Bubsy

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? -Bubsy, 1993

About

Bubsy is a series of video games created by Accolade. Because of their poor reception and the corny dialogue of the title character, Bubsy became popular online through its ironic fandom.

History

The first game in the series, Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind, was released in 1993 for the SNES and the Sega Genesis. The game's plot involves an alien race called "woolies" stealing the world's supply of yarn balls, which Bubsy must recover from them. In-game, Bubsy is very fragile; almost anything in the game kills him instantly, even falling damage and seemingly harmless props. He has the ability to glide, allowing him to hover above obstacles. Bubsy 2 had nearly identical gameplay mechanics, but introduced the ability to use projectile weapons. Bubsy In Fractured Furry Tales, the third game in the series, was released exclusively for the Atari Jaguar, and only used elements from the first game. The last game in the series, Bubsy 3D: Furbitten Planet (referred to as just "Bubsy 3D"), as the name implies, plays in a three-dimensional environment. Bubsy 3D was heavily panned by critics due to its plain graphics and restrictive controls. On the cover and promotional images of the game, Bubsy 3D advertised itself by quoting comments from the gaming magazine 'PSExtreme', who gave it the "Gold X" award^[10], and misquoting Electronic Games Magazine's review, which had been a negative review of the game.^{[11] (shown below, right)}. Aside from the video game series, a pilot episode for a Bubsy animated series was aired on television in 1993, to promote the video game series.

Steam Rerelease

On December 16th, 2015, Bubsy Two-Fur was submitted to the Steam Greenlight service by Steam Community users Sentinent Pizza, Tommo Inc., goodguy58, and Knosmirc.^[1] Bubsy Two-Fur was a digitally emulated version of the first two Bubsy games, emulated with the program Snes9x. Shortly after its submission, Bubsy Two-Fur was greenlit and was released on the Steam Store a day later.^[2]

The Woolies Strike Back

On June 8th, 2017, a trailer was uploaded to YouTube for the upcoming game titled Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back (shown below). The game will be developed by Offenburg-based developers Black Forest Games, known for their reboot entries in the Giana Sisters series, and published by Accolade, now reformed as a subsidiary of Hong-Kong based company Billion Soft, for Playstation 4 and PC and will be released in fall of 2017. The game will follow Bubsy in his quest for the "beloved golden fleece" and touts features such as new exotic locations, 100 additional one-liners, and, according to gaming news site Gematsu, "the gnarliest UFO to ever grace a Bubsy adventure."^[12]

Online, the news was met with trepidation. Both Kotaku^[13] and Polygon^[14] wrote incredulous articles about the upcoming Bubsy game. On /r/TwoBestFriendsPlay, Masterness64^[15] made a joke about the title and the Super Best Friends Play member Woolie Madden that gained over 260 points (shown below, left). Meanwhile, the Sonic The Hedgehog Twitter account had an interaction with that for Bubsy and Mega Man wherein each interaction gained hundreds of retweets and likes (shown below, right).

Online Relevance

Because of the series' poor sales and reception, Bubsy was not very popular throughout the 90's and 2000's, although Bubsy 3D was given a parodic review by Electronic Gaming Monthly's writer Seanbaby in 2002, listing it as the seventeenth worst game ever made.^[3] JonTron posted a review of the series on March 26, 2012, bringing popularity to the then-obscure series.

Arcane Kids' Tribute

In 2013, independent video game development team Arcane Kids (best known for their 2015 work Sonic Dreams Collection) released a fan-made game with mechanics and graphical assets similar to those used in Bubsy 3D, named Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective^[4] for the Unity Web Player. Throughout the game, the setting goes from its premise (visiting the "James Turrell Retrospective" art exhibit) to exploring uncharted rooms and riding a bobsled into hell. The game became known for its strange imagery, and was covered by several gaming journalism websites such as Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun.^[5][6]

Modern Bubsy a.k.a Spanky Bobcat

After the rise of the series' popularity, Bubsy became a popular subject of fan art, along with a popular reinterpretation of the character called "Modern Bubsy", which depicts Bubsy as a transgender prostitute, made depressed by the series' unfortunate history.^[7] Said reinterpretation of Bubsy would also become a character in the game "Super Space Funeral IV: Deluxe Blood Red Version & Bubsy," created by artist Squirrelly Jack^[9], though said game was later cancelled due to Jack no longer having an interest in creating a Space Funeral fan game, instead opting for a standalone Modern Bubsy game called "Purresident Evil." In June 2017, in light of the announcement of The Woolies Strike Back, Squirrelly Jack announced she is rebranding Modern Bubsy as an original character called "Spanky Bobcat" in order to avoid any potential legal problems with Accolade, even further renaming her Modern Bubsy game to "Spanky Bobcat in: Super Bobcat 3D Blast RPG: Purrresident Evil!"^[16][17]. As of December 2015, there are over 2,250 entries on DeviantArt tagged with "Bubsy".^[8]

Related Memes

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

"What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" is a memorable quote uttered by Bubsy in the opening sequence of Bubsy: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind and the Bubsy animated series. The quote became popular among players due to the quote's possible foreshadowing of the game's poor design. Originating from JonTron's review, the most popular response to the quote became "Everything Could Go Wrong!"

Search Interest

External References