Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind

About Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind

Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind (1993) is Accolade's wisecracking bobcat platformer, built to be "as fast as Sonic and as deep as Mario", in which Bubsy defends Earth's yarn balls from alien Woolies.

Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind in Depth

The alien Woolies plan to steal Earth's entire supply of yarn balls, and since Bubsy owns the world's largest collection, he has the most at stake and sets out to stop them. The title is a pun on Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It is a 2D side-scrolling platformer of sixteen levels: Bubsy jumps on Woolies and collects stray yarn balls, earning an extra life for every 500, and starts with nine lives. GamePro praised its graphics and felt Bubsy had more personality than Sonic thanks to his animations and voice clips, and critics liked the non-linear levels, but several complained about his uncontrollable momentum and backgrounds that gave little sense of where a leap would land.

Director John Skeel wanted a game easy to play but hard to master. After weeks of listening to voice tapes he settled on a sped-up recording of Brian Silva, whose delivery drew on Looney Tunes characters such as Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, and Bubsy's catchphrase, "What could possibly go wrong?", came from a quip among the team. In December 1992 local children were invited for pizza and soda to playtest it, and their call for more secret paths led to underground tubes in the first level. On the SNES, a catnip hazard that drove Bubsy mad was replaced with banana peels because of Nintendo's censorship policies.

Making Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind

Michael Berlyn, burned out on adventure games, designed it after studying Sonic. The Genesis version was worked on first and due in September 1992, but Accolade's legal troubles with Sega delayed it; artists Beckett Gladney and Ken Macklin created backgrounds and animations on a PC and a group called Solid Software programmed them for the Super NES. More than 20 people worked on the game, and the SNES and Genesis versions were developed and released almost identical, the SNES version first in 1993. Heavily marketed before release, it received generally favourable reviews, and Electronic Games listed it among the best SNES games.