Bubsy 3D (PlayStation) Playthrough

A playthrough of Accolade's 1996 platformer for the Sony PlayStation, Bubsy 3D.

I collected all thirty-two rocket parts in this video to get the good ending.

Coming out two years after the Atari Jaguar-exclusive Bubsy in: Fractured Furry Tales (   • Bubsy in: Fractured Furry Tales (Jagu...  ), Bubsy 3D was the fourth game to star the world's mangiest mascot. Bubsy 2 and Fractured Furry Tales had left the Bubster with one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel. The outlook was grim.

And instead of being his deliverance, Bubsy 3D became the coup de grâce. It killed the franchise and blew a giant hole through Accolade's reputation in one fell swoop. However, its developer, Eidetic, walked away miraculously unscathed. In fact, it was because of their work on Bubsy 3D that Sony threw the team a bone, and Eidetic's next game, Syphon Filter, ended up becoming a major PS1 hit.

Bubsy 3D manages to run without crashing, so I suppose it deserves credit for that, and some of the FMV death animations are pretty funny. I don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing Bubsy shatter into a million triangles.

But I did quickly tire of the horrendous camera that renders some levels (especially the last) nigh unplayable, the dodgy collision detection, the irritating cartoon-style music filled with rhythmic barking enemy noises, and the way Bubsy controls like a Mack truck driving through maple syrup on a flat tire.

It's true that Bubsy 3D was one of the first fully 3D platformers and that the designers had no template to work from, but knowing that doesn’t make its problems any less egregious. It was an ambitious effort, but it's also a complete mess that's difficult to have any fun with, and it's easily the worst of the Accolade-published Bubsy games. (That includes Bubsy 2 for the Game Boy.)

After playing Zelda's Adventure for the CD-i (   • Zelda's Adventure (CD-i) Playthrough  ) last Christmas, I thought that I'd shoot for something of a similar caliber for this year. Bubsy 3D certainly hit that mark. It's purrfectly catastrophic.

Rot in Hell, Bubsy. You're a right bastard.

Merry Christmas, everybody!
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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