Conker the Squirrel was a red squirrel who appeared in many of Rare’s video games. He first appeared in Diddy Kong Racing alongside Diddy Kong and received his own series of platform games. However, the most notable game centred around the red squirrel was Conker’s Bad Fur Day, one of Rare’s more mature games, which replaced the intended family-friendly, Twelve Tales: Conker 64. While digging through some old boxes Tim Stamper, a co-founder of Rare, found some old never, released games, including the cancelled Twelve Tales: Conker, and decided to share them with the internet.
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Tim Stamper Finds Some Old Games
In 2008, the Stamper brothers left Rare, and based on the many photos he shared with the internet recently, Tim Stamper took quite a few things with him. He started by sharing an image of several plastic storage containers, boxes and what looks to be a cardboard cut out of Conker, along with the words, “Are people still interested in this junk?!” And then told interested fans to head to Instagram for sneak peeks of the retro game collection.
Among the collection, he found the now-very rare Donkey Kong Country Crate, which contained a copy of the platformer, folders from the DKC production and a SNES console. He also found Twelves Tales: Conker’s development cartridges, which he posted an image of captioned, “I have way more than Twelve Tales to tell…”
He later posted a short clip using the development cartridge to boot the game. He switched on the Nintendo 64 and let the game run through a quick logo and intro sequence, which saw Conker being harassed by some green enemies. He ran back across to harass them back before being chased by an orange T-Rex. A masked wizard rose onto the screen before Stamper abruptly switched the N64 off.
The intro has a similar vibe to other Rare projects, specifically Banjo-Kazoole’s musical intro. The cartridge’s date, 26 May 1998, indicates that the game was preparing for E3, which occurred between the 28th and 30th of May.
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Fan Response
The internet knows very little about Twelve Tales: Conker, with the highest-resolution screenshots sitting at 312 x 224. However, Fans of Conker’s game series and video game preservationists went nuts over Stamper’s posts and begged him to post the ROM so people could check out the lost games.
When asked about preserving the game, the Video Game History Foundation commented, “We can if needed, we’ve got the equipment for it.”
Some fans compared the posts to Indiana Jones, saying, “This is like that one scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark where they have the warehouse filled with crates that contain the worlds secrets.”
This is an incredible piece of video game history, and fans are excited to see what other treasures Tim Stamper might have in his assortment of storage containers.
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TL;DR
- Tim Stamper, a co-founder of Rare, posted several images and clips of unreleased and rare video games he found while sorting through some items.
- Among the collection was a rare Donkey Kong Country Crate and the dev cartridge of Twelve Tales: Conker.
- The internet went nuts and eagerly awaits more clips and images from Stamper.
What did you think of the unseen footage of Twelve Tales: Conker?
Rare Co-Founder Uncovers Some Unreleased Treasures Written by Hannah Lieberum for Fortress of Solitude
