This is a case of a sequel that learns NOTHING from the mistakes of the previous one by adding even more, on the one hand you have a "life bar" represented by the character's emotions, I even thought this game was "better" than the previous one before, but replaying it, I noticed that it's really quite bad, the gameplay is much worse, making Bubsy go up to 200 kHz just by holding down the d-pad a little, and worse, the stages don't even have much of a straight line and are full of enemies (or best mess of level design) making it very easy to take damage and the level design has gotten a lot worse, now it's a mess full of paths, and like I said, I like exploration, but this man, it looks like they used artificial intelligence to draw the level design, it's every disjointed and messy thing that looks like those art drawings that you don't understand at all, there are even some arrows that show you the right path, but come on, just because you show the right path in your game to compensating for the terrible and messy level design, does not mean that your level design is good, it just makes you a bad game designer, level design has to be well done, if there is little, it is empty and dull, but if it There's so much stuff to the point that it looks like "Where's Waldo", it becomes extremely polluted, has no identity and is boring to navigate. Ultimately, I don't recommend any game from this franchise.

Bubsy returns for more in this sequel they were too lazy to come up with a pun for in the title. It's still awful.

Bubsy 2 is formatted quite differently from the first game, so a lot of criticism from the first doesn't apply in the same way. Instead of being a straightforward platformer it's much more free-form, allowing you to pick from sets of levels and those levels often being designed like mazes. It sort of reminds me of Sonic CD. The issue then, is that Bubsy takes literally all of the flaws from that game and none of the positives at all. The levels are confusing in extremely poor ways-- arrows that point you in incorrect directions, instances where you need to go into a door multiple times as it leads to multiple different places like it's fucking Yume Nikki, and level mechanics that disguise themselves as background objects are just a tip of the iceberg on how Bubsy 2 designs its stages.

While all that may sound worse than the original, (and it is) there ARE improvements. One of the biggest being that Bubsy does not die in one hit anymore! This change is HUGE-- if I didn't know any better I would assume this game might be good hearing about it isolated. It makes both fighting enemies and scrolling the god-damn screen forward FAR less frustrating. Concerning fighting enemies, there's another improvement too: items. Bubsy 2 features both a gun and a screen clearing bomb, and they help immensely. The game's difficulty in general has been toned down and it makes for a much more "pleasant" (see: boring) experience for the most part. There's still definitely sections that have the amount of bullshit the first game did, but they're few and far between.

The worst part of this game though, is the presentation. The level themes and backgrounds feel like they were designed by an truly uncreative person on drugs thinking it'd help them be original. As for the music? Well, the positive is that this game has dynamic music. The negative, is that it plays at seemingly random times creating a truly dissonant and insanity inducing soundtrack. You can't look this up on YouTube-- you have to play it for yourself (or watch gameplay) to truly understand what I mean.

Overall, this game is terrible, and is even worse than the first one in places. I consider it better, but it's extremely reasonable to think overwise. Bubsy still sucks and you're an extreme contrarian if you say he doesn't.

Somehow Bubsy sold well enough, so I guess Accolade pushed for a sequel, did some bath salts, and pooped out this bad boy right here. There are a few changes made to the core gameplay, mainly that Bubsy can take three hits instead of just one...from enemies. There are still a ton of hazards that kill you instantly, and it really just makes you wonder what the point was. It does feel more fair, but hardly at all. He also has a couple items he can use now, but I didn't find any of them particularly useful except one that lets you leave the level and return to the hub if you get stuck.

Yes, the hub. This game does in fact include one, for some reason. There's an east wing and a west wing that you get to choose between at the beginning, but whichever one you choose doesn't matter. You can do the levels in any order, then when you've done five of them you go up to the next floor, rinse and repeat twice. The hub itself is really strange honestly, not only its sheer existence, but like...where the hell is Bubsy supposed to be? A spaceship? Does it say in the manual? Fuck if I know.

The level design, somehow, takes a major hit in this one. It reaches Death Valley Rally levels of confusing, and pretty frequently at that. The pyramid levels in particular are completely horrible and I couldn't get through them without a video. There is basically no way to tell where to go, except for some arrows which do an honestly lousy job most of the time. Screen crunch is still an issue too, and the camera is jerkier than before, to an almost nauseating extent. To top all that off, the music is even more maddening than the first game. It really feels like you're going insane sometimes with this one. It's vile.

I guess Bubsy's sprites are better by a little. He doesn't give you that putrid smirk he does in the first game. He does have voice lines now when he dies, though, which get annoying immediately.

If you have to play one of these, you're gaslighting yourself and you seriously shouldn't, but if you fail to come to that realization, I suppose the original is slightly better. I wanted to like this one more, but the level design in particular is seriously that bad. What a joke of a series. I sure hope Accolade doesn't try to make the jump into 3D with this bastard.

This Bubsy sequel addresses a lot of complaints that people have with the first game. Instead of one hit deaths, Bubsy now has a hit bar face thing (It's not a bar, it's a picture of Bubsy's face whose expression changes to show you how much damaged he's taken), band-aids to regain hit points, and weapons! The weapons come in the form of a nerf gun and a smart bomb (which is a bomb with a graduation cap on it). It also has non-weapon items that can be of help if used correctly, including a black hole thing that takes you out of the level and back to the level select floor (which is only useful in the Timed mode - I'll get to that later) and a diving suit that takes you into a minigame when you fall into water (instead of instantly dying). To add a little variety, they also added airplane levels and sections of the outer space level where you can drive a spaceship.

Also included in this game are characters from the animated pilot that I assume no one saw until the advent of youtube. (When I saw the advertisement for the cartoon special inside the box of the first game back in 1993, I really wanted to see it, but I couldn't find it in the TV guide, so I missed it. :( I never quite forgave myself until I saw it on youtube two weeks ago. :) ) The characters from the animated pilot include Arnold the Armadillo, who is controlled in the truck minigame and Terry and Terri, who you can control in the new two player mode, which I never tried because I have no friends.

Instead of playing all of the levels in order, the game lets you pick any floor (two sets of three floors, the higher ones are more difficult) and any level within the floor. As a kid, I beat the first floor on the east side and was like "yay, I can beat Bubsy II," and every time that I played it thereafter, I played the levels I knew that I can beat so I can see the ending and feel good about myself. For a bigger challenge, you can select Grand Tour, which will require you to play all three floors of difficulty on either the East side or West side.

The levels can get annoying when you are trying to figure out where to go to find the exit. But once you figure out where to go, you can challenge yourself even further and play timed mode! If you select the Grand Tour on timed mode, the times in many of the levels are quite tight, which will force you to speed run each level. Doing this is where this game shines the most since it doesn't have the one hit deaths of the first game, which would be a nightmare. With three hit deaths, healing items, and the black hole thing that can take you out of a level if you realized that you are taking too long, it is actually quite fun and rewarding to finally beat that time by a second or two.

So, now that I built this game up so much, you might ask why I only gave it the same star rating as the first Bubsy game. Well, there are a few things that could have been done better. Figuring out where to go can often be frustrating. There is only one boss in the entire game and the ending is the same whether you beat the game on the easiest floor or Grand Tour mode. You would have thought they would have added something to reward you for beating the more difficult levels, but nope. The music is good and catchy, but it does a weird thing where it changes depending on what part of the level you are in. Sometimes it changes three times in quick succession, which just seems like bad programming.

Overall, this game is definitely worth a try, especially if you enjoyed the first game.