Bubsy 3D

This article was copied (instead of imported) from the now-deleted Crappy Games Wiki.

Bubsy 3D

In the third dimension, everything can go possibly wrong. But Bubsy must not have been ready, as this was his breaking point for 20 years.

Protagonist(s):	Bubsy the Bobcat
Genre(s):	Platform
Platform(s):	PlayStation
Release Date:	NA: November 25, 1996 EU: August 13, 1997
Developer(s):	Eidetic
Publisher(s):	NA: Accolade EU: Telstar^[1]
Country:	United States
Series:	Bubsy
Predecessor:	Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales
Successor:	Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back

"Stunning[ly agonizing]... Original[ly a torture method]... Bubsy 3D climbs back to the top [of the horrible games chart]... Check it out[at your own risk]!"
— EGM, probably

Bubsy 3D, also known as Bubsy 3D: Furbitten Planet or Bubsy is 3D in Furbitten Planet, is a 1996 platform video game released for the PlayStation. It's the sequel to Bubsy in Fractured Furry Tales for the SNES, the fourth Bubsy game in the series, and was the last one for over 20 years until Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back was released on October 31, 2017.

Development

Bubsy 3D was developed by Eidetic and published by Accolade. The game was designed by mainly Michael Berlyn, the original Bubsy creator, with a team that included fellow Eidetic founder and industry veteran Marc Blank (of Zork fame). Blank also programmed the game. According to Berlyn, Accolade asked him to return to the series in hopes of revitalizing it, after the disappointing performance of the second and third installments of the series. Berlyn agreed under the condition that the game would not be a rehash of the original game, and set out to make one of the first 3D platformers.

Development of the game started in April 1995, with a team of approximately eight people. The team paid particular attention to Bubsy's body language, taking inspiration from Warner Bros. cartoons. Some art direction was overseen by Warner Bros. animator Chuck Jones. Programmer Christopher Reese described development changes due to the team's lack of experience with 3D technology. Due to console limitations, the environments were created with flat shaded polygons instead of textured polygons, which was less typical of most console games of the time. Still, the characters were Gouraud shaded and texture mapped. Berlyn said he chose this unusual combination because it made the characters stand out, ensuring the player's attention would be on Bubsy rather than on the environments. At the time, Bubsy 3D was one of the few PlayStation games that ran in high resolution. The cutscenes between stages were animated by hand in 2D, and the 3D polygonal models were then made to mimic this animation. Sprites were used for the HUD, menu items, and power-ups. Sound effects, music and voice lines for the game were implemented with ADPCM as separate layers. The voice of Bubsy was done by actress Lani Minella.

Berlyn attended the January 1996 Consumer Electronics Show to help demonstrate the Bubsy 3D beta personally. While wandering the floor he saw the demonstration for Super Mario 64, another 3D platformer, but one built with Nintendo's best resources in order to serve as the flagship title for a new gaming console (the Nintendo 64). Berlyn realized that Bubsy 3D looked greatly inferior to Super Mario 64, but as Accolade was already committed to releasing the game, it was too late to do anything except make Bubsy 3D as good as possible within the remaining time.

In Europe, distribution was handled by British publisher Telstar Electronic Studios under their budget label "Telstar Fun & Games". Accolade planned to release a version for the Sega Saturn, and announced plans to take advantage of the more sophisticated movement of the Saturn's analog controller. However, the Saturn version was ultimately cancelled.

Plot

Bubsy's old enemies from the first game, the Woolies, abduct him and take him to their home planet Rayon. It's up to him to collect atoms, and rocket parts, and to defeat the conjoined Woolie Queens, Poly, and Ester, to escape. If Bubsy doesn't find all the rocket parts it malfunctions, leaving him stranded on Rayon. If he does find all the rocket parts, the rocket flies so fast that it sends him to the prehistoric era.

Why It All Went Wrong

The plot is confusing, nonsensical, and stupid. The "good" ending is arguably worse than the "bad" ending; regardless of the ending to this game, Bubsy is still stranded away from Earth, meaning the Woolies are still free to invade it, whether you beat the game 100% or not.
1. This is made even worse by the fact that Bubsy 3D was the final game in the series, and it would have ended the Bubsy series on an extremely bitter note, until Woolies Strike Back was released.
Horrendous graphics and presentation. While colorful, the graphics are almost mostly nothing but texture-less polygons and the floor is mostly a checkerboard pattern, or random polygons have textures and the game seems to be done completely as if it was made in Windows 95 due to its ugly polygonal graphics.
- Speaking of the color palette, it is very bland, nauseating, and dull to look at.
- To add further salt to the wound, both Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot, as in the first game on the PlayStation, were made before Bubsy 3D, and those games look miles better than this.
Dreadful level design, to the point that one must find bugs to progress the levels in some cases. The later levels can get confusing as to where you're supposed to go, even with the arrows, these are inconsistently done enough to be shown as hard to find any path or the ending point.
Each level has two hidden collectible rockets, but it's never explained how you're supposed to get them, and they are even harder to find due to how bad the level design is.
Speaking of the presentation, the in-game animations of enemies, obstacles/etc are very sluggish with the feel of moving at 8 frames or less per second. The characters look poorly designed, besides Bubsy since he's the best-looking model in the game.
- Speaking of which, Bubsy's rendered in-game 3d model is ugly. While his cover art render of his appearance looks like a joke, his in-game design, while the best-looking in the game is uhm.. a sight to behold.
- The menu is awful and had one of the single worst presentations in gaming history, along with Elf Bowling, since it look poorly designed and is looking very generic; however, it Isn't as bad as some other games such as Superman 64.
This game tries way too hard to be funny, with all of the level names being cat puns of other pieces of media, and some puns with the levels themselves have nothing to do with the puns in the slightest, and tons of unnecessary fourth-wall breaking from the titular Bubsy.
Dreadful sound design; the second and third-level music consists of mostly annoying sound bites added to the first-level music, marginally high-pitched, and having weirdly placed accordions in the third level. This is better shown when the music, despite some good soundtrack being found here and there, can sound pretty off-putting or poorly made as well. The noises the enemies make aren't any better.
1. The worst music is the one that plays in the second level, where in Caddcarus' review of the game, sounds like people doing Arm Farts.
Speaking of unbearable voices, Bubsy constantly says one-liners that are utterly unfunny, witless, and hyperactive one-liners are very annoying, and the most insufferable, downright aggravating lines of dialogue ever put to sound. And the worst part is...Bubsy never shuts UP.
- Lani Minella is a very talented voice actress, best known for voicing many characters such as Rouge the Bat from Sonic Adventure 2 and Luke Triton from Professor Layton, but the lines she was told to say along with having her talent being completely wasted as she was giving it her all, and as a result, it made it all so hard to listen to Bubsy's harsh & squeaky tone of voice when he says literally anything.
Very poor navigation: to beat the first boss of the game, you have to glide over the residue of the yellow energy balls the boss fires at you to fly higher so you can damage the boss, but you wouldn't know that without looking it up.
The controls are extremely unresponsive: If Bubsy is running at full speed, it will take him more than 2 seconds after releasing the D-pad for him to stop. You also have to turn yourself towards the direction you want to move to instead of holding the D-pad or joystick much like a tank, which is very uncomfortable, awkward, frustrating, clunky, and stiff for a 3D platformer. It also makes something as simple as getting the basic collectible item difficult. The jump controls are even worse since you might often move on the side making you miss jumps or enemy stomps, which can lead to cheap hits/deaths.
1. While tank-style Controls are usually never a bad thing, those styles of games are made for the Player to take their time and not rush it, while in Bubsy 3D's case, this is a fast-paced game and a pure platform game, in which controls like this doesn't work with this genre, as proved with Rascal and this game.
The gliding is uncontrollable as well, and if you look carefully, you will notice that you actually fall faster than when you're not using the gliding.
False advertising: The North American cover of the game states that it received a positive review from EGM. EGM gave it a negative review that was quote-mined for the cover, meaning that the developer of the game was using fake reviews to make players think that it has received another positive review.
The camera horrible, uncontrollable and very clunky. Every time you jump, the camera always changes to an overhead view which makes platforming harder than it already is. On top of that, whenever you get hit, the camera spins around in front of the character, causing a fair amount of disorientation.
The Woolies don't move, but they only shoot small projectiles which are difficult to dodge because of the horrible controls. The game continues to reuse them over and over without any form of variation aside from recoloring. Even though they don't move it's still hard to jump on them due to the controls and horrible hit detection. Some of them you can't even kill as well and some of them are invisible.
The enemies will even spawn from nowhere, causing more cheap shots on the player quite easily.
The European version's back of the case consists only of screenshots without any description, which is what every game case is supposed to have to explain the gameplay rapidly. To add insult to injury, the American version's back of the box actually has text along with screenshots, and this version was released months before the European version.
Since Bubsy is a cat, he has super drowning skills, but because of the flat, texture-less polygon graphics, it's hard to tell what's supposed to be water. Even worse, every time you touch water, you are automatically forced to see about 20 seconds of Bubsy drowning.
When there is water below the platform and Bubsy runs off a ledge in atleast just one pixel, he does not enter a free-fall like in most other platformer games, so he can land on a lower platform, instead, he instantly dies, whether if you don't die or see a death animation. This happens a lot in level 2.
Poor soundtrack that gets annoying quickly, since a lot of it sounds the same, and doesn't fit the game itself, since it sounds more like circus music.
- Some of the musics also are downright annoying to listen to, since they either sound ear bleeding, or at times it sound incredibly poor due to sounding like fart or music engine that doesn't work properly.
Even though collision detection might exist in this game, enemy projectiles can still go through platforms that don't make sense.
The engine used for the game caused some really bad depth perception, as enemies tend to be further away than they seem, and can mess up your jumps as a result.
Despite the decent roster of bosses, they are all poorly made, and are very poorly paced, with two of which are fought at the same level for no reason.
When you finish a level you always get to see clips of Bubsy dying, which feels pretty weird for a level completion screen.
Speaking of those cutscenes, the CGI animation looks like FMVs from any bowling alley.
The title screen looks very weird, because Bubsy's face is uncanny looking, depicting a big smile with visible teeth and creepy-looking eyes that would remind some people of the Joker from Batman. Also, the start game button is put in two places.

Redeeming Qualities

The animations when you stay still, some death animations, or the cutscenes are interesting and are mostly, pretty funny because they're based on either cartoonish skits done in a way of Warner Bros.' comedic possibilities from their classic cartoons with Bubsy getting hurt from his buffoonery as an element of outlandish, enjoyable entertainment (especially one of them being used as a meme no-less) or Bubsy doing interesting activities that are worth observing (ex. Bubsy messing around with the TV settings as a highlight).
Although badly executed, you can use collectibles to shoot them at enemies, which is a unique idea.
The soundtrack (by Loudmouth Inc.), is surprisingly good and catchy, some tracks might make you want to dance.
- Some examples include "Catatomic Catastrophe", "Daze of Thunder", "Bright Light Big Woolies", and "Mortal Bobkat".
You have the option to shut Bubsy up in the options menu by disabling Bubsy's dialog, and because of this option, it makes him less annoying and insufferable.
Surprisingly, the game impressed Sony, which would make them buy Bend studio, and from then on, they'd go on to make great games, like the Syphon Filter series, Resistance: Retribution, Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Days Gone. Showing how this game was remarkable as it led to improvement in video game programming for future titles.
Christopher Reese, the lead programmer of the game, actually admitted that the game was a disaster, especially after he saw Super Mario 64, and that he would have preferred to start over from scratch if Accolade had let him.

Reception

"What were they thinking?"The Shit Scale

Games that are debatably bad	High level of shit contamination	The very high category	The severe zone	Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	Major code red
			👆

This product belongs to the "Severe Zone" category of the AVGN's Shit Scale.

At release, critics gave mixed reviews for Bubsy 3D, as at the time very few 3D platforming games were published, with only two other games, Crash Bandicoot and Super Mario 64 being released in 1996.

Despite having many negative reviews, Bubsy 3D actually had a few good reviews with its release. Absolute PlayStation gave it a score of 67%. DieHard, GameFan, and Next Generation, however, reviewed the game quite favorably as well. Contrary to popular belief, PSExtreme is a real magazine, and it did actually give the game a 93%, along with their "Gold X Award" as approval to play the game, and is even listed on the EXcavate rating list from PSExtreme. However, due to the unpopularity of the magazine in general, a mistaken rumor suggested that the magazine and the award were fake, and Accolade simply used them as a way to promote the game.

However, retrospectively, Bubsy 3D was critically panned by critics and fans alike, and it is now considered as one of the worst games of all time. It has been said that even most Bubsy fans hate this game.

Many critics called this a Mario rip-off as Super Mario 64 was released earlier in the same year, and say this game is worse than the movie Plan 9 from Outer Space and Battlefield Earth. Bubsy 3D's reception was so negative that Accolade went out of business shortly after its release in 2000.

The lead developer had said that the game was supposed to be an early 3D game, but no one accepted that excuse, because other far superior 3D games came out before Bubsy 3D. Because of that, he tried to blame this game's failure on Super Mario 64.

When SomeCallMeJohnny and Nitro Rad reviewed the game, they both stated that it would've been passable had it come out before Super Mario changed the industry back in 1985.

Despite what was said on the cover, EGM stated they never said anything positive about the game and gave it a 3.25 out of 10. The quote was taken completely out of context from a preview article and twisted to make it sound positive. Said quote didn't even come from the review itself.

In his second wish list episode, The AVGN said the game felt unfinished and by that, he meant "it was barely started at all."

Surprisingly, the game found a rather interesting selling point which several YouTube game reviewers mentioned: It's so bad that it needs to be played to be believed. Caddicarus commented that it's a good thing that the game exists, as it serves as a good "How not to make a video game" example.

YouTube game reviewer The Retro Replay has "Bubsy 3D" as the lowest possible score in his rating system, and is his most hated video game. Once he stated, "The only thing worse than getting the Bubsy 3D rating, is actually being Bubsy 3D".

DX has declared it the worst video game of all time.

Trivia

Coincidentally, the North American version was released on Halloween 1996, or October 31, 1996, exactly twenty-one years before the next Bubsy game.
On the back of the box, they advertise having life pickups, which is a standard feature in most games.
The game was originally going to be released for the Sega 32X, but due to the unsuccessful European release of the 32X, Accolade held back the rights, until the game would be released on a more stable platform.
A Sega Saturn version of the game named Bubsy III, was planned, but was canceled, due to the game's poor reception. It was going to be based on the original 32X version.
On the back of the UK version of this game's cover, there are no advertisements, just pictures, implying they even knew how bad it was.
It spawned the death scene meme where Bubsy explodes, showing how memorable Bubsy 3D's death animations were.
There was a scrapped Japanese release in the game, as in the files, there is an unused copyright screen for a Japanese release of the game.
There is also an unused death animation with Bubsy falling through the ground and waving a white flag with an! mark on the flag. At some point during development, fall damage might have been planned at some point.
The reason why the game looks bland was because they tried to do HD textures while other games on the PS1 had blocky textures, only to find out that HD textures ate up a lot of memory, which the PS1 didn't have.
The game's complete name is a reference to Forbidden Planet, a 1956 sci-fi film.
All of the game's .EXE files have notes left by the developers.
The North American version supports Memory Cards, but the European version doesn't. The graphics for the Save/Load menu are still present, however. The title screen is also a bit brighter and smaller.

Videos

Comments

Loading comments...

↑ Published under the Telstar Fun and Games label.

[1] Published under the Telstar Fun and Games label.

[1]

Bubsy 3D

Contents

Development

Plot

Why It All Went Wrong

Redeeming Qualities

Reception

Trivia

Videos

Comments

Navigation menu

Bubsy 3D

Development

Plot

Why It All Went Wrong

Redeeming Qualities

Reception

Trivia

Videos

Comments

Navigation menu

Search