Retro game publisher Retroism recently dug up an unfortunate remnant from the 90s mascot craze and dropped two of his games on Steam in an attempt to drum up interest in a full-blown Bubsy the Bobcat revival. No thanks, we’re good!
Riding a wave of twisted nostalgia, Retroism managed to get Bubsy Two-Fur—a bundle of the first two Bubsy games for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis—Greenlit on Steam. Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind and Bubsy II seem to be running inside some sort of emulator wrapper, giving fans a fresh way to pay for Accolade’s mascot character’s only good games.
The third game was an Atari Jaguar exclusive, which was probably a bad move. And the fourth...
...is widely considered one of the worst games of all time.
Bubsy 3D was a technical mess, as was often the case with 2D characters making the leap to three dimensions. But his problems were more than technical. His attitude, his sass—it worked in the 90s, to an extent. As we grew up we realized the whole “mascots with attitude” thing had created an army of assholes, and we wanted nothing more to do with them.
I still don’t. Bubsy’s great as a simple platformer and a reflection of video game culture at the time. It doesn’t need to be any more complicated than that.
The First Five is the first five minutes of a game with light commentary. Once the five minutes are up, so’s the video.
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