Bubsy The Bobcat is the cockroach of the video gaming world. No one likes him, no one wants him, but he just keeps on coming back. It’s a franchise that’s produced nothing but low-quality titles for the entirety of its existence. This includes two lackluster Super Nintendo platformers, a poorly received modern-day reboot, and a failed pilot for a Saturday morning cartoon.
But the worst thing that Bubsy and the people at Accolade – the developer that churned out this tripe – ever unleashed upon the world was undeniably Bubsy 3D. It’s widely been considered one of the worst games ever made in the history of the medium. So it would make sense for such an underwhelming title to be ported over to an underwhelming console. Which is exactly what was going to happen as a Sega Saturn edition of the game was expected. Of course, as you might have suspected, plans quickly changed.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
When I say Bubsy 3D – or Bubsy Is 3D In “Furbitten Planet” if you want to use its longer, much worse title – is one of the worst games ever made that’s not an understatement. It released around the game that 3D gaming was in its infancy with many developers still figuring out how to use the technology. It also began development before Super Mario 64 had been released, which meant the people at Accolade had no template for a 3D platformer to work off of. Unsurprisingly, when the team responsible for the god-awful Bubsy games tried to use unfamiliar tech to make a kind of game that previously didn’t exist, it didn’t work out so good.
Bubsy 3D released on November 25, 1996, for the PlayStation. This was several months after Super Mario 64 came out, which taught the entire world how 3D gaming should work. As a result, Bubsy 3D was not looked upon favorably. It was slow; It was awkward to control; It was ugly beyond all reason. Even the voice acting sucked. It was so terrible that just about every reviewer had a field day trying to find the right words to describe its atrociousness.
Before the bad press, Bubsy 3D had been announced for the Sega Saturn. There were magazine ads that proudly touted the Saturn as one of the recipients of the bobcat’s three-dimensional disaster. After the negative reactions, the port was delayed from its original Q4 1996 release date to an undetermined time in the spring of 1997. Needless to say, it never made it to the Saturn.
No official reason has ever come out regarding Bubsy 3D’s canceled Saturn port, but the answer seems obvious. The port was presumably canned after everyone involved realized there was no point in putting in the effort. Sega may not have had a lot of killer games to offer for their fledgling console, but they knew that Bubsy 3D wasn’t going to help sell units. If anything, it might have driven people away from the Saturn in droves. So rather than waste money making a port of a game that no one in their right mind would want for a system that few people owned, the whole project was tossed in the trash where it belonged.
The Bobcat Still Lives
To this day, Bubsy 3D still manages to earn a spot on almost every list that details the worst games of all time. The overwhelming hatred for Bubsy caused the annoying bobcat to lay dormant for two whole decades.
That was until a random Hong Kong holding company bought the rights to both the Accolade brand and the Bubsy series. They then tapped Black Forest Games to revive the franchise and subject us all to more irritating puns and sub-par platforming. Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back emerged in 2017 and Bubsy: Paws On Fire followed in 2019. In what should be a shock to absolutely no one, they were not well-received by players or critics.
So despite releasing a game so bad that even the Sega Saturn – a console that desperately needed games – said “thanks, but no thanks,” Bubsy is still going. One way to look at this is that it’s an inspirational tale about not letting the haters bring you down and pushing through adversity.
The other, more accurate way to look at this is that Bubsy is an unstoppable abomination that continues to exist for no other purpose than to trick gamers into spending $60 on garbage and then suck the joy out of their lives. Because as long as the world has Bubsy, there can be no true happiness.
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