Thanks to Atari for the review code

Title: Bubsy in: The Purrfect Collection
System: Steam
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 09/09/2025

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Prelude

One of my delayed-in-the-queue reviews that took longer to get out than I’d have liked was Bubsy: Paws on Fire! I really dug The Woolies Strike Back as a simple, short and fun platformer from the Giana Sisters team, and liked some parts of Paws on Fire a lot, but the absurd progression system really turned me away from the game and was why it took me longer than I wanted to for me to finally get that review out several years ago.

It seemed a lot of other people thought so too, since after Paws on Fire the current, modern “Reboot” era of Bubsy was done. The new owners didn’t really do much with their socials or Bubsy at all, and it seemed with Paws on Fire being a stumble the series was back on ice, but at least not ending on a disaster this time. That was until Atari bought Accolade and any IP related to them that they were able to obtain, which included the Bubsy games.

Considering that Atari also bought Digital Eclipse, and how Digital Eclipse managed to make even the most seemingly basic/boring/bad Atari 2600 games interesting to experience via their historical timeline/documentary style of compilations, I was absolutely certain that a Bubsy Collection would happen via them, sorta like how Tetris Forever came to be. It should have been a slam dunk!

Instead, a Bubsy collection got announced under the Limited Run Carbon Engine, which I have mentioned can either be a pretty darn good way to reissue a game, or a flaming trainwreck. The latter seemed like a fit for Bubsy, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect out of this compilation, and for a long while it seemed we didn’t know much about it besides a popular youtuber who’s a Bubsy megafan was involved, (as he works for Limited Run, the company now) it wouldn’t include the Jaguar game, and there might be some tweaks to Bubsy 3D to make it less infamous.

Well, the collection has been out for a while, and it did get some extra things added since that initial reveal such as the Jaguar game, making this basically a complete Bubsy chronology, with only Super Bubsy (A PC port of the first Bubsy) absent. Does that mean we have a misunderstood redemption arc on our hands? Well, let’s take a look…

Presentation

Right away you get introduced to the game via a nice sounding title call from the new voice actor of Bubsy. Upon jumping into the game selection menu, you get a pretty fun look at each of the game boxes as you choose from each version, with Bubsy giving a little blurb describing each game. (sadly, not voiced) There’s a sound test with every Bubsy song available to listen to, plus a museum with a lot of scanned art materials, one that’s pretty darn impressive and I believe the most robust of a LRG Carbon Engine release to date; there are plenty of concept materials, ads and other goodies covering the entirety of the classic series, which are a fun look to read through. You even have manual scans for each game, although not every version has their manual scanned, so no Game Boy Bubsy II manual to read.

There are even some video interviews and other archival stuff to watch here! You have the Bubsy pilot split into four parts to watch, some interviews with people who worked on the Bubsy franchise like one of the leads of the Jaguar game, (since sadly, the original creator of the character has passed away) and even a commentary comparing all the changes from the Japanese SFC version of Bubsy to the US one, from the Bubsy megafan Youtuber who’s a lead on this collection. The videos are pretty solid and look nice, but unfortunately have a pretty big flaw that were in some other Carbon releases: you can’t control the video, only stop it entirely.

Yes, that means if you bump your controller while watching the riveting Bubsy Pilot, you’ll have to rewatch that part from the start, which makes the split into four parts a lot more understandable. Sadly, because of the inability to speed up, skip ahead, or go back, you’re basically locked into a video for the long haul unless you want to stop it entirely. Why this still has not been fixed in these Carbon Engine games is beyond me, but alas.

Thankfully when it comes to the in-game emulation aspect, things are a lot better. Each game has a menu that you can bring up via the right stick, (Causing Bubsy to go “Uh-Oh” each and every time) which lets you choose from one of several different border options, screen sizes, and a CRT filter that’s pretty decent. Bubsy II on GB even has a decent LCD filter, though it’s far from the best of its type, and doesn’t have the fake handheld border that Xtreme Sports offered.

Still, just like the newer Carbon titles, your screen/border options properly save upon exiting a game, which is how it should have been from the beginning with these rereleases. Unlike Ninja Five-O, I didn’t encounter any weird sound quirks in my gameplay, and the audio emulation was spot on. (for better or worse) This also means the Jaguar Bubsy runs just like it should, adding yet another Jaguar game into modern playability territory thanks to the new advancements in emulation over the past few years, starting with Atari 50. There’s even an attempt to fix Bubsy 3D, which has some weird issues, but nothing I can really pin on anything the port team did besides their enhancements.

Gameplay

With only four games here and multiple versions, there’s a lot of Bubsy to cover. We already went over the bonuses in the museum and such, and there’s not much more for me to add about all that. I do wish that when you’re in the middle of a game you can bring up the manual while paused like Digital Eclipse’s stuff, but otherwise that’s the only other thing that comes to mind. Onward to the games!

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Bubsy in Clawed Encounters of the Furred Kind: The original Bubsy, in both SNES/Genesis variants, and this one is actually pretty decent? Like, I’ve enjoyed a bunch of Mascot platformers and found some truly horrific ones and also played some pretty decent ones like Zool, and Bubsy fits in a bit underneath Zool in terms of the enjoyability factor. Both versions are fine, with the Genesis being the base version, but I found the SNES version to be slightly better due to an improved presentation.

Here you control Bubsy, who can do a normal jump, a high jump, or a jump that lets him glide for a little bit after taking off. Your main goal is to head for the end of the stage while collecting as many yarn balls as you can, as you knock out whatever Woolies lie in your way and avoid anything that will knock Bubsy down, since he’s a one hit KO kind of cat.

In fact, that’s really the big problem with the original Bubsy. You can go really really fast or jump pretty high and smack right into something you barely noticed until it pops up on screen, killing you instantly. Sometimes you might even take fall damage and die, or just bump into a random obstacle and die. The NSO-style rewind comes in especially handy here, but even still this one can be memorized to a decent degree and have the cheap deaths be less of an issue, and by and large I found the original Bubsy to be far more fun than I was honestly expecting. I think Woolies Strike Back is still better for not having the cheap deaths, but this one was a decent mascot platformer and had things improved later on, the series could have been genuinely great.

Bubsy II: Then this sequel happened and seemed to not take any common sense advice or thinking on how to improve the flaws of the original Bubsy, and pretty much went “You know what? Let’s make the game bad now”. The controls are far more slippery. The levels are more nonsensical, gimmicky and confusing with a lot of warping doors and focus more on getting you lost than providing actual platforming fun.

There are tons of minigames shoehorned in here, and nearly all of them are terrible. (the only one I found pretty enjoyable was the one with Arnold, which funnily enough was the best of Paws on Fire’s stage types too) I could go on and on, but Bubsy II just somehow takes all the bad parts of the first game and makes them worse, except thankfully you have a lifebar this time around so it’s not a OHKO carnival anymore.

Bubsy is now in a Museum this time around to save some idiot twins, and you pretty much have to clear each floor one after the other. Being a Museum, the level themes are way more varied than in the first Bubsy game, but most of them are worse or just bad themes compared to the more simple and grounded worlds of the first game. Egypt Bubsy sounds cool, but when it’s a bunch of warping and getting lost the fun dries up quickly. One small step forward, and a giant long jump backwards for the series.

Yet it somehow gets even worse. Bubsy II got a Game Boy port, as a lot of things did back in the day, and this version is so outta control and bizarre the game pops up a warning about playing the game every single time you go to do so, with an achievement description sincerely apologizing if you manage to beat this without cheating. Take the Bubsy II console experience and everything bad about it, cut it down significantly and make it shorter (thankfully), but also make everything feel a bajillion times worse and have the audio sound like pure torment.

I am not exaggerating when I say the frog minigame in this port is one of the worst experiences I have ever encountered in a GB game, which is very darn hard to pull off. Forget Bubsy 3D, this one is arguably the worst of them all and makes Bubsy II as a whole a worse experience in general. Did you know this was slated for Game Gear too? Thankfully, we don’t have that lost version here, as I can’t take much more of this.

Bubsy: Fractured Furry Tales: The Atari Jaguar entry in the series, and originally one not planned to be included on this set. Thank god it was, otherwise you’d have 2/3 of the collection being absolutely insufferable to play. In this game, Bubsy ends up in a bunch of nonsensical and strange worlds based off a variety of fairy tales.

Nothing much besides that in terms of plot, and right off the bat your enemies are incredibly weird. Sure, you fight a lot of stuff from Alice in Wonderland, but they don’t look like a goofy Woolie or something from the first two games, but instead all the enemies look a little off. Weird looking Bees and Rabbits, giant Cat heads from nowhere, and just strange foes that might freak you out, and subsequent chapters don’t get much better.

Still, Bubsy has his typical glide and high jumps to use, and unlike Bubsy II, the controls feel a lot better, while the game is far, far worse in terms of the navigation. See, you still have moments of barely offscreen enemies killing you if you jump around too much, but you at least don’t have them happening as constantly as in Bubsy II. I was able to survive for quite a while without needing to rewind or state here, which would lead to a better game on par with the first if the levels weren’t gargantuan labyrinths.

Yes, each stage is huge. You gotta usually find flip switches or whatever in order to fumble your way to a blue explanation point to exit the stage, but i’m not kidding when I say these levels are the most Amiga-esque, terribly designed nightmares I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Sure, the Bubsy II stages were bad, but the controls and fixation on warp doors/minigames mostly sunk that game, while here you have actually decent controls and a feel that could lead to a pretty fun game, except the levels feel as if someone just scribbled a map with a marker and called it a day. You will get lost in these stages, with some of them being so cryptic and infuriating I needed to pull out a guide and just focus on getting to the end of the level.

Add in a very cruel timer that punishes you for exploration and basically mandates you either cheat with an infinite timer to explore, or just speedrun to the end of a level with a map in hand and Fractured Furry Tales is a hot mess. I’m glad it was included here for completion sake, but you will need a map, and any game that mandates that, especially games made after in-game maps were a thing aren’t worth your time. At least the music is pretty decent.

Bubsy 3D: You know it and I could probably make this section a one word summary: Bad.

But I genuinely think Bubsy II might be a tad worse, but not by much and partly due to the bad GB port being included as part of that game. Even still, I’d rather play the GB port by its lonesome over this game since GB Bubsy II is far, far shorter, but it’s a close call on which Bubsy is worse. Bubsy 3D has been surrounded in infamy for years and years due to just how nonsensical it all seems, especially at first glance.

A terrible 3D platformer in the wake of Super Mario 64? A character with the most obnoxious voice ever who doesn’t seem to ever shut up? D-Pad controls in an era right after Analog sticks proved how much better 3D gaming could be? Surely this must mean Bubsy 3D was just made by stupid idiot programmers who didn’t know how to do a 3D platformer, right?

Well, not exactly. See, Bubsy 3D was at least aiming to do something new when it was originally conceived, and if it had more polish and didn’t come out after a certain game called Super Mario 64, it might have been a genuinely impressive showcase for the PS1 that made the most of the D-Pad controller. Yes, D-Pad controller, because the Dualshock didn’t exist when this game was made, so you have tank controls!

Unfortunately, even with the context of a “this was made before anyone know Super Mario 64 was the true 3D platforming template”, Bubsy 3D is very bad. You are tremendously slow, platforming is a nightmare with the camera being all over the place, and while you still have a health bar there are instakill hazards that’ll set you back a bit, though the NSO style rewind is here to mitigate those annoyances. So in theory, the revamped version available in this collection should fix most of these issues and make Bubsy 3D a fascinating relic of its time that still has some decent moments, right?

Not really. If anything the enhancements are outright broken or weird since the game was not clearly made for any of them in mind. You have a forced 16:9 display which is average at best, and while Bubsy finally moves way faster, this game was meant with tank controls and instead of doing the D-Pad on a stick approach it tries full analog. I say “tries” because sometimes it just doesn’t feel like working well at all and you have to go back to D-Pad to play nicely with certain segments of the game. You do have manual camera control with the right stick which helps, but by and large these enhancements are pretty sloppy with their implementation and outside of the faster movement speed I can’t say this is that much of an improvement.

In fact, both versions took out the Password/Memory Card save features, meaning you have to use Save States to save your progress and yes, that means suffering to find every single rocket part to see the true ending of the game. Have fun in that final level from hell.

Overall, this game was indeed just as insufferable and as bad as its reputation said, but even with me aware of the dev team never intending to make a bad video game, I just couldn’t stand Bubsy 3D for long, and it’s a miracle it wasn’t even the worst game in this set. (but not by much) Shame there wasn’t better effort at the enhancements.

Conclusion

Near the end of writing this, I just realized that with this collection now covered, I have officially reviewed every Bubsy game to currently exist in some way, shape or form, meaning all that’s left for 100% review completion is the upcoming Bubsy 4D. So what do I think of the Bubster? Well, for these games most of them were indeed deserving of their bad reputation. The original Bubsy is pretty solid and the most like Woolies Strike Back for me, cheap deaths aside, and was a game I’d gladly play in full.

Bubsy II on the other hand takes a hammer and smashes up the good foundation the first game set by making everything a headache inducing mess, and somehow that abysmal GB port was more entertaining than the main course due to it being at least way, way shorter and thus the pain ends quicker.

Bubsy on Jaguar is the hidden “gem” of the set, for as much as that’s worth, and even then it has the big issue of a strict timer and the levels being terribly designed. If it wasn’t for the infinite time cheat or pulling up a map while you play, this one would be way more insufferable to deal with, but it’s still my second favorite of the set for at least being a well meaning game that has some pretty fun moments within, and is just plain weird.

Bubsy 3D… Is as you expect. The Meme. The Myth. The Legend. Even with my headspace picturing this in an alternate world with no SM64 and this was the first game of its kind with a D-Pad controller, Bubsy 3D would still be absolutely dreadful. The nonsensical level design really hurts it a lot and even with Bubsy mostly shutting up after the first few levers, the sound design in other areas is enough to make me feel like a drill is being plowed directly into my eardrum. (that obnoxious music…) With the removal of the password feature you won’t be getting that 100% bonus without enduring pure hell.

Ultimately, Bubsy is a franchise that definitely started OK-ish during a mascot boom and was made by a real passionate team, but every subsequent entry got worse and worse, or had a major flaw that made the rest of the game sink like a damaged ship. The bonus content in the collection is more enjoyable than the actual game, and I’m genuinely impressed LRG did a better job here with that compared to most of their carbon sets.

Shame the video playback is a little wonky, but otherwise the bonus material and the first Bubsy are the main reasons to pick this set up. If you want an actual mediocre Bobcat game that won’t make you want to dive into acid however, you’re better off playing The Woolies Strike Back over most of the other games in this set, or waiting for Bubsy 4D.

I give Bubsy: The Purrfect Collection a 4 out of 10.