Retro game publisher Retroism recently dug up an unfortunate remnant from the ’90s mascot craze and dropped two of his games on Steam in an attempt to drum up interest in a full-blown Bubsy the Bobcat revival. No thanks, we’re good!
Riding a wave of twisted nostalgia, Retroism managed to get Bubsy Two-Fur — a bundle of the first two Bubsy games for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis — Greenlit on Steam. Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind and Bubsy II seem to be running inside some sort of emulator wrapper, giving fans a fresh way to pay for Accolade’s mascot character’s only good games.
The third game was an Atari Jaguar exclusive, which was probably a bad move. And the fourth…
…is widely considered one of the worst games of all time.
Bubsy 3D was a technical mess, as was often the case with 2D characters making the leap to three dimensions. But his problems were more than technical. His attitude, his sass — it worked in the ’90s, to an extent. As we grew up we realised the whole “mascots with attitude” thing had created an army of arseholes, and we wanted nothing more to do with them.
I still don’t. Bubsy‘s great as a simple platformer and a reflection of video game culture at the time. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
The First Five is the first five minutes of a game with light commentary. Once the five minutes are up, so’s the video.
Comments
26 responses to “The First Five Minutes Of Bubsy Is All The Bubsy We Need”
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I think I remember this game from an after school tv show back in the day
There was a bubsy tv show??!
Although I think he’s likely referring to A*mazing, I feel like there may have actually been a Bubsy cartoon too.
Nah, A*mazing. Kids gameshow which involved collecting things from mazes. One of the rounds was a Super Nintendo challenge of some sort, usually collecting coins in Mario Kart or balls of yarn in Bubsy.
man I remember A*mazing, I wished I could be in one of the teams competing, but growing up in a rural location there was fat chance of that happening.
That show killed me. It was like everytime the kids competing had never watched the show + never played video games. LOOK BEHIND THE F**KING CACTUS YOU F**KING MORONS!! Also the goal for mario kart was to get the most coins. I wouldve just stop and gone slowly over the area full of coins… /facepalm. + Their inability to know where the keys of a keyboard are FRUSTRATED THE SH*T OUT OF ME!!! A A A A AMAZING!
Yeah, I always found it frustrating to watch at times when I was a kid. Even for the SNES segment, why weren’t they all practising Bubsy, Donkey Kong Country, Mario Paint (the fly/gnat swatting game with a mouse) and Mario Kart at home? Some of them were really shitty at playing them. It’s also not like the games changed every year!
If I were a parent whose child was going on the show in the ’90s, I would coach them on the SNES segment and the games so they knew exactly what to do.
ah, nostalgia.jpg
I loved Bubsy as a kid. These recurring articles reek of cynicism from someone too young to have experienced it at the time.
Ditto. I loved it as a kid, saw something about it being greenlit on Steam, and in a fit of nostalgia, dragged the Sega out and started playing. Turns out, it’s still a fun little platformer. Fairly unique world designs, lots of speed and fast movement, multiple vertical tiers for running along, making each stage fairly fresh even after a few runs. I had a ton of fun as a kid, and a ton of fun yesterday. Where’s all the hate coming from?
Well Jontron did make a video about the game some years ago. Sometime’s people hear another’s opinion and then make it their own without trying the product.
Or old enough to have dredged through the sheer glut of these games at the time.
I’d rather see a B.O.B revival, just to know if he ever got off that asteroid at the end.
Yep, old enough and not wearing rose coloured glasses.
What could possibly go wrong?
Not sure if any one else got that chapter start reference, but thumbs up to you, sir.
Also, Bubsy was fun. A bit of Mario fused with a bit of sonic. Far from perfect, but may be worth a revisit. I’ll keep an open mind.
I still own this on megadrive. It was and is a terrible game and he was an awful, annoying mascot in a time when every company trotted out some cynical and thrown together character to emulate the success of sonic. These failed mascots were a dime a dozen, B.O.B, Zero the Squirrel, james pond , zool, mick and Mac etc etc
how about Cool Spot? the 7up tie in game…
Oh yeah forgot that one!!
Look.. I don’t think it was really horrible at the time. It’s only horrible in retrospect. For us Snes owners he was the closest thing to a fast sonic mascot that we had. I mean sure you died easy… and the level lay out was horrible. And that stupid roller coaster level sucked balls.. But at the time It was ok? I think? lol 😛
Balls… Of yarn?
Seriously though Bubsy had a fair bit of charm in the days of me being too young to properly laugh at Duke and was more fun than Gex
It was all about Earthworm Jim back in those days!
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/11/02/retroid
Bubsy 3D gave me nightmares as a little kid gave me trouble sleeping for about a week. I don’t know how to explain it… It was just horrible, something was scary about it, the graphics made no sense. Somehow it just disturbed me!
I thought we established last time that bubsy wasn’t horrible when it came out just mediocre? Why all the articles that make out like bubsy games were a mess? Does it need a reboot probably not but back then the games were uninspired but decent.
people only seem to remember that mess of a 3D game on PS1… That game truly was abysmal.
The original 16 bit games? loved em!
EDIT: Wrong article.