Top 5 Arnie references in Rare games

by Lerako on Mar 21st, 2012

If Rare has taught us anything over the years, it’s that pairing up unlikely duos and sending them on their way will always prevail over evil – and for a while, it seemed that Banjo-Kazooie would be the most diverse we would see mismatched pairs go. We were wrong of course, as this list is about to reveal; perhaps the strongest bond of all comes from that of a few socially awkward programmers at Twycross and a musclebound Austrian action movie star. Wait. What? Rare seems to have an infatuation with Arnold Schwarzenegger that goes beyond including his name in Jeopardy for the NES, but rather sneaking in his various catchphrases and assimilating his impossibly thick accent to no end. There is a chance that he could be coming around and threatening the brittle keyboard tappers to put him in their games, but we digress. In a list that comes of nearly as silly and plenty as stupid as the Top 5 Notorious Rare Toilets we ran a few moons ago, we hope to get to the bottom of this amorous Arnold affair. These are the Top 5 Arnold Schwarzenegger References in Classic Rare Games.

 

#5. DIDDY KONG RACING – AHNOLD MAGIC

Starting off with something simple, Diddy Kong Racing has the widest crossover audience for cute and furry racing enthusiasts to lovers of violence and carnage, so naturally Arnold is going to fit right in. Each time you manage to best Wizpig in your campaign file and endure the credits, you’ll find a secret Magic Code tucked in between the programmers and artists that will change various aspects of your game once you’ve entered it in yourself. One such code is called ARNOLD, and when entered into the Cheat Menu will increase the size of the racers exponentially. While it’s counterpart TEENYWEENIES finds itself a bit more cumbersome to remember, towering over Taj the Elephant Genie with a little help from Arnold has never been easier.

 

#4. BANJO-KAZOOIE – THE JINJONATOR

As we’ve pointed out before, the collectible Jinjo’s scattered about the worlds of Banjo-Kazooie can be a tad bit annoying with their faltering cries for help and their tendencies to find themselves precariously perched in front of Gruntilda’s latest death trap. If you can manage to bear them until the final match up against Gruntilda however, you’ll find your efforts rewarded as the once feeble Jinjos aid the bear and bird duo with taking down the airborne witch. The final blow is to be had by neither ursine or avian however, as the duo are forced to resurrect an all-power being dubbed the Jinjonator, a portmanteau of Jinjo and Terminator, the latter which found itself as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s titular role in the 1984 film of the same name.

 

#3. CONKER: LIVE & RELOADED – MACHINE TEDIZ

If you’re unfamiliar with the Terminator series of film, with phrases like “I’ll Be Back” relayed in a thick Austrain accent bringing only a lingering emptiness that can only be compared to your sheltered existence, have no fear! The E3 2004 Trailer for Conker: Live & Reloaded transcribes the film concerning a robotic uprising and resulting war perfectly, and turns that into a conflagration against the Squirrels and Tediz Forces that began from the original Bad Fur Day title. With the Machine Tediz representing their Terminator counterparts, the narration describing a similar scenario isn’t complete without the inclusion of a Terminator-esque theme. Live & Reloaded wasn’t the first title from Rare to pay tribute to this theme though, as the entries below can attest to…

 

#2. PERFECT DARK – MR. BLONDE’S REVENGE

If you can manage to complete every chronological mission in Perfect Dark on Agent Difficulty, you’ll unlock a bonus mission called Mr. Blonde’s Revenge, the first of the four Special Missions in the game. In this mode, you take control of the aforementioned Mr. Blonde as you take care of a plot-point that was initially solved off-screen that involved an ulterior escort of dataDyne head, Casandra De Vries. As you make your way through the dataDyne Headquarters, you’ll hear an entirely new tune composed by Grant Kirkhope that borrows heavily from the Terminator main theme. Further building on the parody, confronting Casandra will have Mr. Blonde echoing Arnold’s famous line of “Come with me if you want to live” with “Get to the Helipad if you want to live.”

 

#1. CONKER’S BAD FUR DAY – BUFF YOU!

With Conker’s Bad Fur Day parodying The Matrix, The Godfather and A Clockwork Orange among others, The Terminator finds itself tucked in snuggly with the events of the Barn Chapter where players are tasked with prodding at a large sentient bale of hay. Things aren’t quite what they seem as the bale has its face torched, revealing its robotic interior and selecting the modified Terminator catchphrase Buff You, A*&%@#*! from its library. The ensuing battle is cut short after the floor collapses underneath, but as Conker rises from the grimy setting of the basement, the fully revealed Haybot references the film by walking through a thick wall of fire. This is complemented spectacularly with a new parodied theme for the Arnie-inspired android.

Categories: Top 5 Lists