Message Boards and other usenet groups.
“Everyone’s entitled to their opinion, and you’re clearly of the opinion that you don’t want this game: that’s fine. But everyone has an opinion, and therefore you don’t speak for the entire gaming population of the world. If there wasn’t an unsatisfied audience out there clamouring for this type of game, it’d never have been made.”
Didn’t say I WAS speaking for everyone. This is MY opinion. I wouldn’t exactly say “clamouring”, because there’s always alternatives to Rare.
“PD‘s sales figures were never going to reach the astronomical levels achieved by GoldenEye in the N64’s prime, as its user base today is barely comparable.”
Really? I disagree. Perfect Dark was so eagerly awaited and hyped that it was almost unbearable. It was the rightful heir to the almighty GoldenEye 007. To say it fell below expectations is an understatement.
“And of course we knew that the Mature tag would exclude a substantial percentage of buyers, but as we felt that it was necessary, we stuck with it at our own potential sales disadvantage rather than compromise the quality of the game or try to market it to unsuitable age groups, which kind of shoots your own ‘lack of integrity’/’bandwagon-jumping’ arguments out of the water. So yes, a point well made – thanks for bringing it up.”
Again, I disagree. There’s going to be a heck of a whole lot of angry people giving you grief in the future. What perfect world do you live in? Just because something says “M” on it doesn’t make it bulletproof from the children of America, given your past record and having it on the Nintendo 64. Parents are biased TOWARDS you, and I think it’s going to get nasty.
“By the way, I’ve played Conker’s Bad Fur Day. I’m most assuredly not under 18. I think it’s hilarious. Say what you like about my mentality, but it’d be a more ‘mature’ approach to reserve your judgement until you’ve actually played it – and maybe even respect the opinions of other people in the meantime.”
When did I say I DIDN’T respect other people’s opinions? Seems you don’t respect mine by taking a cheap shot to end your response and gather the wagons.
Dennis Ferrand
Sigh. Okay. Let’s address some of these points… again.
Do you send indignant letters to any major film studio that dares release an age-restricted film just in case it’s eventually watched, somewhere in the world, by someone who isn’t strictly old enough? If Conker’s BFD ends up selling to people below the Mature age limit, maybe you should be pointing the finger at dishonest retailers. Like Nintendo, we’ve done all we can to market the game solely to its target audience. And the idea that we should be excluded from ever making games for a more mature audience simply because we also release family-friendly titles is laughable, and you know it – believe it or not, people can tell the difference.
“Didn’t say I WAS speaking for everyone”, he says. So what was all that last time about how “the horrid, tacky and tasteless d*ck jokes insult the average adult’s intelligence”? Speaking on behalf of “the average adult” in this case certainly sounds like “speaking for everyone” to me.
You can “disagree” with facts and statistics all you like, but it’s not going to lend any weight to your argument – there are nowhere near as many N64 players now as there were during the peak of GoldenEye’s success. Nobody ever fooled themselves into thinking that any kind of hype could lift PD’s sales to GoldenEye heights. Hardly “falling below expectations”. In the designer’s words: “It was released as attention shifted from the console. It has sold to date about a quarter of GoldenEye’s total sales. And making it a Mature product cut off a percentage of the audience that would otherwise have bought it. Your point here is what?”
As for things getting “nasty”, the very few complaints that we’ve had are from people like yourself who disapprove of the game concept in general, rather than those who’ve been scandalously suckered into buying it by the appalling and misleading publicity campaign. Maybe we’d better stop running those blood-spattered, profanity-ridden ads in children’s comics, eh?
This is where you start work on a smug letter about Conker’s sales to date, as if we’d been expecting anything different.
Hello Dave,
I think that it’s marvellous that Dennis Ferrand has got the bottle to say what he thinks about that juvenile Conker game. I for one had always refrained from purchasing a game I didn’t like the sound of as I didn’t realize that you could actually write to the designers and moan at them. Den has really changed my life in this respect and today I fired off a strongly worded email to that knob Jamie Oliver and told him to get his pukka arse off the telly because he gets on my nerves and the next thing I know he’s cutting back on his T.V. work, how’s about that then? You don’t know that dck-head ‘Alan Curly Hair Sht-Creek’s’ email do you, I’ll try and get him off the telly as well.
I’d ask a Banjo Tooie question but it still hasn’t been released here, you w**kers.
Love,
Papa Lazarou
PS Could you also tell your American readers that Conker will be more like Viz than South Park. South Park wasn’t even as funny as DuckMan.
Such a dirty, dirty toilet mouth. Mind, if it helps with getting certain ‘popular’ ‘celebrities’ off the telly, I’m all for it. See if you can do anything about Les Dennis and Dale Winton – I’ll pay you.
And look, Tooie’s out in Europe any day now, so ask away. (You might also like to know that I tried to use a dead funny compound swearword here in response to you calling us w**kers, but it got censored. Tsk.)
Dearest Scribedy-Scribes,
First of all, regarding Dennis Ferrand’s letter of the 12th of February Scribes Edition; I believe, as you correctly pointed out… he is wrong.
I do accept his comments that the humour and over-the-top toilet-humour antics may be attracting the wrong crowd – what is a seemingly cute game in the eyes of a parent turns out to shock their children… but that is what the M rating/18 certificate stands for. Tell me, Mr. Ferrand, if Rare had left Conker’s BFD as Twelve Tales, would you still be complaining about it being sick and immature? No, but you would be complaining about it being “another Mario 64 clone/rip-off” like people have stated of BK and DK64.
Oh, and one last thing regarding Mr. Ferrand’s ‘slagging off’ of Perfect Dark:
1. Perfect Dark = bad level design? Erm, excuse me, have you even played this game? Sure, some levels were bad, but on the flipside a lot were very good. Played NOLF recently? That’s an example of good AI, but bad level design wich doesn’t take advantage of the AI. Perfect Dark, on the other hand is sublime. Think how the Area 51 levels all ‘fit together’, or how Villa was actually made on a console game.
2. Cliché story? Hmm… I have heard complaints, but I personally liked the storyline, I only felt Rare made a mistake by not ‘forcing’ their users to view the briefings as they were not as apparent as GoldenEye‘s… and then there were a lot of gamers who wondered what was going on, when simply reading the briefing would have helped no end. Also, each time I replayed the game, I understood more and more of the story… and even though I would have preferred new secret levels, I liked the idea of showing past, present and future events through different characters’ eyes (and heights!).
3. Finally… annoying voice-acting? Elvis annoying? Maybe. But, think for a minute (and dash me to heck if I’m wrong) but… why was his voice like that? Was it annoying? Or was it possibly distinguishing? When Elvis spoke, you knew it was Elvis. Same for Carrington. You didn’t have to wonder who was who. Many games do this, because they only have a certain amount of time to get across each character; hence stereotyping. Many times have I been confused in games and films where two characters looked alike (eg. first time watching ‘Ronin’) or sounded ‘normal’ as opposed to distinguishing. If all the characters had what you may think is a normal accent and dialect, how would you tell who was who? It would be much harder.
-Martin Badowsky/Alf-Life
You’re right about the inevitable emails concerning “more gay Mario rip-off platformers”: we got those when the game was Conker’s Quest/Twelve Tales, we tried to change it to appeal to a different audience, and we just got a different set of complaints from the original audience. You can’t please everyone. In fact it seems you can barely please anyone these days. Tsk.
Cheers for the PD comments… yes, ‘distinguishing’. Of course that’s what we were aiming for. Yes.
By the way, before anyone accuses me of bias, let me just say that I’d gladly have printed some emails defending Mr. Ferrand’s stance, only there weren’t any.
Dear Mr. Scribes,
You’ve just won the Millionaire Sweepstakes! 2nd place, to be exact. Your prize is: Receiving an e-mail from me!
Now that I’ve gotten your attention…
1. What would I get if I beat all of the DKR times that are shown during the Adventure 2 credits? (other than a trip to my local asylum, mind you)
1.5. I’ve included these “practicallyimpossibletobeat” times in 2 rubbish attachments so all the inhabitants of Scribesland can enjoy their magnificence. You had better print this e-mail, as I had to buy a TV card for my computer to get these images. Does the text file have the correct times? (320×240 is the best the card could do on such short notice.)
2. Same as #1, except replace “DKR” with “Blast Corps“, “times that are shown during the Adventure 2 credits” with “Platinum Times”, and “asylum” with “mental institution”.
3. You and Uncle Tusk both have the same e-mail address, how are the e-mails sorted between you and that elephant, er, barbarian, if the sender doesn’t specify? Unless… You and Uncle Tusk are the same person! That really explains a lot, except for why Rare would have 2 letter pages with the same person? (Or two letter pages at all for that matter, it seems unnecessary.)
3.5 (This is not a question. Just leave whatever comment you feel like typing.) Ahem, When I first started surfing this site oh so many years ago, I thought that the name “Uncle Tusk” was referring to the elephant that I saw in the DKR demo at my not-so-local Wal-Mart oh so many years ago. (Taj DOES have tusks, Tusk DOESN’T have tusks (at least none that I can see))
4. What is the proper British way to spell e-mail: “e-mail”, “eMail”, or “email”. Or don’t you guys care at all?
5. How did you hide the “Ginger Beer” in Banjo-Tooie and the “He’s a h*** of a guy!” in the DK Rap from the ESRB?
6. Please don’t make any more people-shooting games. I’m not allowed to buy Perfect Dark OR Goldeneye due to their human-harming violence (even though I’m 15). I was allowed to buy Jet Force Gemini because it’s all about hurting bugs and not people, so PLEEEEEEZE make a JFG sequel! You could combine it with a Blast Corps sequel on the same Gamecube disc!
7. I HATE YOU I HATE YOU I HATE YOU (Rare in general, not you in particular) for making Perfect Dark and Goldeneye! More to come after Conker’s BFD release.
8. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU (Rare in general, not you in particular) for making JFG, BC, B-K, DKC3, and many others! More to come after DinoPlanet release (I hope).
9. I own Donkey Kong Land 2 for GameBoy. Do you think I should get Donkey Kong Country 2 for SNES?
10. I spent days (well, minutes spread out over days) choosing the questions and checking the punctuation and spelling in this e-mail. You had better appreciate it.
11. I hate Mrs. Pie, Mr. Pie, and Mr. Trout.
Sincerely,
Mike-ro$oft (a.k.a. Mike-ro$oftooie, evil twin of Kablooie, Bwahaha (a.k.a. Mr. Mike-ro$oft, Mr. Pants’ distant cousin (a.k.a. Mike-ro$oft Kong, Lanky Kong’s long-lost stepbrother (a.k.a. King Mike-ro$oftaling, King of the Mike-ro$oftinjos))))(I like Parentheses (maybe I’ll be a programmer))
P.S. I’m sorry for trying to get your attention with that Millionaire contest thing, feel free to hit me on the head with Mr. Pants’s hat if it makes you feel better.
1) Once more then, for the record: if you beat those times, you get the satisfaction of knowing you’ve beaten the times set by the debug departments of Rare, Nintendo of America and Nintendo Co. Ltd. (Japan). Is that not enough?
2) Same as #1, except replace “Is that not enough?” with “That’s probably not enough, but we don’t care.”
3) Theoretically, Tusk deals with gaming problems and I deal with… other rubbish. In practice it doesn’t always work out like that, natch. If a letter’s specifically addressed to either Scribes or Tusk, it goes there regardless of relevance. Otherwise I decide where it should go. Usually the bin, I’ve noticed.
4) That’s right.
5) We didn’t – they’re just not even remotely offensive. Or so we thought. Sigh.
6) How dare you? Comments like this are slanderous and hurtful to the insect community. Insect rights! Big up the exoskeleton massive!
7-10) Oh, I can’t be arsed.
11) As if those speciesist anti-insect comments weren’t enough, there you go flaunting the kind of destructive knee-jerk hatred that proved directly responsible for Mr. Trout’s death. I’m saddened and appalled.
Dear Rare,
I’m just writing in response to Joe F. Tangco’s letter about your “hard games”. I just want to say the guy’s an idiot and should receive a swift kick in the crotch by Mr. Tusk. Your games are not hard, if anything they’re a little on the easy side. Oh, and I’m not some little nine year old. I’m 15 and have been enjoying your games for almost 5 years now. Anyways about that Joe F. Tango idiot, the Dark Sims are not impossible, anyone with half a brain and the hand-eye coordination of an amoeba can plainly see the Dark Sims’ weakness. They only really have one simple strategy, and that is to hunt you down no matter what, so therefore instead of running at a Dark Sim like an idiot why don’t you let it come to you? Then just simply aim at its head for an easy kill. Of course some of the more experienced gamers like myself have other tactics. However, this simple one seems to be best for such a terrible gamer as yourself.
Also, how about making a very challenging game that makes you think for us seasoned gamers Rare?
-Ben Calhoun
“You’d have to be damn quick to pick a DarkSim off with a head shot unless you had a cheat active,” says the designer. “I always fight DarkSims with proximity mines and explosive weapons, because you never get that much of a chance against them when they can see you. The DarkSims’ weakness is their inability to recognise explosive ordinance. They move faster, are more accurate, cheat with reloading and are designed from the ground up to be unfair.”
However, in response to this, the lead programmer reckons: “I can well believe someone can pick DarkSims off with headshots. Just because you can’t, doesn’t mean no-one else can… we need to hide your true gaming ability, poor fellow.”
And in response to that, the designer says: “I didn’t say that I couldn’t defeat them, I just said that I had a preferred method of fighting them. And they are particularly worrisome enemies too. Which you would know if you played anything other than EverQuest. You big wuss. You don’t have a gaming ability to hide anymore. It shrunk and fell off.”
Look what you’ve done, man! You’ve started a fight! Mutiny in the ranks! I hope you’re satisfied.
This is a long-shot…
I was at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It was about 6:00 in the morning and I was watching the sun come up in a dive bar called “Waldos”. As I was taking an inebriated p*ss, I noticed quite a peculiar ad on the wall of the men’s bathroom. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Your ad for “Conker’s BFD” had me laughing so hard I urinated all over my leg. Maybe it was the ad, maybe it was the situation. All I know is I want a Conker poster in my room, so you got to tell me what I have to do to obtain one.
Healing my Liver in California,
Thanks for any information,
Bryan
This sort of suggests that you’d like to wet yourself every time you walk into your room. Why?
Anyway, Nintendo are likely to be responsible for this one, as we’d have had to fly halfway round the world with an armful of posters and Blu-Tack to get that interesting bit of promotional material in place ourselves. This kind of stuff is probably reserved for advertising, though, so I wouldn’t pin your hopes on getting one direct from NOA (and I doubt they’ll want to pay your dry cleaning bill either).
However, I’d imagine there’ll be some kind of Conker poster Win Stuff shenanigans at some point, once all this imminent Tooie PAL competition business blows over…
Hey Scribes Guy,
I know what I want and I want it now! I want the locations of the dogforsaken car parts in Mickey’s Speedway USA, ‘cos Nintendo Power and those drunkie online gaming magazines are TOO DA@* LAZY to show the locations of the DA@* CAR PARTS!!! Where the heck are these babies, anyhoo? Perhaps one is hidden in the swampy Everglades? Perhaps one lies in the Banjo-Kazooie cartridge, so you must Stop ‘n’ Swop? (Sorry! please don’t kill me!) Or perhaps… perhaps they’re all hidden in the super-secret debug version, shoved up Mickey’s arsenal! Please help! Give me a map or give me directions! I’m sure you’re driving other gamers mad as well! Do tell, O Jibey Scribes! Release your information online!!! Thank you.
JetDog (Y2Kong)
Indianapolis, Chicago, Malibu and Philadelphia. That’s what I’m told. Though the designer could simply have been describing a quiet night in watching the racing on TV with soft rock music playing in the background, a rum-based alcoholic drink in one hand and a squirty cheese sandwich in the other. You might have to be British to understand that. I’m not sure.
Categories: News
0 Comments
This post has been left all alone with no comments. Don't leave it lonesome - give it some company with a comment.