Thursday 20 January 2011

Everyone hates Bubsy


If you think of the gig videogame wars of the 80s and 90s you will probably think of two things; Nintendo vs Sega, and Mario vs Sonic, which is basically the same thing, but that was it. Other consoles came and went, like the Atari Jauar for example, a game console that had ads where people vomit after playing their games. I'm guessing this was meant to be a good thing.

Until Sony got in the game with Playstation, the rule was not ot buy a console that didn't have Nintendo or Sega written on the box. Then there where the characters that came and went, the mascots who tried to take the throne of Mario and Sonic but... well you know.
WHERE ARE THEY NOW???






All these little guys are lost to the sands of time. They were all trying to get in on the act but Mario and Sonic where having none of it. Stylistically, it seems most of them where ripping off Sonic more that Mario... FOOLS (hindsight is a bitch)! Anyway, another one of these young pretenders was Bubsy The Bobcat, who had a fair bit of hype behind him at the time, and I seem to remember him being tipped to be the next big platforming franchise. He was a wise cracking animal with big eyes who could run really fast. Sound familiar? Other than that, what else is there to really say about this guy? Not much, as the one pilot cartoon will show you. Infact, the cartoon makes a great point about why we should forget about this little bobcat all together. The games got pretty decent reviews at the time but as the years have gone on people have grown to hate Bubsy, and why? Because he is A PAIN IN THE ASS! Lots of wise cracks do no a good character make. They just make you want to punch the TV. The supporting characters are so weak they are less than two dimensional. Where's your Luigi and Yoshi and Bowser and Tails Robotnick? There's nothing there to really build a story out of, there's just whacky shenanigans, which isn't always a bad thing but in this case it really is. Watch this one cartoon and try not to pull your ears off. It's just a mess of noise and when you hear him say "what could possibly go wrong" for the billionth time you will feel like throwing up. No. No. No. It hurts that little but more that he is voiced by Rob Paulsen who worked on the likes of Ninja Turtles, Animaniacs, Powerpuff Girls and the cartoon of Fraggel Rock, but this cat will forever be a big black spot on his CV.






It's heavy going isn't it? The armadillo says that Bubsy is worse than getting hit by a truck within the first few minutes of the show. At least someone knew what was going on.

Well, thankfully the pilot was never picked up and the world is all the better for it. The games still did well until the release of Bubsy 3D for the Playstation which seems to be considered one of the worst games of all time and it's not hard to see why, just look at the intro to the game:

The sound is shocking and as for the graphics... well, do they remind you of anything?

Yeah, and that was from 1985!

No new Bubsy games were ever made after this and he joined all the other fallen mascots in video game heaven, or quite possably hell. So long bobcat.

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