Conker's Bad Fur Day's Great Mighty Poo Boss Fight Is Soft Locking Xbox Series X Cons

[Nergal]

 

Once again the incredibly fast load times of Xbox Series S/X are causing a Rare Ltd. title to function not as intended, this time soft locking players from progressing past the Great Mighty Poo boss in Conker's Bad Fur Day. Being stuck in a room filled with poo really stinks, especially for those attempting to beat Conker's Bad Fur Day as fast as possible.

Another Rare Ltd. game was affected by the Xbox Series S/X's fast load times, but the effects were less detrimental than the Great Mighty Poo soft lock. Players who wanted to enjoy the nostalgic journey of 2008's Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts on the current-gen Xbox found that an integral character appeared less often than he did in the original game. Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts loads so fast on the Xbox Series X that LOG, the comedic and informative robot, doesn't have time to crack his infamous loading screen jokes. The rest of the game plays tremendously, but the increased loading speed removes a small portion of the game's charm.

Conker's Bad Fur Day, on the other hand, suffers from a far worse loading error that stops players from progressing past the Great Might Poo boss fight. The soft lock was first reported by Arbliterator, a Conker's Bad Fur Day speedrunner, along with another speedrunner, Inthedarkness5. According to multiple clips that Arbliterator posted to Twitter, the music during the Great Mighty Poo boss fight is forced out of sync by the game's fast load times, which then breaks the boss fight entirely. Players are required to throw rolls of toilet paper into the boss's mouth, but the soft lock makes it so that Great Might Poo never opens his mouth.

Arbliterator speculates that the soft lock is caused by the gaming loading too quickly forcing the music to desync from the boss's cutscene. During the boss fight, Great Mighty Poo will sing opera-like notes opening his mouth wide signalling the player to take their shot. However, if the boss fight soft locks, the opera performance will continue, but Great Mighty Poo will not open his mouth, almost as if he is a ventriloquist. The soft lock can be fixed if the player pauses their game and waits for the music to come to an end, but this fix is detrimental to speed runners looking to get a world-record time.

Luckily, Rare Ltd. responded to Arbliterator's Twitter thread and has sent the footage of the glitch off to the right people. Of course, Conker's Bad Fur Day was developed for the Nintendo 64 back in 2001. While long load times were expected back in the day, no one would have thought they were essential to the functionality of the game.