E3 2014: 14 Best Moments From Microsoft’s Press Conference

7. Conker€™s Project Spark Appearance

Microsoft has been trying hard to make game creation easier for people for years, with Halo€™s Forge mode being one early example. Project Spark is Microsoft€™s latest attempt to make a user friendly game creator, but something surprising happened at the end of the reveal trailer. Conker was revealed to be in Project Spark. For those who don€™t know or don€™t remember, Conker was a character in Rareware€™s Nintendo games. In his first incarnation, he was just a squirrel that was in Diddy Kong€™s Racing. But he became a cult character when Conker€™s Bad Fur Day was released on the Nintendo 64, a game that aimed at a mature audience and used crass humor, violence, and profanity. While Bad Fur Day did get an Xbox remake when Rareware was bought out by Microsoft, the IP has been pretty much dead for a decade. Conker€™s appearance in Project Spark is an admission that Microsoft pretty much squandering Rare€™s game development talent on Kinect games. It€™s also an admission that Microsoft has bled Rare of a lot of its talent by cancelling tons of Rare€™s non-Kinect games. The fact that Conker is coming back as part of a game creation kit shows that Microsoft knows that the fans will make the games they want to play if they€™re given a chance to use the IPs they love.