Young Conker Controversy

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Part of a series on Conker's Bad Fur Day. [View Related Entries]

About

The Young Conker Controversy refers to the online backlash against a redesign of the protagonist Conker from the popular 2001 video game Conker's Bad Fur Day. The character was revamped by Microsoft for the upcoming video game Young Conker by Rareware, which is set to be one of the starter games for the development edition of Microsoft HoloLens.

Background

On February 29th, 2016, Microsoft HoloLens, a new virtual reality system,^[1] uploaded a YouTube video of the making and gameplay of Young Conker to promote the development release of the HoloLens. The video receive over 100,00 views with over 10,000 downvotes in less than 24 hours. As of March 3rd, 2016, the video has over 339,000 views and more than 18,000 downvotes, with only 1,200 upvotes. There are over 4,000 videos on YouTube about the Young Conker and Microsoft HoloLens, including mirrors.^[3]

Criticism

Reaction to the representation of Conker was immediately and resoundingly negative. A thread in the NeoGAF forums about the reboot quickly received over 1100 comments, almost completely made up of fans who were in disbelief at the way the character was being drawn.^[2] Several YouTube reaction videos were created and became popular quickly, including one by YouTuber AlphaOmegaSin, who's rant video about Young Conker on March 1st, 2016 gained over 200,000 views in less than 24 hours.

Game review sites quickly wrote negative articles, fueling the criticism. Destructoid wrote that the Young Conker character looked like a "weird corpse" of the original.^[4] The Verge wrote that Conker looked like "a Hanna Barbara villain recovering from a cocaine bender" and published a sliding-bar comparison so fans could see the difference between the original and the new rendition.^[5] Kotaku UK wrote that the game looked "Awful, Just Awful."^[6] 36 separate threads about the video were posted to reddit,^[7] some with titles like "Oh my god, Conker, what's wrong with your faaace? (New Conker HoloLens game)," which was posted to the /r/twobestfriendsplay subreddit, where it received 18 points (85% upvoted).^[8]