Just a heads-up, but, the long-anticipated Bubsy Purrfect Collection is just days away, and I for one am thrilled to see it coming!
It's a joy to see just about every game from Bubsy's past come back to the hands of fans once again, and that's including the rather obscure Jaguar game, "Fractured Furry Tales", and the infamous installment, Bubsy 3D, but the game's getting new improvements to ensure there's no direct repeat of why it went down as one of its badly-received 3D games in gaming history(and I don't blame that not much couldn't be fine tuned in time for its launch at that time).
A bit to relate on Bubsy 3D, it's getting a somewhat sequel, and the name may kinda sound like an April Fools joke, but believe me, it sure is not; "Bubsy 4D", made by an indie studio, Fabraz, and published by Atari.
Its story centers on Bubsy facing, once again, the Woolies, up to stealing yarnballs and Bubsy's Golden Fleece again, the very item Bubsy took back from the end of "The Woolies Strike Back", but this time, they're absconding the flocks of sheep on his planet to force them to steal it. However, they underestimated the sheep, because they revolted against them and are attempting to fight back the Woolies by building their own weapons, the "Baabots", to steal away the Fleece for themselves. Once again, its up to Bubsy to step in and save the Golden Fleece and his planet from their madness, but doing so won't be easier for him this time, because he's got two enemies in their newly-formed two-front war between them.
Needless to say, Bubsy's got a few new tricks up his sleeve for that game(alongside minor cosmetics, including the model from Bubsy 3D), including one ability to become a rolling hairball... sorta. In fact, that strongly reminds me of how Homer Simpson did his "Homer Ball", the power that can turn into a big ball of flab, from "The Simpsons Game", only Bubsy's weighing far less than everybody's favorite goofy, albeit notably rotund, but family protective and good-hearted, family man.
The newest Bubsy game's level amount is, well, once more, going to have 3 different planets, each having 5 levels, for a total of 15 levels, and, to guess right, new bosses are fought in the end of each planet's final level.
I think many of Bubsy's games' amounts on their worlds, levels, and bosses may need to be stepped up beyond that said repeated amounts.
If anyone asks, I wasn't too fond of "Paws on Fire" because the unnecessarily placed Bit Trip rhythm-based gameplay doesn't really suit the bobcat, me, and plenty of others, quite well. Sure, it was neat to take down Oinker P. Hamm again, and it was nice to see many of the characters from Bubsy II and the Bubsy TV pilot show up in the game, but I still felt that kind of rhythm-based gameplay should've been kept out in that.
While I do enjoy Bubsy's adventures, and I know that its not so bad to slightly experiment a bit differently now and then(but not far too much that can deviate away from its true roots), I still would've felt they were quite more in-line with its past 2D games, in hi-bit format, because, well, so many people grew up playing them, and Atari's present CEO, Wade Ross, thinks and believes that, to quote "the last thing anyone wants is a really generic platformer".
Really? "Generic"? In Bubsy's games? The majority of our gaming audience grew up playing and making 2D games, before and after Bubsy was made, and many still do today, because as long as imaginations sticks around, and great creative spirits are within us, NOTHING is ever completely generic in 2D games! I still love them! It all only depends on keeping them coherent to their original vision and their teams working well and in-line, too. I think his tastes on 2D games are quite off-kilter, as others', so far.
And, so far, there's not yet a 2D Bubsy game that had its levels made longer and larger than the past games' maps. The basic tech used to make them has increased greatly, so why not go for it?
Nevertheless, for those willing to get back to Bubsy's past adventures, they're probably gonna feel a bit rusty on level route memorization, and the games' maps are still yet to be charted.
