What are your thoughts on Bubsy?I just finished replaying Bubsy 1, and it's a flawed but ultimately decent game. It has a ton of cheap deaths - especially in later stages - but it also has big levels with lots of secrets that avoid being giant, boring mazes like many Western platformers of the era. They're more like Sonic's levels, where you have high and low paths. Once you accept that you should be gliding almost all the time, the cheap deaths aren't as common either. The common fall damage complaint goes away too when you realize gliding prevents fall damage. As ulillillia discusses, the game is also very fast. Especially after you know the levels, you can zip through them and it feels really nice flying at high speeds. The game could've used something other than one-hit deaths, but when you are able to avoid dying the game feels nice to play. Yarnballs feel a bit pointless if you don't care about score, because you need a whopping 500 to get a 1up. Something like 100 or 200 would've worked better, but perhaps it's a plus that you don't need to hunt down collectibles so much. You can focus on speeding through the levels, occasionally grabbing 1up/2up shirts.There are lots of nice animations too, Bubsy is genuinely pretty charming in this one. So Bubsy 1 is a C-, 6.7/10 sort of game, but it has a soul, and is fun to play when you're not getting hit by off-screen projectiles. Michael Berlyn put some genuine heart into it, and did impressive job considering it was his first action game (he previously worked with Infocom, so mostly text adventure games).
Bubsy 2 is shit. Rather than building a better game that realizes Bubsy's potential (high speed platforming with gliding through expansive levels, classic cartoon aesthetics), it clamps down on Bubsy's speed. The levels become boring mazes. Bubsy 1's art could be a mixed bag, but there were some nice graphics and the music was catchy. Bubsy 2 feels like a fever dream with random visual clutter and terrible music. It's seriously one of the ugliest 16-bit games I've played. I feel sick playing Bubsy 2. It's a nerf ad.Bubsy 3D obviously sucks balls, but at least it has the excuse of being a relatively small team's attempt at building a 3D platformer before they were fully established after Mario 64. Somehow I'd rather play it than Bubsy 2.Not retro, but Bubsy 4D is great. Very short with an emphasis on speedrunning, and there's not much to it besides nice movement, but it's enough.Haven't played the Jaguar game, Fractured Furry Tales, but it looks pretty bad.
>>12610178I'd rather play with bubsy than bussy and that's where my thoughts on it end
>>12610179how did you type all that in 13 sec
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/genesis/586079-bubsy-in-claws-encounters-of-the-furred-kind/reviews/140717ulillillia's review is worth checking out. He gives it a 7/10, and mentions some things people don't normally talk about, like this:>The major thing that I love about Bubsy, of which is the sole element that has kept me at this game for literally thousands of hours (yes, thousands, over 15 years), is the extreme speed. To this date, I have yet to find a game with a faster scrolling speed than Bubsy. While it takes special conditions to accomplish, I very strongly enjoy the thrill of watching everything whiz by at 32 px/fr (8 screen-heights per second), which is insanely fast, and I can very well get faster than that, up to my record (taking 3 days of leaving the system on overnight to accomplish and the best possible) of 95/fr. I also like messing around with gliding on woolie's cheese wheels, especially in levels 2, 8, and 11.or the sounds the yarnballs make>The sound effects seem to be Bubsy's main audio weak point. I jump, but only about 5% of the time, I hear the "boing" sound. The sound effects don't sound much like cartoons, or anything for that matter. They sound cheaply made. However, one of the good sides to Bubsy's sound effects is present when you collect yarn balls. Each color has a different pitch and, as you collect them, you can, in a way, make your own music. This is my favorite part about the game's sound effects.It is pretty cool how the yarnballs have a different pitch, makes collecting them more fun.
>>12610183I care deeply about Bubsy, and can type out my thoughts about that Bobcat very quickly. Also, I would recommend the Sega Genesis version over SNES or Super Bubsy. The game feels a bit nicer to play on Genesis.
>>12610193>Also, I would recommend the Sega Genesis version over SNES or Super Bubsy. The game feels a bit nicer to play on Genesis.Yeah, but you do lose a few unique music tracks. On the other hand, the Genesis has some slightly-different arrangements that I feel ties the melodies together better.
>>12610183But seriously, I was over the character limit so I just cut and pasted the second half into a new post.>>12610193The Japanese game magazine Famitsu gave Bubsy 22/40 (7, 6, 4, and 5). I haven't found the text for that review yet, I'm curious what it says.The bosses in Bubsy are weird. The later ones throw a bunch of random crap out, so your best strategy is to get on top of them and hit them repeatedly with your glide until they die. Like the final boss can be over in seconds if you do this, or else you're dealing with this:https://youtu.be/gSlcea_EjlIIt does feel pretty nice hitting them repeatedly and staying in the air with the glide though. I feel like that mechanic could've been expanded into something more interesting. It's a bit like bouncing off Robotnik multiple times in Sonic too.Interviews with Michael Berlyn:https://youtu.be/jlYW3pof8JIhttps://www.sega-16.com/2006/08/interview-mike-berlyn/https://retrovolve.com/a-chat-with-bubsys-michael-berlyn-part-1-the-rise-and-fall-of-bubsy/
>>12610204Yeah, I'll have to try the other versions again later to confirm, but my impression is that the music sounds a bit nicer on Genesis too.
EGM's Bubsy review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiGmwV2VL8E
Back in the SNES era I used to like it, though could not get far. Years later when I tried playing it again all the flaws became much more apparent.The first one was heavily flawed. It was clearly trying to copy Sonic, but got just about everything wrong. It's ridiculously easy to outrun the camera, this can happen in Sonic but you have to actually be good, in Bubsy it's common, and this is a problem because of it's other flaws.Everything is one-hit deaths. Unlike Sonic where you have the rings, in Bubsy anything that touches you kills you, and some of them are confusingly sudden or jarring, such as manholes suddenly shooting up and hitting you as you was in the air, not to mention how weird it looks when Bubsy runs into an enemy after running at Warp 5 and then just stops and falls over. In trying to make the death animations cartoony they it confusing to die terms of gameplay. The hitboxes can be odd as well, enemies can kill you when you can swear you didn't touch them.And above all, another big problem is that despite most of the levels being very very vertical, the game has fall damage. You are constantly traveling hundreds of feet up, and falling from about 20 feet or so will kill you.There are many other flaws, but those are the three big ones from how it messed up copying Sonic.Bubsy 2 was weird and felt more like an incomplete game. It's nice that you can choose your level so you can see them all, but it just makes progression lacking, the levels are all also basically just mazes with mini games in between. Out-of-nowhere Nerf product placement too.Haven't played the Jaguar one meaningfully to comment, but the first level alone was an annoying vertical climb of random floating objects.Nothing more needs to be said about 3D.Or the two attempts a few years ago at a revival.Ironically the latest one seems to actually be a decent 3D platformer.
>>12610217>The first one was heavily flawed. It was clearly trying to copy Sonic, but got just about everything wrong. It's ridiculously easy to outrun the camera, this can happen in Sonic but you have to actually be good, in Bubsy it's common, and this is a problem because of it's other flaws.>Everything is one-hit deaths. Unlike Sonic where you have the rings, in Bubsy anything that touches you kills you, and some of them are confusingly sudden or jarring, such as manholes suddenly shooting up and hitting you as you was in the air, not to mention how weird it looks when Bubsy runs into an enemy after running at Warp 5 and then just stops and falls over. In trying to make the death animations cartoony they it confusing to die terms of gameplay. The hitboxes can be odd as well, enemies can kill you when you can swear you didn't touch them.Yeah, that's pretty much how I see it. I appreciate the effort, but it wasn't executed well enough. It's also bizarre to me that, despite taking inspiration from Sonic and studying it, they didn't think to include something similar to the ring mechanic.It does feel nice when it works (even if the physics are wonky too), but it requires too much memorization. There's no way you'll play through Bubsy without a large number of annoying deaths. Still, I honestly feel like I'd rather play a mess like Bubsy than a polished but kinda boring game like Castle of Illusion. That's a polished game, but there's not much freedom in how you play it. There's more excitement in Bubsy, in-between the cheap deaths. >Bubsy 2 was weird and felt more like an incomplete game. It's nice that you can choose your level so you can see them all, but it just makes progression lacking, the levels are all also basically just mazes with mini games in between. Out-of-nowhere Nerf product placement too.Yeah, you basically summed up my feelings on it too. Added to that, there's only like 3 different repeating level themes, so it's very repetitive.
Bubsy 1 got a huge marketing push. It also amuses me that it got a cartoon pilot sponsored by Taco Bell, of all people. Which probably explains the Southwestern look of the cartoon.
Replayed the first one on SNES a couple months ago and its fine. I love this song:https://youtu.be/2DhlwvaTSTM?si=Bafbh6gOh_ZiKKcA
>>12610231Yeah, the music is pretty nice. I like that music, but the river level where it plays isn't my favorite. It's not so bad, but having to use the raft is kind of annoying.In my experience, most people have relatively fond memories of Bubsy 1, even while acknowledging the flaws. It's the later games (mostly 3D) that gave the series its meme reputation.
>>12610217>Ironically the latest one seems to actually be a decent 3D platformer.It is. The main issue is it's over very quickly, even going for 100% you can finish it under 10 hours. On the other hand, a 3D platformer that doesn't drag on isn't the worst thing.
>>12610214Game Informer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UgD-zOuA6kNice hack that's worth a shot, it tries to address a lot of the common complaints about the game. https://youtu.be/UUPl5fmgZT0
>>12610179>Haven't played the Jaguar game, Fractured Furry Tales, but it looks pretty bad.Oh, it is absolutely bad. Terrible enemy placement, mazes with switch hunts and dead ends, bosses with limited animations and weird hitboxes that you don't know when it's safe to hit them or not.
I played the Jaguar one a lot as a kid because we had a Jag and it was a cute cartoony game (also played a lot of Rayman and Zool 2) but looking back as an adult...it's shit. Levels are huge, annoying mazes. Deaths are cheap. Hitboxes are confusing. I could never beat a boss as a kid and that turns out to be because they're badly designed. There's a part of me that still feels some intense nostalgia for hanging out in the basement in the summer playing Bubsy, but it's very much missing being a kid, not the game
>>12610268>>12610281Both the Jaguar game and II seemed to fundamentally miss the intention of the first game. Like rather than building on the design of the original and making it work better for speed, they just shoehorned Bubsy into boring maze levels.
>>12610238That music was for the train stages. This was for the river.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kamrJbhjQyI
>>12610178It's amazing that it's survived for 30 years based only on the strength of the first game, which was kind of just an okay rental.I think it must be that the character design is so distinctly 90s people want it to succeed, because otherwise another bit of our childhood dies with it. If Squeeze-Its, Fruitopia and Shark Bites came back people would want them to succeed too even though they were never that great to begin with.
More like a bridge too short.
>>12610527Whatever blows your hair back!
>>12610328Ah yeah, you're right.
>>12610350>It's amazing that it's survived for 30 years based only on the strength of the first gameI feel like the sheer infamy of 3D has more to do with Bubsy’s continuing relevance.
>>12610179Fractured Furry Tales is worse than Bubsy 3D.I don't care if it's a hot take. It's the objective truth.
Super Bubsy is a weird version. A PC port of Bubsy that came out in 1995 with new graphics and some extra features like difficulty modes. You can also collect TVs to unlock parts of the Bubsy cartoon pilot.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9iaDybjr9v8The load times between deaths are lame and some of it feels cheap/off to me compared to the console versions, but if you're craving more Bubsy it's an interesting novelty.
I think the first half of Bubsy is better than the second half.
>>12610207https://files.catbox.moe/qk31dk.jpg
I find it funny how after Bubsy 3D the WHOLE series got retroactively declared shit.As can be seen by looking into several magazines the first game was genuinely liked by most.It's a colorful kinda charming little platfomer with really catchy music. Many said they the one hit deaths are a bit harsh but otherwise the game is fun and fine.It was not the big media boom franchise Accolade had hoped for (Cartoon series! Figures! Bubsy-Os for a complete breakfast! Toys! ...) but it was well liked when it was still just one game with a bobcat character who maybe could get popular maybe not, who knows...It's important to keep their viewpoint of the time in mind. Even Bubsy 3D, being one of the first steps into 3D without needing a PC got at the time a Gold X award. There is nothing suggesting that he was "bought" or anything, he just liked the game and gave it the benefit of well, it't one of the first tries to step into 3D. There's always someone who likes it. I bet there is at least one person who loved Superman64 because flying through rings just resonated well with him and was just his cup of tea in Zen like manner.
>>12611885>the first game was genuinely liked by most.Yeah right. I had the game on sega as a kid and even back then I knew it was shit. Maybe tendies were more forgiving since their bar for good action platformers was lower
>>12612038>>12611885I had it as a kid on Genesis back then and enjoyed it a ton, although even as a small child I recognized it wasn't the best game I owned. I still preferred Sonic and other games. But I also considered it a pretty good game. There were far worse games I tried back then, garbage like Awesome Possum. I have more or less the same judgement now as an adult. The game has flaws, but is still fun and decent enough. I still replay it every now and then and enjoy myself. I think a lot of the flaws got exaggerated over the years too, like the fall damage isn't as big of an issue as it sounds. I died maybe once or twice to it in my last playthrough.
>>12611532Thanks! It seems like their takes on the game are similar to the ones in this thread.
>>12612521>but in reality, it is a thin, plain cat action game.What are the best CAGs?
>>12610214And people say EGM was better than Gamepro.
>>12612548Speaking of GamePro, here are their Bubsy scoresMore reviews: http://www.defunctgames.com/reviewcrew/3/bubsy-the-bobcat-what-did-critics-think-at-the-time
>>12610268>>12610281https://retrovolve.com/when-did-the-world-stop-loving-bubsy/>You can see that while the author of this letter was disappointed by the Jaguar’s Bubsy game (Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales, which isn’t even acknowledged in the overall numbering scheme of the series), he bought it because he thought the Genesis version (the original game, I assume) was "cool."
>>12611885I only ever played the first game, having been one of the few SNES games I had growing up. Occasionally the whole family would try to cooperate to beat it for an afternoon and fail, then we'd usually just default back to something else like Mario All-Stars. The first level or so is extremely charming, everything later into the game is bizarrely brutal and there's a lot of stuff you simply won't know the outcome of until you blindly attempt it.We liked the game enough to keep trying every so often, but having asked said family members what they thought of it years later I more or less got back "It was cute but way too hard" from all of them.
What 16-bit Sonic-inspired platformers besides Bubsy actually copied Sonic's speed? It feels like Bubsy is one of the few that actually goes fast. Even if one-hit kills often ruin that speed, the ability to move fast is there. Games like Socket or Zool don't go nearly as fast. Buster's Hidden Treasure is pretty fast, but not as much as Sonic or Bubsy.I think it might actually be the fastest.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaCjWUOg8roSeems like a good game to speedrun.
>>12610178>C-, 6.7/10 sort of gameChanged my mind a bit after replaying even more, it's a solid 7. It definitely feels a lot better to play with more memorization.
>>12613080The speedy gonzales game and uniracers.
Bubsy is a (bad) copy of Sonic the Hedgehog but 10 times worse
>>12613492I considered Uniracers, it's fast but I don't really consider it a platformer. I forgot about the Speedy game, they even made a Sonic bootleg hack out of it.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPGiMPz8ts0
I was only able to beat the second game as a kid but I've always wanted to like playing the first game because I like it on an aesthetic level. The first area with the hills and cartoony houses is pure sovl.
