Christmas 1993 was my introduction to Accolade’s furry mascot, with the first Bubsy gift-wrapped under the tree alongside the Super Nintendo Mario All-Stars bundle. While Bubsy earned a few positive reviews in the gaming magazines of the era and was certainly presented nicely, it didn’t take long for adolescent me to realise something was off. A game where momentum builds quickly, à la Sonic, but with a one-hit death system? Everything that could possibly go wrong did. The next few Bubsy games never made future Christmas lists and, having played them recently, I didn’t miss out on anything other than hardship and lame puns.
The Bubsy franchise has been brought back a couple of times before – first in 2017’s Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back and then in 2019’s Bubsy: Paws on Fire – and, par for the course for the series, both ended up as the butt of many jokes and received a negative reception. Now under the wing of modern-day Atari, it very much seems the prolific publisher has set its sights on making Bubsy an important part of its brand: a familiar face it can call on to stir up nostalgia and perhaps provide a chuckle in the social media age.
The task of giving Bubsy a modern makeover has fallen to Fabraz, creators of the speedrun-focused Demon Tides and Demon Turf – two similar 3D platformers with colourful visuals and a light, comical tone. Presumably, Atari handed them the reins not only because of their expertise but also because it knew they could bring Bubsy into modern times by incorporating the online speedrunning features found in those titles. Conveniently, this ties in with the bobcat’s existing move set: gliding, pouncing and running on all fours to get around swiftly.
Bubsy 4D has a storyline that mostly exists to justify hopping between different worlds to collect things – in this case, scattered parts of a golden fleece – while also introducing a range of new adversaries. The Baabots, as they’re known, are robotic sheep, and there are three of them to battle at the end of each world. That is to say, there are only three worlds here, each with a handful of stages. Two have a handcrafted aesthetic, not unlike Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts and LittleBigPlanet, while the remaining one is a junk planet formed from outdated tech. A stolen UFO acts as a hub, populated by Bubsy’s extended family, and it’s here that new outfits and upgrades can be purchased, along with access to a VR booth housing a few supplemental areas.
Stages are formed from floating platforms spaced far apart, along with the occasional NPC-populated island with a set piece, areas connected by winding tubes, twisty chutes to roll down at speed and towers to climb. Most stages offer a choice of paths, or at least a minor deviation, leading to either a yarn-ball stash or a valuable blueprint used for permanent upgrades, such as a ground pound or an additional health point. On that note, Bubsy can now withstand three hits (hurrah!), which, together with the well-placed litter-box checkpoints, makes things feel considerably more modern.
Our reluctant hero sports a sharp new look and is far more cynical, with an astute self-awareness of his past failures. Every death has a unique animation, a couple of which are genuinely amusing. The same goes for Bubsy’s range of meme-esque expressions, which help carve out a more relevant identity.
This 3D platformer is heavily centred on long-distance traversal, with combat largely redundant thanks to infrequent enemy encounters and the ease of locking on for a pounce attack. Beyond that, its three reasonably challenging boss fights serve as the only real change of pace. These encounters are appropriately testing, each tougher than the last, and will likely require a few retries to learn their patterns, as there are no mid-fight health top-ups.
In addition to gliding and pouncing, Bubsy can flutter in the air for a few seconds, wall-jump, briefly scramble upwards and turn into a giant hairball to roll through pipes and along chutes. Mastering how to use these skills in conjunction with one another – say, transitioning from a double jump with a flutter into a pounce – takes a while, and there’s a tutorial to put you on the right path. However, this extended move set is also cumbersome, with different abilities mapped to each of the four shoulder buttons and, in some instances, an additional button press needed to cancel a move. The controls are not entirely reliable either, resulting in jumps that feel like lucky flukes – especially when the camera haphazardly spins just before landing – and plenty of instances where Bubsy bounds clean over small platforms and falls to his doom.
After struggling with the later long-distance platforming sections, I was often left wondering whether I should have been gliding instead of pouncing, and vice versa, or whether I had overlooked a unique chain of moves entirely. If you miscalculate a jump, Bubsy will grab onto a wall… but only once, and he will jump away from it rather than upwards. This leads to more unavoidable deaths. Likewise, if you fall from a platform, Bubsy will usually respawn at the point before you fell, which sounds fine, but if you happen to hit a random platform during the descent, you’ll instead respawn from there, resulting in lost progress. Because of these factors, much of Bubsy 4D’s challenge lies not in its branching level design and the hazards within it, but in the controls themselves. This makes for a very different experience from something like Super Mario Odyssey, where movement is effortless and feels natural. I’m sure it can be mastered and may come into its own during speedrunning, but regardless, anything more complex than a double jump and a follow-up feels awkward.
It doesn’t help that the worlds are quite empty. They may be themed, but they also have that ‘floating void’ feel to them, and a couple can fairly be called ugly, built from dull grey towers that exist largely to be climbed. Bubsy’s personality shines through some of the murkiness, backed up by a few running jokes courtesy of the supporting cast, but the game really needed a few more set pieces and additional gimmicks within its level design. The five-hour runtime is shorter than expected too, although if you are drawn into the speedrunning aspect, you may well get more than your money’s worth. At £17.99, Atari isn’t out to fool anyone either – it’s priced appropriately for the length of a typical playthrough. And there’s certainly nothing here that could be considered filler.
As a reintroduction to the platforming space, Bubsy 4D is a qualified success, making the titular hero likeable and relevant again. It is clearly built using tools and mechanics from Fabraz’s previous work rather than as an entirely bespoke production, and that harms the experience somewhat, as Bubsy has been shoehorned into an existing template he only more or less fits. So, while this comeback is somewhat experimental, it is more successful in some areas than others. At the very least, it’s a flutter jump in the right direction for the Bubster.
Fabraz’ Bubsy 4D is out now on all formats. Published by Atari. A ‘Pawsome Edition’ retail version is available for Switch and Switch 2, including an artbook, poster, and a mini manual.