Former developer at Rare Chris Seavor has been sharing video game history on Twitter. And today's little tidbit is a pretty fun one — Seavor has found the first-ever drawing of Conker the Squirrel.
Seavor teased his followers earlier today about "some 'curious' old scribbles" that he found, and as promised, he later shared photos of the sketches that he created from back in the day. Rare fans will know that Seavor not only designed the squirrel, but he was also the voice of the mischief-maker
Conker looks drastically different from what we're used to from Rare's foul-mouthed squirrel — who is probably most well-known from Conker's Bad Fur Day. In fact, the sketch Seavor has is from a time when Conker was going to be the star of a family-friendly platformer, known as Conker 64.
The design reflects that, too — Conker has much bigger ears and a pointier tail, and he's even wearing clogs in one doodle. It's way closer to a red squirrel than what we eventually ended up getting in Diddy Kong Racing (though his ears are still slightly pointed there) and subsequent appearances. Another big difference is that the original Conker looks to be wearing overalls or dungarees. Eventually, the squirrel would swap this out for a simple top, and eventually a zipper jacket.
One eager fan asked whether this design was inspired by Snarf from Thundercats, with Seavor admits that he has "no memory" of what he was thinking when he created these doodles.