Bubsy is one of the many...specimens that appeared in an attempt to rival Sonic the Hedgehog in the early 90s, and he was less doomed from the start than you would initially believe. It sold pretty well, better than Sparkster oddly enough, then Accolade pressed their luck a few more times and now Bubsy has just about mainstream infamy for his piss and shit games. The games are probably more known nowadays for their poor quality than even games featured in early AVGN episodes. I was wondering today, though, if the first title was really that bad. I've played some absurd bullshit and was kind of expecting to get around to this one sooner or later anyway, so might as well quit delaying.

What I learned is that it sucks ass, but it's not necessarily unsalvageable. This is about what I was expecting, a mediocre platformer at its core that was then rendered nonsense due to a few glaring flaws. The biggest issue is probably the combination of screen crunch and Bubsy's utter incompetence. He is probably three times as fragile as a glass bottle. It seems like they were more focused on making various ways for Bubsy to die than making actual fun platforming. He has a downright strange amount of death animations for a game this old, and they're always provoked with a single touch. If you take one hit he'll melt or shatter or split in half or some other shit. There are lots of old games where you only have one hit, but imagine if you were playing like Vectorman or something and he was that weak. That's what the screen crunch is like in this, it's another one of those games where the level layouts really don't match the screen size at all. Also he builds up ridiculous speed too, so you'll constantly crash into things that weren't even on screen long enough for your brain to register that they exist. Truly delightful.

At the start of each level, Bubsy makes some lame quip of sorts. You would think "oh, good, at least he doesn't talk as much as later installments," but it also plays over again each time you die, which is bound to be a ton of times. It gets incredibly grating. I don't see what the point of that is anyway, when instead you could just fade to black for a second and spawn back at a checkpoint instead of looking at the level's title card every time and hearing him spout dumbassery. It sounds like a minor nitpick, but it really starts to wear on you fast when you're the one with the controller.

The thing is that I feel like this game could definitely be fixed. If Bubsy himself had better physics, he had more hit points, and the screen was zoomed out a bit, it would probably be pretty serviceable. I don't at all think it's one of the worst ever, but it's got a lot of insanely frustrating issues. Not as horrible as a lot of content creators would lead you to believe, but still pretty goddamn bad and not worth a play.