When Bubsy debuted in 1993, the lovable bobcat with an attitude managed to stand out among a glut of quirky, quippy anthropomorphic video game mascots. Credit belongs to the hype developer Accolade built for its new 2D platformer, and the fact that Bubsy, as a video game series, wasn’t half bad. The first game, clumsily named Bubsy in: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind, was well-received by critics and sold well enough to get two sequels.
While he never reached the same popularity as his A-list competitors like Mario and Sonic, the wisecracking Bubsy was riding high in the early 1990s, and even got a kids' TV pilot. What could possibly go wrong? Adding another dimension to the mix, as it turns out. Bubsy’s fourth game, aptly titled Bubsy 3D, was the franchise's attempt to pull off what Nintendo’s Italian plumber did just months earlier. Unfortunately, the result was one of the worst games of its time, an industry-wide lesson of what not to do when making games in 3D.
