• he/him/they

/ i always wanted a thing called tuna sashimi! /

shmup fan, puzzle fan, sometimes talks (should do that more tbh)


gamedeveloper
@gamedeveloper

Months after acquiring the rights to the Bubsy games, Atari has put out a call to any indie developer with a pitch for the long dormant series. In a recent interview with MinnMax, Atari CEO Wade Rosen said that if a smaller studio "wanted to reach out, we'd certainly be interested in hearing those [ideas]." He advised those interested to send their pitch over to Atari via its website.

He further noted that pitches should be "interesting, innovative, and tongue-in-cheek. The last thing anyone wants is a really generic platformer these days. [...] It's an interesting challenge, and someone's going to crack it."

Read the full story over at Game Developer.


gosokkyu
@gosokkyu

He further noted that pitches should be "interesting, innovative, and tongue-in-cheek. The last thing anyone wants is a really generic platformer these days. [...] It's an interesting challenge, and someone's going to crack it."

By his own admission, Rosen acknowledged the mixed-to-negative response to previous Bubsy games puts future installments in an interesting position. "How do you make a great game while also acknowledging that he's been in less than desirable things? Eventually, a good Bubsy game needs to be made."

putting aside the suggestion that the indie scene for platformers isn't currently in an extremely healthy place that's probably more amenable to a "generic" platformer than ever before, the idea that a new Bubsy game necessarily needs to wink at the franchise's bad reputation or perpetuate the one tired joke seems completely played out to me... I'm not so naive as to think they couldn't profitably produce half-assed ironygames until the end of time but dear lord is that shit tired

what they ought to be doing (and I'd like to think there's a more-than-zero chance they might at least gesture in this direction, given the relationship between Atari's new CEO and certain preservationist folk) is using Bubsy as the centrepiece for promoting and educating people about the value of independent historical orgs and the hurdles presented by predatory copyright laws and so on: have Digital Eclipse put together a completely straight-laced Bubsy collection that highlights the game's connection to the Sega vs. Accolade lawsuit; release the original game under permissive license as a pretense to educating people about copyright law and public domain; produce official editor tools for the old binaries and legitimise the idea of modding old closed-box games and/or making new software for Genesis or friggin' Jaguar or whatever; run a pay-what-you-want Bubsy game jam on itch once a year, let everybody get their shit off and give the money to archive.org or someone, etc etc etc.

the most subversive thing anybody could do with Bubsy—and really, the only subversive thing—is to transform it from the avatar of artless commercialism into the mascot for free information and a vanguard for copyright reform. but who am I kidding, they'll probably be pushing a dating sim parody or some bloody thing by this time next year


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in reply to @gamedeveloper's post:

the second bubsy revival
huh
lol
they tried it once before and it seemed like kind of a false start, choice provisions making a runner-like game and the woolies strike back seeing not great reception
i wonder whatll come out of this, hopefully more weird and interesting things

in reply to @gosokkyu's post: