[h1][i]“This is gonna be cool!”[/i]
~Butt-Head[/h1]
Nowadays, Bubsy comes with one heck of a bad rep. Even people who never played Bubsy games know that the pantsless bobcat is bad news. The thing is, though, it wasn't always like that. I mean, Bubsy was never in a major league, but in order to understand Bubsy, it's important to understand the time period itself.
While nowadays there's that huge, [i]huge[/i] gap between AAA projects and games with a strict budget, back in the day things weren't that simple and rushed games that only looked like a real deal yet felt like complete garbage were still a thing. Actually, that was just the thing that led to the infamous video game crash of 1983 – publishers were buying cheap and often unfinished stuff from all sorts of people. And even though post-crash times brought some quality with 'em... Let's just say that in a way nothing really changed.
Take legendary Super Mario World by Nintendo and The Wizard of Oz by Manley & Associates as an example. Both came out the same year for the same exact platform (SNES). Both looked bright and impressive. Both were family-friendly. You were able to find them on the same exact shelf in your local store. Yet one was a fantastic game, while the other was garbage.
That's just how things worked. While some companies had vision and did their best to deliver a high quality product, lots of others were out for a quick buck. Because, well, we as a species never learn. And let me tell you, while chasing that buck, people did some crazy sh*t back then. Take Atari for example. They tried to reverse-engineer Nintendo's 10NES lockout chip. Which led to that well-known lawsuit. And Bubsy? It was totally that kind of story.
When the development began, Accolade was already in the middle of their legal battle with SEGA. And yes, the reason was that Accolade tried to reverse-engineer things too. And while SEGA tried to sue 'em for that, they found no better thing to do but to steal SEGA's legendary mascot too. That's what Bubsy initially was. A Sonic rip-off.
All the cool guys had mascots at that point. Accolade wanted one too. They didn't want to be second-grade, they wanted to be cool! So, they asked Infocom's veteran Michael Berlyn to make 'em one of those mascots. Michael took the task seriously and started to study the competitors. As a result, he came up with bobcat character who, exactly like Sonic, loves to go fast. Rings became wool, lots of level design was taken from Sonic as is (take that carnival level for example), etc. Like I said, Bubsy originated as a Sonic rip-off. And after Accolade actually won the lawsuit (believe it or not), there was nothing standing between them and the store shelves. I mean, come on. They got away with reverse-engineering. Naturally, they're free to imitate Sonic. The question was – can they?
Like I said, though, Bubsy wasn't really that bad. But yeah, mistakes were made. With the biggest one being that, even though the character himself was designed to go fast, the environment was designed as something more Mario-like and therefore didn't give Bubsy enough space to act like Sonic did. Sonic was a speed demon. While Bubsy ended up being a bit rough and overall unpleasant. Especially thanks to how the first game in the series also made him die from one hit / touch. Think Sonic who's always on zero rings. Not so fun, huh?
Still, Bubsy wasn't a catastrophe. Wannabe? Sure. But not a catastrophe. Looked fine too. SNES came out relatively recently and its games still looked a lot like playable cartoons to kids. Bubsy had that. With tons of pop culture references on top. Thanks to all that... Well, you'd still wish your parents bought you, say, Mega Man X or Disney's Aladdin, but all in all, you weren't screwed.
Even the sequel wasn't really that bad (there were even plans for an animated series, characters from which appeared in Bubsy II). Things in the sequel became a bit too confusing thanks to how Accolade tried to switch from straightforward level design to something more labyrinth-like, while quality was a bit lacking (Accolade just tried to add too much stuff – from SHMUP-like levels to mini-games that players were able to access from the main levels, thanks to which it ended up being a quantity-over-quality situation), but thanks to how they also added a proper health meter... Again, it was playable.
The horrors began with that infamous Game Boy version of Bubsy II. Which felt a lot like an unfinished prototype. And, of course, everybody heard of Bubsy 3D. But guess what? We're not talking 'bout those today. Today we're talking about the first two games. Because that's exactly what we've got in this collection. The first two games. SNES versions specifically. And here's a question... Why?
I mean, despite looking slightly worse, Genesis / Mega Drive versions felt much more smooth thanks to SEGA's powerful CPU. Even with lots of things on the screen, there were close to no slowdowns on Genesis, so all in all, it was [i]the[/i] version to go with. Yet we can't have it here. They took only the first two games in the series and gave us versions that can't even count as the best.
Which... isn't even my biggest complaint. I mean, why not? They wanted to re-release SNES versions and they did that. Who cares? Whatever! The real problem is, when we buy old games of such kind nowadays, we expect quality-of-life features. Like that rewind thingy that allows the player to, well, [i]rewind[/i] the game back for a bit to avoid the death that just happened. The first Bubsy could totally use some of that with its cheap deaths that were everywhere (one-hit death, remember?). Also, things like optional visual improvements and filters are welcomed and, of course, we all love ourselves some extras. Now, what does this collection have? Well, it has... nothing. That's it. Absolutely [i]nothing[/i].
The first thing you'll see after launching this product is a rather ugly window that looks like something that came from an ancient-old version of Windows. And if you ever used an emulator before... OK, I'll keep things short, they used Snes9x, OK? They took that ancient-old emulator, added some minimum customization to it and here we are. Well, at this point they've replaced Snes9x with Mednafen (a more accurate emulator), but... Are you sh*tting me? Are we seriously paying for Mednafen now? I mean, it's just that. A free emulator that lets you map buttons and save states by using keyboard shortcuts. There's nothing else here.
It sounds like I'm trying to make a drama out of nothing, but think about it. They literally sold us two ancient-old games and a free emulator. With zero improvements and / or additions. The same exact emulator that you can get as a part of RetroArch here, on Steam. And no, I'm not saying “I'd rather download the ROM online, it's free!”. Sure, it's free. But it's also illegal [i]and[/i] I do like having things in my Steam library. It's just that when I do use emulators to play something, I know that I need to go through all the clunkiness and emulation-related problems because what I'm dealing with is a free product. Paying real money to go through the same exact unpleasant experience? Imagine them re-releasing an Xbox game, but instead of adding proper gamepad support, throwing in an x360c and saying “that'll do”. What Butt-Head decided it'll be cool?
So, at the end of the day, I must say I'm... confused. On the one hand, I don't mind the games. Those aren't my top choice, of course, but I did play 'em back in the day and to be honest, I did have my share of fun with them. Both back then and now. Despite Bubsy and Bubsy II being nothing more than wannabe attempts, they can still be fun if you're into retro. But the way they've treated this specific release is unforgivable. Well, that's probably why they've removed it from the store and replaced it with a much better collection. But that's, my friends, a story for another day.
