This was printed in Playboy magazine in April 2001.
It’s hard to explain to people who weren’t around back then how loose the “rules” were for making games. Conker’s Bad Fur Day was definitely trying to market itself as edgy, but aside from some faith-based groups who would be upset, nobody really cared.
Even back then this kind of advertisement (and game) was an anomaly coming from Nintendo.
Yeah. One reason being that this wasn’t a Nintendo game. It was a Rare/THQ game. Nintendo didn’t publish this.
Rare was basically a second party developer back in those days. They were given access to internal tools from Nintendo, a direct hotline for help, hell they even developed Nintendo IPs, which was unheard of for a western developer and is still rare even today
Yes, very Rare of them.
Doesn’t change the fact that Nintendo only owned a minority share and that this specific game was not published by Nintendo. They had access to the development tools already, so it was no special treatment for Conker.
This even being on a Nintendo system–subject to Nintendo’s review–was a major change. Nintendo of America was as puritanical as it came up through the 16-bit era. Something like this releasing on a Nintendo system was unconscionable as late as 1995.
Nintendo famously changed their mind when Mortal Kombat 1 sold better on Genesis/Mega Drive than Super Nintendo.
Ah, from the minds that brought us Warhammer in electronic form.
More of an anomaly than it is today, TBH. The console stores and Steam really do not care anymore what goes up on their shop, as long as they can see even a little $$$ from it. Porn games on the eShop and Steam are rampant.