Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind

Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind
Sega Genesis cover art
Developer(s)	Accolade
Publisher(s)	Accolade, Retroism
Producer(s)	John A.S. Skeel Cynthia Kirkpatrick
Designer(s)	Michael Berlyn
Artist(s)	Beckett Gladney Ken Macklin
Composer(s)	Matt Berardo
Series	Bubsy
Platform(s)	Sega Genesis, Super NES, Microsoft Windows
Release	Sega Genesis NA: 1993[1] EU: 1993 AU: 1993 Super NES NA: May 1993[2] EU: October 28, 1993 JP: June 17, 1994 PC NA: 1995[3][4] Steam re-release: WW: December 17, 2015[5]
Mode(s)	Single-player

Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind, known as Bubsy for short, is a platform video game released by Accolade in the early 1990s.^[6] It is the first game in the Bubsy series of video games. The game's name is a play on words in reference to the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind,^[7] with the game revolving around Bubsy defending the planet's supply of yarnballs from alien invaders.^[8] The game received a sequel, Bubsy 2, in 1994.^[9]

Gameplay

In the game, enemy aliens called "Woolies" intend to steal Earth's supply of yarnballs, and as Bubsy has the world's largest collection of yarnballs, he has the most at stake, and sets out to stop the Woolies and reclaim the yarnballs.^[10] The game plays as a 2D sidescrolling platformer.^[6] The player must maneuver Bubsy through the levels, jumping on enemy "Woolies", and collecting stray yarn balls (which earns an extra life if 500 are collected).^[11] The game consists of sixteen levels, and Bubsy starts off with nine lives.^[12] In general, the game's gameplay has been compared to the Sonic the Hedgehog games from the Sega Genesis era.^{[13][12][14][15]}

Development

Designer Michael Berlyn had previously designed adventure video games, such as Altered Destiny and Search for the King prior his work on Bubsy.^[16] Eventually burning out on the genre, he came across the original Sonic the Hedgehog and ended up playing it 14 hours a day, for a whole week, in order to find inspiration to do his own take on it.^[16] Development of the game began in 1991. Earlier sketches show Bubsy wearing shoes which were omitted in the final design. The Genesis version, which was the first one being worked on, was to be released in late 1992 but Accolade's legal troubles with Sega caused the game to be delayed.^[17] After artists Beckett Gladney and Ken Macklin constructed the backgrounds and character animations respectively on a PC program, a group named Solid Software went on to program them for the SNES.^[18]

Director John Skeel said in an interview that they want to create a game as fast as Sonic and as deep as Mario. They also planned the game to be easy to play but hard to master.^[19] He also had difficulty finding a good voice for the main character. After weeks of searching through voice talent tapes, John received a call from Brian Silva who aided trying to find a suitable voice, until John tried speeding up a recording of Brian's voice, which took inspiration from Looney Tunes characters like Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny and added to the end result of Bubsy's design. Bubsy's catchphrase was derived from the development team's quip.^[20]

In December of 1992, some children who reside near Accolade's office in San Jose, California were invited to have pizza, soda, and to test play the game. The children were also asked to comment on the game's aspects. Their suggestion to add more secret paths was picket up, resulting the inclusion of some underground tube ways in the first level.^[21]

A group of 20+ people worked on the game.^[22] During the programming of the game to the SNES, one of the hazards in the game was a catnip that could drive Bubsy mad. This was replaced by banana peels because of Nintendo's censorship policies.^[21] The game was developed and released concurrently for the Genesis and Super NES, with each version looking and sounding almost identical.^[11] Approximately two years later, the game was also ported to Windows 95, under the name Super Bubsy.^[10] It contained slightly upscaled graphics, and the Bubsy cartoon pilot that was never picked up for further episodes.^[13] The Super NES version was made part of Bubsy Two-Fur on Steam in December 2015.

The Super NES version is the only game in the Bubsy series to be released in Japan, under the title Yamaneko Bubsy no Daibōken. The release was mostly identical, except that Bubsy's voice clips were dubbed in Japanese.

Reception

References

External links

• Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind at MobyGames
• Super Bubsy at MobyGames