• he/him

Avatar by @DrDubz.
Banner by one of Colin Jackson, Rick Lodge, Steve Noake, or David Severn from Bubsy in: Fractured Furry Tales for the Atari Jaguar.


gannets
@gannets

You probably already know that Space Station 13 has been largely developed by amateurs over the course of a couple of decades.

Here's a little story about how decisions made by folks like us who don't know any better can lead to Fun Consequences down the line. It also highlights some of the impossible to predict edgecases you deal with when working with twenty years worth of interacting systems.



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


blazehedgehog
@blazehedgehog

So I pitched for this. For those of you who don't know, once upon a time, I was working on a Bubsy thing, which was 25% a joke and 75% serious.

I started after watching this Digital Foundry video they put out for April Fools back in 2019. Despite being for April Fools, it's mostly a legitimate celebration of Bubsy, suggesting that by the standards of 1993, that first Bubsy game was actually pretty well-liked. There was something there.

I am obviously a Sonic fan. Have been all my life. And a game developer seemingly perpetually stuck in the "burgeoning" status. So many, many, many years ago, I reserved myself to the idea that I might not ever get to work on a Sonic game, and certainly not in any kind of important capacity. But I began to wonder if, in the mascot platformer rush of the 90's, if there wasn't some way I could still satisfy myself.

Bubsy, I think, was one of the few games that scratched the surface of "getting it right." The game eventually falls apart a few levels in, but there's a charm to Bubsy, and I think I'm not alone in realizing that. It's more than just shitposting and schadenfreude. Again, Digital Foundry wasn't wrong: people did at one point unironically like Bubsy. There was something about it that rose above the others. Mike Berlyn (RIP) knew what he was doing.

Friends and I joked about buying the Bubsy IP as far back as 2005, because we figured, at that point, it must have been cheap. And, in recent times, I'd even started rolling around the idea of something merely inspired by Bubsy called "Rude 'n' Tude" about two mascot platformer brothers (one named Rude, the other named Tude).

Following the Digital Foundry Bubsy video, I began working on something under the codename "Better Bubsy."

There's a long story behind why development was slow, but it was getting to the point where game developer friends were prodding me to submit this as a pitch to UFO Entertainment, who published the last two Bubsy games. But with my Mom getting sick and losing that HDD around the same time, it was slow and difficult work.

Then Atari buys the Bubsy IP and openly calls for indie devs. I kind of just dropped everything and lunged at it. I submitted everything I had whether it was good or not, and I'm not sure that was the best idea. But it was the best I had.

And now I am nervous and a little sad, because that was going on a week ago.