Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind

Publisher: Accolade
Developer: Solid State
Release Date: May 1993

This franchise gets a lot of hate in retrospect, mostly because of the 3D sequel that was later released for the Playstation, but the original game was actually not so bad.

While it seems ridiculous now, Bubsy was one of the more hyped 3rd party games of 1993. It appeared in the midst of the "animals with attitude" craze initiated by Sonic the Hedgehog, and was a dyed-in-the-wool imitation, from the smart-aleck main character, to the open, multi-tiered level designs, to the game's pacing and physics. In fact Bubsy was regarded by some onlookers at the time as potentially being the Super Nintendo's answer to Sonic. Though it was later released for Genesis as well, the SNES version came out first because of an Accolade lawsuit with Sega at the time.

I bought into the hype completely and remember purchasing Bubsy as summer vacation began in 1993. Though I was disappointed that it was not quite as fast as Sonic, I wasn't displeased altogether. Bubsy is definitely in the upper echelon of 16-bit platformers. Though it doesn't do anything groundbreaking, the levels are huge and challenging, with lots of items to collect, and the graphics and sound are above average for the period. Bubsy was certainly hefty for a platformer of that era, weighing in at 16 megabits, and was packed with colorful animations and the sound samples of famed voice actor Rob Paulsen to give the Bubsy Bobcat character life. Since at the time the only other games of that size were usually fighting game conversions like Street Fighter II, notice was attracted for that fact alone.

Bubsy generally received positive reviews and was successful enough to merit a disappointing sequel released a year later. Accolade, which had re-branded itself upon Bubsy's launch as offering "Games With Personality," obviously had big things planned and intended the series as a flagship for the company. A cartoon pilot was actually made, a special edition was produced for Windows PC, and a next-generation sequel was licensed for the Atari Jaguar. Poor follow-ups however ultimately doomed the franchise to obscurity as the 32-bit era dawned, but it will always be infamous for the failings of its final installment, Bubsy 3D.