Review | Bubsy 4D - The Bobcat Chases Golden Fleece

Dear Bubsy,

I have been indifferent towards you for years. It has been too easy to negatively compare you to other platformers. I will not mention names — it is well known that you are sensitive. I am too. To quote my acquaintance Tim Rogers you are “a cartoon mascot character from a video game precision engineered to be the perfect birthday present for preteen boys who got a D in algebra.” You never understood that other mascots don’t speak to us because they realised that walls in games are not obstructions to enjoyment; they are part of the geography that makes games real. You never got that. In your quest to compete with Mario and Sonic, you tried to distinguish yourself, come out as a different sort of guy, a more annoying cat. You succeeded in the latter. The fourth wall has never been real, Bubsy!

Bubsy, why would you wear a shirt but never pants to go with it? I don’t care that Looney Tunes characters did the same. You are not one of them. Okay, I will name names. Sonic had the decency of not wearing either. (The shoes don’t count; he was just protecting his feet, and science has shown that going “fast” turns soles to chopped cheese.) 

I know that your father loved you. This is clear. He, Michael Berlyn, so enamoured by Sonic’s speed, stopped wanting to make great narrative adventure games. Still somehow you were endowed with a certain je ne sais quoi. You were memorable yet unexceptional. You committed a fatal sin: your games were just never great. The screen’s reflectivity imposes my face on yours. Your visage becomes mine, mine yours. I already have failed enough. I don’t need yours added to my litany of missed chances and cliffs barely reached.  

Here is the messed-up thing, I am really writing to you because now, after playing you in Bubsy 4D, I might love you. All I want to do is play your damn game.

Bubsy 4D has a lot to prove and it attempts to swing for the fences. It is irreverent and makes fun of other mascot platformers. Like a good inhabitant of the internet, developer Fabraz has taken the playbook of YouTuber charlatans that have disingenuously maligned the series and in turned it on its head. Bubsy is no longer the punching bag. Like a Sega character circa 2000 to 2004, Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg, Sonic Adventure (1 and 2), Jet Set Radio — this game takes from the good stuff. Explosions of brilliant colours, the thrill of swiftness captured in 3D virtual spaces, music you keep humming after you stop playing. Bubsy 4D feels great.

This is a Dreamcast game beamed to us from outer space in 2026. An odd mix of new and old ideas stuffed together in a weird vibrant package. The villains, the cybernetically-enhanced BaaBots (evil sheep) also happen to be really cute. These baaad ovēs are a throwback to the cute scoundrels of the 3D Sonic games and Klonoa games. On your mission through the game’s linear stage selection the gameplay possibilities open up like a chess game, but without the movement limitations imposed on its individual pieces. Bubsy here is a protagonist that is a do-everything acrobatic talent (except get near water). Fabraz has also honed its 3D-platforming skills. For another example, check out the studio’s excellent Demon Tides (also released this year). For its part, Bubsy 4D makes for a great entry point into “expressive” platformers. In these games you have an expansive moveset (multiple types of jumps, glides, hurdling leaps) and you utilise them in whatever order you choose to create a unique playstyle for traversing the hazards the game throws at you. Traversal and overcoming challenges can be done in multiple ways. 

Bubsy 4D should not work. Though the level environments look like blinged out development assets, the game’s charm makes up for it. The levels in Bubsy 4D feel sparse and the dialogue can get annoying. Yet, I had a blast. The game is not self-originating, yet it is unique like jazz fusion. Besides a few camera hiccups and glitches, the game takes the principles established by “better” 3D platformers and makes them its own. It pulls off walking on a razor wire tightrope. It is leisurely and demanding all at once; players will be challenged just not stressed. 

Complementing the game is its art style and absurdity. The wooleys have gone insane. They stole the Golden Fleece. This cannot stand, because Bubsy has the world’s biggest collection of yarn and fleece. He loves to hoard yarn like a gamer loves Funko Pops. Fabraz has managed to make this most verbose of characters endearing, unlike Funko Pop collectors. He is washed up, yet with barely any breath left he still tries, and that effort is worth its weight in fleece of gold. Through the player’s efforts this ordinary bobcat becomes a Mario on an odyssey fit for the terminally online.

This is a good game. Miraculously it is not weighed down by expectations of the unfairly maligned series. The first game Bubsy in: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind was a competent platformer released in 1993. The next two installments were not as good, but were also not uniquely flawed compared to contemporaneous releases. Bubsy 3D and its failure have become a folktale. To hear the YouTubers you might believe that it is the worst game ever made. This is drivel. It is a troubled game, but one that tried to shoot for the moon and failed. Two additional games followed and those are pretty bad, but most video games are, so again, this is not exceptional. All this is to say that Bubsy until now has been a series defined by how unexceptional it is. Compare it to its influences (Sonic, Mario) and the bobcat is not just pantsless, he could not dare jump to storied heights. Until now, that is.

Playing Bubsy 4D captures lightning in a bottle — fluid movement, the glee of freedom to traverse as one pleases. This is a sandbox of thrills and bad jokes at the expense of the aging antihero, Bubsy, who controls like Mario in Odyssey. This isn’t only a game you think about whilst playing it. It is one that you replay in your head while having dinner with your in-laws. You, in a stupor, think “How can I get the speedrun medal in world 1-3?” They ask to pass the potatoes. You answer, not with the tuberous vegetable, but with Bubsy on the brain, you want some of that fleece. “If I unlock all the customs in Bubsy 4D, would I finally be loved by the both of you?” They look at you. And then they look at each other. They emphatically say in unison, “Yes, especially if you unlock Bubsy’s ‘Hedgehog’ costume and beat every level in the game with it on, we will finally love you.” Your heart skips. The palpitation is not joy at hearing their answer but caused by the realisation that indifference is no longer something I feel towards Busby. The bobcat is alright.

Bubsy 4D was played on Nintendo Switch 2 using a code provided by the publisher.