This is a reupload since the original got blocked by WWE for featuring a few seconds of the RAW is WAR opening during the video. The footage has been edited out and replaced with far superior TNA footage so hopefully it should be ok from here on out! If you previously watched the original or are just watching this version for the first time, thanks for checking it out! Much love
I'm so sorry you content creators have to deal with this nonsense. Great job on the video! You described exactly how I feel about Bubsy 3D and its more positive aspects.
The story behind Simpsons wrestling is sad. There's a video on youtube where someone interviews the devs and it turns out it was actually a really well thought out game design but the publisher and other people involved in the licensing got involved and stopped them from doing all of the cool stuff
@@SeanSeanson If the intention of Bubsy 3D was to make it visually similar to an Outer Space Cartoon with Maurice Noble's background art (It is rumored that Chuck Jones partook in the art direction for Bubsy 3D and is never credited for it), I kinda see what you're trying to explain, especially since the whole premise of the game is Bubsy being kidnapped by the Woolies in an act of revenge to the first game (because according to Bubsy 3D, the Queen's Poly and Ester got cut in half), and you have to collect Rocket Pieces to return home. I believe the biggest issue with the game comes down to three problems: 1. Bubsy's Voice - It's not so much as him talking a lot (that's part of his character), but to my guess, with the amount of tutorializing, it's the type of voice he was given is what people hate. See, before Bubsy 3D, Bubsy sounded more masculine, and a majority of his appearances prior to Bubsy 3D was voiced by Rob Paulsen; which I can only describe his vocal performance as Bugs Bunny if he was voiced by Yakko Warner. His voice isn't that great, but it's much more pleasant on the ears by contrast; Rob Paulsen would even think Bubsy is not worse than Coconut Fred. When Bubsy makes a return in 2016 for "Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back", he ends up getting a voice change again, this time his voice is more similar to his debut back in his first game: "Bubsy in Close Encounters of the Furred Kind", which, again, is more pleasant sounding than the "Bubsy 3D" voice. Lani Minella, best known for voicing Rouge the Bat and Omochao in Sonic Adventure 2, Larry Koopa in the Mario games since NSMBWii, and Ivy Valentine from the Soul Edge/Calibur series, doesn't think fondly of her Bubsy voice. The Bubsy Wiki states that she expressed regret for the role; and did not like the direction she was given for the character. One would wonder if her voice as Omochao was a take that to her Bubsy Performance, especially when you can actually attack Omochao or even carry him around and throw him into a Pit. But yeah, it's not the character that's the issue, but it's more of the change in voice that felt inconsistent compared to other Bubsy voices. 2. The Controls - Let's face it, Bubsy has some serious control issues before Woolies Strike Back. When Bubsy was introduced, Accolade was using Sonic as the blueprint for the gameplay, and the reason for that was to highlight reasons why Sonic is a success. The creator of the character would also state in an interview he wanted the game to be as fast as Sonic and as deep as Mario. There's a catch, though. because of Sonic's speed, he has to have a safety net when running into enemies, hence why the Gold Rings play a role in it. Bubsy has no such safety net, at least in the first game (as well as Fractured Furry Tales). Bubsy did get items that heal him in the form of Bandages in Bubsy 2, the Paw Points in Bubsy 3D, and his own T-Shirts in Woolies Strike Back (giving Bubsy the Mario treatment in the health department for Woolies Strike Back). It's no secret that Bubsy 3D was a terrible game, due to having tank controls in a platformer meant to have freeform platforming like Mario, and having to take an entire year to complete the game is not a full-proof plan (Super Mario 64 began development in 1993, while Bubsy began development in 1995, so a few years would've been enough to polish it more). In a game like Tomb Raider, of course it would have Tank Controls, but that is to give the general vibe of the world she lives in being similar to that of an Indiana Jones movie. It totally works for Lara Croft, not so much with Bubsy. In honesty, I would like to see what it would be like if Bubsy 3D had Mario 64 mechanics... say like, a Rom hack of SM64, but Bubsy is the Player Model. The free movement would've been more forgiving. 3. The 100% Completionist Ending - Honestly, out of the two endings, The "Bad" ending is better than 100% Completionist ending. Although it felt like Bubsy wouldn't be able to make it, it's better than being sent back in time for no inexplicable reason, other than this: "In addition to procuring 32 rocket {piece}s, the speciment took far more atoms than the Rocket Engines can handle, causing an inverson loop overload of the primary core thruster, resulting in a hyperbolic cascade overreaction that will tear the very fabric of the space-time continum; in other words, the bobcat will find himself hurtling through time to an earlier period in the planet's history, losing track of the rocket somewhere in the dark ages." First of all, what a terrible way to end a game that gives you the promise of returning him home. Second, what if you didn't have as much atoms as the game thinks you have? Does using a single atom result in sending Bubsy to the Prehistoric times? If I was playing the game as a kid, with the incentive to save him by getting all the rocket pieces, only to be given a fuck-you by this ending, I'd go get myself a refund.
As a lover of holy warrior archetypes in various forms of media, Ned Flanders being terrible at everything but having the literal power of God on his side in a wrestling game brings a tear to my eye and fills me with immense joy
Fun fact: In Bubsy 3D, you can get infinite jumps by holding the select button for about a second in the middle of a glide. Just keep holding triangle and press/hold the select button at the start of the glide animation, wait for Bubsy to start falling (but not too long, try to time it so he only falls for like a frame or two) and repeat to go as high up as you want (at least within the limits of the game).
As somewhat of a TH-cam veteran at this point who's been watching since the early days of TH-camrs like the AVGN and Caddicarus, I can honestly say it’s massively refreshing to see a deeper dive into titles like these. I’ve always felt that Bubsy is 3D in Furbitten Planet (yes, I’m a big enough nerd to know the official title) is such a misunderstood mess of a game that deserves more credit than it gets. It’s great to see someone acknowledge just how deep the PS1 library (and the gaming world in general) is and how little the collective internet really knows of it outside of the big titles and the few smaller titles that get picked up by bigger creators and I think it’s such a shame that the same dozen or so games get picked out as the standouts time after time again. When a 2.5 hour plus video flies by so fast that I wish it was longer (you could’ve made this video 12 hours long and I think I’d still be wanting more) it’s obvious that I’ve found something pretty special, so Ive subbed and I’ll definitely be checking out your other videos. No idea if you’ll even see this comment, but if you do it’s a big thumbs up from me, keep up the awesome work!
@@christallh24 I don't think so? He has a playlist for all of his older videos and the compilation Season # videos. But yeah, I didn't feel Bubsy was properly covered until Nitrorad. And Caddy has moved on from being a reviewer to just being an entertainer.
@@jailynneverett3972 Going from videogame-review exclusive to just being all-out entertainers is something many of these youtubers benefitted from and gained my respect for! Caddicarus, Jontron, I think the AVGN should do it too. I'm glad they at least could get something out of these old games, a laugh at least, because not everyone has to be a gaming-historian, but it's so much better when they don't pretend to be such a thing
"No one doing the hard work sets out to make a bad game," is a quote from a friend of mine in game dev. And I always think of Bubsy3D (as well as all these others now!) when thinking of that, or playing a modern game that's not for me. Cannot imagine the extra stress of learning how to make a game in 3D in its infancy. Thanks for highlighting these, bringing back some childhood memories, and still giving praise in small places where it's due!
One of my university lecturers had a saying: "those who fail will always tell you how hard they tried." Most of the Bubsy 3D devs took the L graciously and made Syphon Filter. Most of them. I keep forgetting his name but there's that one saltlord whose interview is in all these Bubsy 3D videos who to this day has continued to whine about how hard he had worked, and not how much he had learned.
@@reloadpsiYou're talking about Richard Ham. The originating interview where he rants about how hard he worked, but not on how much he learned, was done in a magazine to market another game with a lot of promise and potential: The often overlooked and troubled online FPS from 2011, Brink. Richard learned a few things at least, having worked on Fable 2, and the Siphon Filter games.
My heart really goes out to the devs of Bubsy3D. Your video has cemented them in my mind as one of the true pioneers of that era. How brave it must be to develop a game with no peers or contemporaries to help answer some fundamental UX questions. In a vacuum, I think it turned out to be a very servicable game that they should be proud of.
@@sven_bender I haven't yet watched the video, so perhaps I will feel differently in two and half hours, but Bubsy 3D is not the first, or anything close to it. Alpha Waves waaayyy back in 1990 is perhaps the first 3D platfomer, predates Bubsy 3D by an entire 6 years (may as well be an eternity for how quick video game tech was improving in this time), and I would argue plays better. Even just on the PS1, multiple 3D platformers beat Bubsy 3D to market. Both Jumping Flash! 1 _and_ 2 (themselves spiritual successors to Geograph Seal made in 1994), Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider (more action adventure, but has plenty of 3D platforming), and Floating Runner all come to mind. I would say all of these play better than Bubsy 3D, though Floating Runner is a tough call. That's not to say it should have borrowed ideas from these games (though I'm almost certain it _did_ borrow from Jumping Flash!) because most of these would have been revealed and released when the game was deep into development. It's just, others did it earlier, and better, with either as few or fewer existing 3D platformer blueprints to work from. Never mind Mario 64 over there on the competing hardware. It's not the worst game of all time or anything. It probably wouldn't even crack a top 10 worst PS1 games list were I compelled to make one, and I feel a lot of the criticisms it gets are unfair and stem from a complete lack of understanding of the game, but it's also hardly something worth praising for being first or for nailing anything. It's interesting, and slightly more competent and functional than given credit for, but not much else.
yes of course they tried their best at the time. but let´s be real here, they tried and they failed spectaculerily. it´s terrible game made by very talented people that went on to make syphon filter and days gone. so the lesson here is imo not, oh bubsy 3d actually wasn´t that bad. it most definitly was bad but that didn´t get them down. they got back on the horse and delivered some cult classics after such a spectacular fail and thats commendable
Glad this got back up, I meant to leave a comment before, and forgot to. I think it’s pretty crazy that a lot of the “worst” games on a console are usually disappointing or particularly meme-able, as opposed to being the definitively worst functioning games on the console. The narrative gets controlled by the zeitgeist, opposed to everyone actually playing and evaluating the games.
More of a biggest disappointments race. Sonic 06, Batman & Robin, Bubsy 3D, Superman 64, Duke Nukem Forever all had high hopes and let down masses of fans. A similar effect has allowed more recent games to embed themselves in gaming history like FlatOut 3, Fable 3, No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077.
Video games are a really unique medium in terms of their availability and time cost. If you don’t emulate (and let’s be real, a lot of people don’t because they’re intimidated by it or PC gaming) then you need specific hardware to even access games, plus 10 hours is “short” for this medium (compare with movies and music). I agree with you, but I think the time cost and availability make gaming discourse worse. It happens with everything because people like memes tho. I just think it’s even worse for this medium.
You can see this all over the place. The very top of every "worst of" list will always be completely dominated not by the objectively worst but rather the most widely hated. Look at Steam for instance. At one point Overwatch 2 was one of if not the lowest rated game on the platform. Objectively, Overwatch 2 isn't even in the bottom 10,000 games on the platform. Hell, it honestly is probably in the top 30% of titles given the sheer quantity of broken shovelware, NFT grift games, and failed indie attempts that are on there. What Overwatch 2 was, however, is widely hated because of what a disappointment it was compared to what it replaced and all of Blizzard's broken promises. It was well known and it angered millions. That is how you top a worst of list. It's not by being objectively the worst.
I really liked the super level-headed look at Bubsy 3D at the end there. Just seeing it talked about not in an overly negative way was very refreshing.
I spent HOURS of my childhood playing Barbie Super Sports. I loved the vibe and how colorful it was, the outfits, and the music! I would love to play it again to see if i still enjoy it :)
LOVING the concept of this one! Popped up randomly in my feed and I was like hmmm... I didn't realize how tired I was of hearing the same old low-effort regurgitated "here's games that suck lol" lists. Really love the more thoughtful treatment you gave this one. Subscribed!
I love videogame reviews! Even if someone doesn't like a game, if they have something interesting to say about it, props. It's also okay just use it for jokes, but be honest about it! It's annoying as hell when they do it while pretending to be experts, and then have people repeat what they said thoughtlessly
Dude I just want to say since I've subbed to you, you been delivering banger after banger; and I really do feel you are one of the most underrated gaming TH-camrs producing content right now.
I actually never realized that Bubsy was mocked in comparison to Mario 64 and Crash, when I saw how the dates lined up I remember thinking about how unfortunate it was. That they couldn't help that this is the game they made in such an early era, and that these heavy hitters would ruin the reputation. Being a pioneer is hard! So I gotta respect Bubsy for that!
I can't because again, Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot 1 had their own fair share of developmental troubles (especially Crash 1, because of the strange way Naughty Dog relocated from Boston/Washington DC to California and Universal being really stupid) and they turned out to be GOOD GAMES, Bubsy is terrible. Mainly because Accolade were a terribly managed and horrifically organised publisher. They DID make good games, such as Test Drive and also published a few good games made by Interplay, however they were very poorly run and failed to learn from their predecessors at Atari and their compatriots at Absolute and Activision (yes, all three companies, Activision, Accolade and Absolute were established by former developers at Atari, and the main trait all of them had was that they named their companies so that in the Yellow Book directories, they would appear higher up the list than Atari as they are alphabetically assigned).
Awesome video, probably the most level headed takes I've seen on Special Forces and Bubsy 3D, I'm always fascinated by the wild west approach to early 3D games, it gave us such vast levels of quality. I've heard the theory that roughly %50 give or take of a consoles library is shovelware, then the next %25 is considered good, then the top %25 is considered great/amazing. With a library of 4k + games really makes you wonder what the worst games actually are
Something I've thought about recently is that true shovelware is a sign of a consoles success. Before the days of digital distribution, only very very successful consoles would see huge influxes of budget software. The PS1, PS2 and Wii are the best examples of it, everybody was trying to cash in. So I try not to think of shovelware as diluting the qaulity of the library, more so just an odd by product of success.
@@SeanSeansonfor sure, With the N64 every bad game is kind of a tragedy, because there's only 388 of them. A bad game on the PS1 is just some clutter to sweep out your front door.
For the era of Simpsons Wrestling, at least, cel shading effectively doubled the polygon counts for models using that. I remember following a DBZ Quake 3 mod back in the day, and reading the developers languishing about how "making it look right" meant they had to simplify models to allow for the outline effect
You know you have crafted a great video when it's 2 hours and 40 minutes long, yet people absolutely don't mind watching it AGAIN after having to re-upload it. I really do just love how open-minded and reasonable you are and how you applied it to everything here. It's so much more interesting to see someone cover The Simpsons Wrestling or MK Special Forces with the mindset of, "I dunno... maybe I actually try to play it? Spend some actual time with it, and look at the controls? Perhaps I should think about it with some context? Having played other games for points of reference? And _NOT JUST_ blindly regurgitate an opinion that's been passed around constantly?" You're really finding a lot of fascinating things to talk about that way. And seriously, I said it before (the WWE copyright strike), I think it's incredibly cathartic to hear someone actually _have something to say_ about Bubsy 3D, and genuinely defend a lot of points about it even if you arrive at the, "It's a bad game" conclusion. I mean, I own and played Jumping Flash and Floating Runner; I got enjoyment out of both and I never had problems with non-Mario 64 style 3D platformers (a lot of people enjoy Croc too and that has tank controls) and Bubsy 3D definitely looked fine in relation to games _like those_ - though you're right that a double-jump probably would've helped immensely. I'm also *thrilled* to hear someone FINALLY recognize the visuals are actually pretty neat; it's INSANE that everyone just trashed the colorful low-poly look when it so obviously was going for the same kind of abstract '50s and '60s cartoon look, just like that Marvin the Martian cartoon you mentioned. I mean, Duck Dodger 64 was trying to nail this aesthetic, as were games like Blasto, and _actual_ Looney Tunes games at the time, and they all have their audiences with no "professionals" trashing _those_ games for _their_ visuals - it has always been crazy to me that people would single out poor ol' Bubsy 3D. The aesthetic definitely has a cool vibe to it in many places. If you're Eidetic and you need to craft a whole world for Bubsy to inhabit in 3D, and 3D games _barely exist,_ you're almost certainly gonna look at cartoons for reference, and if you're looking at low poly limits and need to keep other tech constraints in mind, it makes total sense they'd pull inspiration from stylized, abstract cartoons _specifically._ It never seemed like a bad decision; it's so good to hear someone figure this out and say it. It's refreshing to hear someone apply some basic sense to this stuff in 2023, lol. You're totally right that people often misrepresent a game by playing poorly and/or using hyperbole to push a narrative and that sucks when you just want to _actually_ know about it, and hear an _actual_ opinion. I remember learning that lesson when Prince of Persia Warrior Within came out, and so many outlets complained how much he swears and how edgy he was, but I loved it and _I actually played it_ and found out he only swears TWICE; once in the opening stage and once at the end; this lightbulb went off in my head that journalists often don't care and just need to craft a narrative and push out some (bad) coverage, and that's unfair to so many games. You *NEVER* do that; you gave that chance to stuff like Ubik and Pax Corpus, and it's just nice to hear you apply that point of view to games like Bubsy 3D here. You sir, are a true legend on this platform. I also love how insane you are when it comes to coverage. You covered _so many more games here_ than you needed to JUST to show off other related games, and your _side-games_ get better coverage than 99% of TH-camrs would ever give. You're a true mad man, Mr. Seanson, and we love it! Thanks for putting so much work into your videos. Anyway, fantastic video! I really hope it stays up this time because I don't wanna write a long comment again, lmao, but gotta please that algorithm and work this good definitely deserves some serious engagement.
I have never played Bubsy 3D but the colors look striking and beautiful because PS1 graphics are what's "nostalgic" now. EVERY SINGLE TIME when it comes to nostalgia a lot of the most hated stuff of an era will end up being fondly remembered looking back in time. That's why I'm weary whenever people collectively hate on something that's "bad" or "too mainstream/annoying", even modern "bad" games as overtime there will be folks looking at said game at face value.
@@giselletorres4156 Bubsy 3D has always looked like shit (not so much the colors but the jitteriness of everything the level geometry looks straight up unfinished) and you're seriously telling me with a straight face there will be a time people will unironically like say Big Rigs or Super Monkey Diabouken or SQIJ? Christ I think I just found the Chris Stuckmann of gamers
2:21:55 that walking in wet shoes sound is the noise the woolies make! So although it is very strange sounding, that's why it keeps seeming to come from different directions as you move around--it lets you know where the enemies are Also I fully agree with you about this game, including what Bubsy himself is like; I love Lani Minella's performance as him!
Lani would go on to voice other iconic characters such as Rough the Bat and Omichao for the Sonic games and voiced all the characters in the underrated Sega Saturn game Astal, a personal favorite of mine. Not only that, she was also the person who got John St John casted to be the voice for Duke Nukem.
@@BlazeHeartPanther Minella is also known as the main actress who voices Nancy Drew in the eponymous Nancy Drew games. She also voiced Commandant Steele in Borderlands 1 and Ivy Valentine in the Soulcalibur series.
Phew, glad to see this comment because I was always very sure that the noise is actually the enemies and not the music itself but the video kind of made me second guess. But honestly, just whipping up some extracted OST already should confirm that this is just the enemeis you hear. I get it though, since they are everywhere in levels, people mix it up and think that's in the music itself
I like this approach. Even "bad" games have redeeming features and have to be considered in context of their release. And also, some of them can be very fun to play, even if unintentionally.
I'm so glad you got this back up so quickly! I didn't even remember any WWE footage in the original ffs. This is another great video, glad I get to finish it now and discover the glory of Bubsy.
It's almost like it's an incredibly Inconsequential small clip that is like a drop in a whole ass two and a half hour video But TH-cam will be TH-cam and be a pain in the ass
They suck so much. I watch a couple channels devoted to combat sports/performance & they've wrecked or robbed or prevented some really wonderful videos covering the art + sport of fighting + the fighters. They're so needlessly irrationally pointlessly grabby about things that are fair use. It's not even like the fighters + other people who do the kayfabe + crew the infrastructure + matches ever even benefit from WWE just yoinking or shutting down any material on the fighters or sport or their history/lore --- almost of the stuff that uses WWE is either making it a cool edit or meme or they cover the sport + care about it deeply, & care as much or more about the wellbeing of the fighter-performers. So it feels like another way they get to keep their fighters down & throw their weight around in the culture + in the sports world. Apparently Canal Studios is equally bad. A channel was trying to upload a deep dive into a 90s film, "Jacob's Ladder", & Canal just shut him the F down. After rounds + rounds of the usual re-edits around the trigger happy legal behemoth threats, the creator was begging Canal to just let him please release the video he thought was one of his best, saying he was totally fine with being demonetized, he just wanted people to see it, & it was positive about the film --- he wanted to share it bc he loves the film & the framing of the video was an exploration of his theories about Jacob's Ladder being an influence on the Silent Hill franchise, particularly the original SH2. I h8 how they can be legally wrong but they have the money to intimidate. It's so needlessly stressful on creators & I've heard a few implicate those release-block-claim loops combined with unresponsive YT staff who don't seem to understand their own product/platform/ToS. Ugh sorry apparently I had a lot of feelings.
Simpsons Wrestling has always been a guilty pleasure for me. Also, i would love to see a part 2 for the other games you considered to cover for this topic.
Reliably thorough and fantastic work as always, and I was especially nodding "yeah! YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT!" during your opening points...I hate how many experimental or nuanced or mixed bag games get dismissed entirely as trash just because one lazy and shallow take gets accepted and parroted by people who never played them, turning one hasty opinion into common consensus. Add in how many factors ENCOURAGE content creators to exagerrate a game's badness to turn it into a punchline, and you end up with more people smugly and certainly talking about how purely bad game is than there were people who ever actually played and tried forming their own opinion on it.
I got radicalised by a guy in college years ago who kept saying certain games were bad because Yahtzee didn't like them. It's been brewing up in me for years 😂
@@SeanSeanson As a long time Zero Punctuation/Fully Ramblomatic fan, even Yahtzee himself tells people that his opinions aren't definite and should be taken with a grain of salt, especially with certain genres or franchises he personally dislikes. So the idea of someone basing their entire opinion of games on his admitted exaggerated riffing is utterly insane to me. :/
Because a bad game is a bad game, you can't polish a turd by drawing smiley faces on it. I recall playing a lot of terrible games as a child that I liked then (mostly licensed dreck), I will not play those games ever again because they suck so much. Childhood denial is a powerful drug.
@@DR3ADER1"Good" and "bad" are arguably subjective terms. Sure there's conventions on what's commonly seen as good, but at the end of the day, it really comes down to personal opinion
@@rockettaco Incorrect, "Good" and "Bad" are objective by definition. And are qualified by quality standpoints, design standpoints and most importantly, practical positions.
Yeah sure, I'll watch it again. The Bubsy segment really opened my eyes about game development. Edit: I forgot to add. The reason I found this channel was because one day I was scrolling through a list of weird videogames and found Men in Black for the PS1. Never in my entire life had I heard about such a thing and thought to myself "You know what? Let's go. Life is short, let's get nuts. No videos, no reviews, no spoilers." Well long story short the game was balls but I decided to check again and the only channel with a proper review of it? You guessed it. Sean 2: Son of Sean. And what a find it is.
I always loved that harsh, colorful polygons from early 3d games. Bubsy was one of the first games I played on the PS1 and never understood the massive hate it got. Another one that borrows the psychedelic aesthetic and plays quite the same is Mort The Chicken
I think the reason the outlines tanked the performance in Simpsons Wrestling is because - from personal experience in using Blender - a common way 3D models are given outlines like that is by duplicating the model, scaling it up slightly, inverting its normals, giving it an all-black material, and setting it to render behind the original model. While this does produce the outline effect relatively well, it also effectively means the game is rendering each character model TWICE, which could be the reason behind the major performance hit.
I'm just glad we finally got some bubsy action. How's the metroid video coming along? It's gotta be a huge undertaking, but you handled castlevania and lotr better than any extra long form video game essays I've seen, so I'm eagerly awaiting the final product.
So weird how people received South Park Rally. I had it on the N64, and it for its jank and odd gameplay, I kind of really enjoyed it as a kid? I come back to it and I kind of love it for how Disgusting it feels, it's PUTRID, but it's still playable enough that I can play with my friends through Parsec... Nowadays I can understand, but it definitely doesn't feel like The Worst of the bunch in this video, so I think it deserves the position given to it. Oh, and the music kind of goes off REALLY hard at times and I dig that, it's actually all tracker music, according to the PC release of the game, probably transcribed/converted between each console port.
A new SeanSeanson video? Yes, this is ineed a good week. Also like, great video! I very much appreciate your fair and unbiased shake at ANY game regardless of previous consensus. You truly manage to bring out the light side of any game in a way that makes me want to try them.
Some of my favorite games are ones that got bad reviews at the time, sold bad or actually have obvious flaws, but oftentimes they feature *something* unique to them that I really like. Gotcha Force has awful voice acting (child actors apparently, so understandable), arguably repetitive gameplay and music, as well as a rather plain story. It sold poorly, it usually gets reviewed poorly, but the specific combination of stuff it provides makes it one of my favorite games, to the point I replay it annualy. The early Monster Hunter titles *always* got flak for being clunky and way too hard, but they still ended up gathering an audience that wanted its specific feel, including me. I rarely watch the funny rage reviews anymore, but when I did, I sometimes found myself being rather intrigued by certain aspects of the games torn apart. Heck, recently, I found a very passionate review on Quest 64, one of those games I thought sounded interesting but were set in my mind as "one of the bad ones". Sidenote, I always hesitated to say it but yeah, I do find Bubsy funny. I like eye-rolling humor.
The barbie game you attributed to dice was actually created by sandbox studios, a developer that made many licensed children's games on PS1 before being acquired by DICE in 2001 to become a support studio for battlefield. So those barbie games aren't really made by dice, but rather a studio that was later acquired by DICE. They also worked on the Shrek game for Xbox prior to or at the same time as the acquisition and it's often mistakenly attributed to dice themselves.
To be fair I said it was Dice Canada, which was the name sandbox changed to after the acquisition. It would be like the difference in saying a game is made my Ubisoft Montreal or Ubisoft Montpellier, it's the one blanket but I know they're two different studios.
It's light years ahead of the same old rehashed "bad game lists". I love this "undercard/underdog" re-evaluation thing he's doing here. Love this format.
Can confirm this is still an excellent video and you're right, Bubsy -looks- fine. I recommend a look at the Arcane Kids release "Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective" to anyone who hasn't experienced it.
Holy SHIT what a throwback, I haven't thought about that in years! I had to look it up to remember it, but like the first few seconds of gameplay was all I needed to remember that, I think I remember Vinesauce playing through it back in like what, 2015?
THANK YOU FOR TALKING ABOUT HOW BAD TWIN STICK CONTROLS WERE People look at the reviews for Alien Resurrection and laugh at them for hating the controls, but that style frequently felt like crap until closer to Halo. Controller layout is only part of the equation.
Kyle and Stan kind of breaking character to question their iconic call and response is absolutely something I'd play through an entire South Park game just to see.
so refreshing to see someone not completely throwing 3 square mile floors of shit to bubsy 3d, it really puts it into a new perspective on how much it has going for it, even if the game ended up poorly made it still shows the potential it could've had if it just didn't start development in a clumsy period for 3d games
Sean, your content is so wholesome, expertly researched and immaculately commentated. i've been a big fan for around a year now and I just wanted to say that your videos have been really entertaining and meaningful to me for this past year and I count you among my favorite youtubers. I've found myself eagerly awaiting for your next video consistently. If things weren't so hard right now, I'd definitely be a patron already, but I am planning on it once I manage to secure some financial stability.
This has to be so painful having such a long video, considering it was doing pretty well, get tagged for a few seconds of footage. TH-cam copyright is a mess. I've already seen this but I'm gonna let it run again, for algorithm magic :)
I got the south park game BRAND NEW at Walmart in 1999 for N64 only 5 bucks and actually had fun especially the multi-player mode..i love the game for being so different and having the damn near the full cast of characters from the show playable and voice acted too
"And you know what? I get it." *Proceeds to show Scorpion.* Yeah. Like idk how I even kept playing the game five minutes in, but when I saw the FMVs, it was so Mortal Kombat. So I kept playing.
i received south park rally by a well-meaning relative for my 6th birthday. i bet they just saw the bright and cheery cover art and assumed south park was for kids, which probably wasn't unheard of at the time. i think i played it for about 5 minutes before ramming into a cow that subsequently exploded all over the screen, which led me to turn the game off, never playing it again and im pretty sure i had a little cry about it, too.
My mom bought this game for me on a Christimas (I think it was in 2001 or 2002) alongside my PS1, and she bought it for the same reasons lol, she was pretty shocked when she saw the content, but never took the game from me.
I think the reason Bubsy 3D gets slammed a ton - aside from being attached to a punching bag of a videogame franchise - can be chalked up to game feel. You could have the most ambitious project of 1996, but if it doesn't feel good to play, it doesn't feel good to play.
This is prob my fav channel devoted to retro gaming. The ps1 is my fav console and im pretty happy to see someone do such detailed breakdowns of its many facets. I'd love to see you do the inverse of this video and talk about some of your favorite ps1 games, not just the ones that everyone loves. Id love to hear your takes on cool games for the system that mean a lot to you. Thanks for all your incredible work. Wish you the best, love the vid!
I never really gave a good game topic much thought honestly, but I think doing this gave me a better appreciation for the really good stuff so it's something I'll keep in mind for sure. Appreciate the kind comment and thanks for watching! :)
I was a big fan of Bubsy 1 on the Megadrive, so when Bubsy 3d came out I was super excited. My mum wouldn't let me get the game because it had really really poor ratings in the PSX magazines at the time, so one day I snuck the game into the pile of rentals at the video store and managed to get it past her. She later caught me playing the game and thought it was the funniest thing ever, BTW I did not have a great time with Bubsy 3d and she could tell XD
The creator of Bubsy Michael Berlyn sadly passed away in March 2023 after a 8 year battle of cancer and I say he deserves more respect even though Bubsy is often become a huge joke when first discussed on his games. Michael made the original title out of passion while playing the original Sonic for 14 hours a day for research to convince the higher ups at Accolade to get it approved. He did return to the franchise on Accolade's favour to found Eidetic (Later Bend Studio) to develop a new Bubsy title in 3D and he and the small team of 8 people did as much as they could to envision on what a 3D would look before it became mainstay in video games. After seeing a demo of Super Mario 64, Michael wanted to restart from scratch but got denied by Accolade as Bubsy 3D become a joke and largly negative reception. He then played a minor role in creating Syphon Filter although he didn't wanted to be credited after the failure of Bubsy 3D. One more thing, he was often one of the pioneers of the text-based adventure games with Zork and wanted to branch forward to platformers, and this is where Michael got the idea to do Bubsy. Later on in his life he enjoyed a relaxing break from the industry focusing on casual games and even founded a music band called "Hot Mustard" on jazz. (Most Interesting) I would recommend watching the Did You Know Gaming video on Bubsy and Michaels career as a whole focusing on the creation, the popularity and the fall of the franchise, really interesting and sad story to a guy who wanted to develop a good game but Accolade kind of milked the franchise to the ground as well as the company with it. RIP Michael Berlyn 1949-2023
I always liked Bubsy 3d and don't think it deserves quite the reputation it has. It has a distinctive style and aesthetic and while it lacks fluidity, it controls competently enough. If you had tried playing similar games on the PC in the early 90s, something like Bubsy 3d would have seemed quite sophisticated.
It may shock you to hear but honestly Barbie games from what I’ve heard just have spectacular soundtracks. Honestly i feel like it’s weirder for Barry to have a bad sound track
Your integrity in giving all these games a fair shot, placing them in their proper historical context and highlighting their strengths and troubled developments -- especially Bubsy 3D, which has been so maligned -- is to be commended. I'm glad this video has so many views; nuanced, loving voices like yours are rare and should be treasured. Thank you for all you do!
It's always been funny to me how many bad games people think there are , but they lack the necessary perspective to really understand gaps in quality. Very early on I learned that Cosmic Race was the rock-bottom on PS1 and nothing really even comes close to it. Every other game has some unique redeemable quality. Cosmic race uses dev kit assets for graphic and public domain music, the most baffling control scheme on the system and has an overall design that works mostly, but not very well. The levels are 8-10 times larger than they need to be for no reason, there are no effective differences in character choice. It is soulless exercise to make busywork for some people that were getting paid to do something for someone for reasons unknown to me. The gall is that they attempted to sell it. With that consideration things have to be very bad relatively, we have to go down to Iron and Blood, which is frustrating on multitudes of levels to even explain and purely inexcusable claptrap like Barbie Explorer, something that actively hurts our culture. Bubsy 3D and Masters of Teras Kasi are like masterclass products in comparison. Further I find it completely baffling that something as high quality as Star Gladiator could even be taken into consideration. Unfortunately the only way to really solve this inconsistency of understanding is to put the games in the hands of the players. That just isn't reasonable. Maybe something like a very easily accessible peer-reviewed collection of them would help provide real context... mostly it is up to people like Sean to spread the word. Even "bad" games are important. Any work even one person spends months creating is highly likely to have value or at least provide entertainment as it was intended, and it's only fair that these works be given their equal chance to show what they have.
What a fantastic video. It's great seeing someone give Bubsy 3D it's flowers. I genuinely love bad games for so many reasons, and it's weirdly difficult to explain that to people. I really like what you said at 6:33 about Batman & Robin, it's really no surprise to find "Bad Games" being weirdly innovative or ahead of their time. I feel like people almost actively dislike looking at past failures that went on to influence games that succeeded, and I really don't know why. Dark Souls is kind of impossible to not mention here, it's both the most glaring example, and biggest exception, of this attitude. It is deeply bizarre to see Armored Core and, impossibly, _King's Field_ develop an active fanbase online. If you haven't, please, please play "Bubsy's Back! Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective" from ARCANE KIDS (also made the infamous Sonic Dreams Collection). The best way I could describe it is a deeply bizarre, sorta-faithful Bubsy 3D Tribute / Pseudo-Walking Sim / Educational Game about Bubsy well, visiting the real life James Turrell Retrospective held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2013~2014. It's very, very funny, and deeply weird. It also... bizarrely now works double-duty as a time capsule for both that _very_ specific James Turrell exhibition, and the former LACMA building that was, very controversially, demolished in 2020. When Unity Web Player support was discontinued, ARCANE KIDS even went back and added an epilogue for the downloadable version where Bubsy begrudgingly visits Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass" which, yeah all my homies hate Levitated Mass it's just a big rock
Thank you for the kind comment! And yeah I still find it hard to believe Fromsoft is this darling of the gaming world nowadays. A group of people making some of the most niche and hardcore games imaginable, and they made it big by sticking to that formula. A real Cinderella story, and I couldn't be happier for them! I'll definitely check out Bubsy's Back! Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective. I've always admired it from afar, but I think after finishing Bubsy 3D I owe it to myself digg into it properly. Appreciate you watching! :)
Bubsy 3D is still shit, and Richard Ham's comments about the criticism still reinforce my position on the game. However, Batman and Robin was just Batman Arkham Knight, only 18 years older and made with less knowledge of how to make good 3D games in the British Isles and Mainland Europe. It's also coincidental that both games were developed in London, the only difference being that Probe was from Croydon and Rocksteady is from Kentish Town, on opposing sides of the City (South and North) and the River Thames.
This got me thinking about Batman & Robin. The clock system and free roam is mindblowing in a pre-GTA III world. Even Driver 2 wasn't doing what Batman & Robin was. I see you covered it in an older video, I'll have to head back!
Me: "I'm sorry no, I haven't got time to watch any movies or TV series or sporting events." Also me: "Can't wait to sit down and watch 2 and a half hours of Bubsy the Bobcat"
You're right that people focus on the North American viewpoint, but perhaps that's simply because there's more people from that region making content. I certainly never see Japanese people making lists of top games (in English, something we'd see, I mean.. surely they do in Japanese). Europeans seem to be grumpy about not being represented, but I think they can simply make more videos from their own perspective. I notice a lot of people really like to complain about America's popularity. I can see where some of it comes from, but you also need other regions to actually BE POPULAR to be talked about. Japan is popular, for example, but not really in the sense of us seeing the opinions and thoughts of actual people there, when it comes to games. We have videos about the people there who made games, but few from the ground level. So of course we're not talking about their top ten lists of games. Europe is much the same, but there's less language barrier so I think it should be easy for people over there to share with us if they want to.
Oh for sure, a major part of the problem lies in the lack of euro centric videos on the topic, or at least ones that make it big on the platform. That could be down to interest in the topic itself, but if we want people to care about these games, we have to take the time to show them why, in the same way people do for American and Japanese games.
Love the genuine passion and attention to detail you're putting into your videos. They're like the absolute peak of listicle videos, to the point where it almost feels like an insult to call them a listicle.
Excellent video as always! Your vids are just as fun as they are informative, and I appreciate the hard work that goes into them (I'm sure it's a lot more difficult getting these vids together than it looks!) Much love & support from NZ, hope you're doing well in these crazy times!
You are the most consistently feel good, level headed, funny and kind people on here. Each video is a joy to watch and while I’m new to the channel and can’t remember how I found you, I’m so glad I did. I hope you get all the success you deserve☺
Really enjoying this video! I love bad games...there's usually something to enjoy, be it art or music. Sometimes ya just gotta dig for those absurd and inspired moments. My favorite bit so far: "sitting in the dark, in silence, playing barbie explorer is a strangely harrowing experience" 😂
Torneko and Azure Dreams really took a lot of unjustified flak from reviewers back in the mid nineties. People who didn't knew what the Rogue genre of games is and never played a full rogue (not a rogue like). I love Rogue games, I play Shiren on the Nintendo DS to this day, it has the Final Puzzle mode where it gives you a challenge very much like the original Rogue with of course it's own peculiarities. Torneko also gives you a full Rogue experience on the More Magical Dungeon mode which I enjoy quite a lot and translates well to a phone touchscreen. Let's not forget about the Azure Dreams race that happens to this day and has many contestants and newcomers that are always welcomed into the community.
Lovely video as always! I'm honestly surprised that Shrek Treasure Hunt wasn't mentioned as it's often talked about in "Worst PS1 games" conversations, that one gave me a pretty bad time as a kid. That being said, I think that Bubsy is in a rather similar place to something like E.T. 2600. Taking it at face value, it's definitely one of the worst games in the system for someone to pick up and play. Giving the context in which it was made makes it understandable that the game was done in such a way, but I feel like it still doesn't really... "redeem" the game? The thing I'm trying to say is that a game can be both bad and charmingly bad, and there's really nothing wrong with that. As mentioned several times through the video, it's better to have a "so bad it's funny" game than a dull, bland and mediocre game. And I think that Bubsy 3D falls in between the two. Either way, that was a pretty good plot twist with the developers, I actually never realized that they were behind that other game lol. Thank you again for the great content!
im autistic and i remember having a hyperfixiation phase with bubsy, specifically the Bubsy 3D Game, i was so interested in what were other people opinions even if they were the same, about the game development, what were it's inspirations into making it, but at the same time it was **sensory hell** to me, something about the colors fighting in my eyes and the music while it isn't that bad, it hits and scratches my brain in all of the wrong ways for me, but like a car crash i just can't stop watching it. You video surely was like refreshing air hearing about Bubsy 3D that wasn't the same thing other people said with different words. I love the Playstation 1, i grew with it and it means a lot of me the videogames made for the ps1 no matter how good or bad they are.
As someone who both loves dunking on a good shitter of a game, but also loves giving them a chance (sometimes), I can definitely appreciate the mindset behind this video. Like, somewhat recently, I played Balan Wonderworld, which the internet loves to dunk on (due in no small part to its association to Yuji Naka, who is a mess of a human being). I actually went on to 100% the game and found a lot to love (and even went on to read the novel afterwards), and while the game is definitely not without its problems, it's also genuinely pretty fun with some cool art and music (and I feel like a lot of hate towards it is because, again, of Yuji Naka, who a lot of people know for arguably stealing credit for creating Sonic the Hedgehog, so I just feel bad for Balan being credited mostly to him, when other people did most the work).
I really appreciate your outlook on video games. Too many people just get really heated at bad video games and that's all they spend their time doing. Nothing wrong with disliking or even hating some bad games, but the level of anger and rage baiting is so insane on the internet that some make it their entire personalities. I'm happy "bad" games exist. They tend to be pretty interesting and sometimes show an alternate way to handle something, even if the result isn't always ideal. If you'd like to watch someone with a similar outlook to yours, I'd recommend DNOpls. He plays pretty much anything and everything, and never gets mad. Dude just like video games.
Since this channel loves framing things into perspective, consider how expensive some of these shit games were, in 80s money no less. Imagine as a kid saving up for weeks if not months to buy a brand full-price game and it's crap, that's it, and you're stuck with it, the anger at a lot of shitty games is completely deserved
@@zenksren8206 Sure, but most people complaining about something like Bubsy 3D didn't even buy it when it came out. A lot of the bad games are only being judged by people that just learned about them a few years ago. At some point you just gotta let that sort of hate go. There's much more valid things to be mad about.
Great video, man! Spot on about the USA kinda driving the ratings conversation on YT etc, also the SAME for South Park, I preferred the older seasons, they were kids, they had the innocence of kids, the stories were original and weren't mostly based on current events. It's a shame the creators want to get rid of anything season 4 and below, I found it to be their best work.
I get the impression that Bubsy would be a decent-ish game if it had better controls and other QOL improvements. I do agree that the visuals are quite a vibe, and I think the recent appreciation for early 3D graphics (like ENA) makes it more appealing as well. The low framerate animations also add to the aesthetic as well. It's actually kind of insane how much game developers were able to get out of early 3D. I can't imagine it was the easiest thing to learn back then, let alone making it run realtime in a game engine.
The issue was that Eidetic focused primarily on resolution, not the camera, or the movement, or the level design, in fact, they ONLY focused on having the "highest" resolution of any PS1 game.
The issue was that Eidetic focused primarily on resolution, not the camera, or the movement, or the level design, in fact, they ONLY focused on having the "highest" resolution of any PS1 game.
I love your series on PS1 games and respect that you defend Bubsy as an early 3d game. I love Quest 64 because it was one of my earliest game experiences and has unique mechanics and a wonderful atmosphere. Keep preaching the gospel of playing it for yourself and making your own opinion!
this was fantastic! i always appreciate when weird old games are given a fair shake and i think you did a really good job explaining why they got such a bad reputation and how they can still be appreciated in a modern context. just curious, what is the little bird platformer being played at 1:52:02?
Aw thank you, appreciate you watching! It's called Kyoro-chan no Purikura Daisakusen. It's a very cute little platformer based around a Japanese food mascot, well worth checking out!
I absolutely loved Barbie Explored when I played it on PC as a little 4 year old baby. I think the controls didn’t bother me because, to a 4 year old, ALL game controls are confusing and unintuitive, but I think the pretty environments, slow pacing, and cool theming gave me room to come up with my own stories and ideas to play make-believe with it. I’m also certain the menu voiceover thing was put in for accessibility, since they were expecting 4 year old babies like me to be playing the games. Edit: also, I did 100% complete it. But I can’t guarantee I did so without help from my parents. All I remember is spending a looong time collecting gems, finishing the final level and seeing the end cutscene, and then being a little confused when I collected all the collectables and nothing happened.
Okay so it seems like Eidetic had everything against them. They had no experience working with 3D games, didn't have enough time to complete and fix everything, and had no clue about the competition and their games. The fact that it works at all, and can be played is nothing but a miracle and should be praised to be honest. It's not a good game but let's face it Eidetic never had a chance from the beginning. So I understand how you can feel bad for them because I do too now.
I was finally able to sit down and watch this masterpiece of yours :) lovely video and good message, I defo need to try some of these games, I was playing Simpson Wrestling as a kid and I loved it. Looking forward to another video essay, you just do it differently, Sean, I keep getting back to all of your videos and I cannot stop to watching them. Thank you so much, from all of us for your precious time that has been always spent well and converted into hours upon hours of quality vdieo content.I guess, sometimes it might be tedious, exhausting to go through all of this, but please, keep it up, do it for fans, do it for the VIBE
I’m glad to see someone give a shoutout to the Bubsy 3D soundtrack, some of it isn’t bad at all. I can’t forgive the game (in terms of playing it and I have played it - I do respect the development behind it) but yeah
I'd be surprised if there were any good Barbie games. It's fookin' Barbie. Inoffensive is probably the best that can be said about them. Although my wife did play one on Windows 95 that was pretty ok. Shame it was a buggy mess that crashed every 2 seconds.
There's a Barbie metroidvania on the DS if you can believe it. Don't know if its any good but at least people are trying to make a Barbie game for the gamers haha
Well since I get to make another comment, I might as well take the opportunity make a japan only games viewer wheel nomination (tho I'm not entirely sure if you've covered this game before or not lol.) Gekisou Tomarunner (1999), which is another one of those racing/platformer hybrids, and it's pretty damn good too.
Worth noting the followup release "TomaRunner vs L'Arc-en-Ciel" which adds members of the titular Japanese rock band as playable characters (there may be other differences, but I never actually played it). Looking forward to seeing either one covered, as iirc, I suggested that one too :)
Honestly when you compare these games to stuff nowadays like asset flips, blatant scams, or pay to win games, it really makes you appreciate the effort put into every other game out there. Even stuff like Bubsy 3D. I'd take that one any day over something like... The Slaughtering Grounds or all those scummy mobile games. If anything, I think this is just an example of how important first impressions are. People only have so much patience and if you don't wow them in the first fifteen minutes then you can't expect them to stick around. And with most of these games, I think that is the main reason why they are so hated. Which is a shame, but that's just how a majority of people's minds work.
This is a reupload since the original got blocked by WWE for featuring a few seconds of the RAW is WAR opening during the video. The footage has been edited out and replaced with far superior TNA footage so hopefully it should be ok from here on out!
If you previously watched the original or are just watching this version for the first time, thanks for checking it out! Much love
The Return of the King!
I'm so sorry you content creators have to deal with this nonsense. Great job on the video! You described exactly how I feel about Bubsy 3D and its more positive aspects.
I downloaded the original
Damn you WWE! At least this gives me the excuse to enjoy this video back to back
Can't believe the fed crapped on you. I'm moving all their games down to 1/10 scores out of spite! Sorry about that happening to you lad.
The story behind Simpsons wrestling is sad. There's a video on youtube where someone interviews the devs and it turns out it was actually a really well thought out game design but the publisher and other people involved in the licensing got involved and stopped them from doing all of the cool stuff
It's such a common situation with licensed games :(
@@SeanSeanson If the intention of Bubsy 3D was to make it visually similar to an Outer Space Cartoon with Maurice Noble's background art (It is rumored that Chuck Jones partook in the art direction for Bubsy 3D and is never credited for it), I kinda see what you're trying to explain, especially since the whole premise of the game is Bubsy being kidnapped by the Woolies in an act of revenge to the first game (because according to Bubsy 3D, the Queen's Poly and Ester got cut in half), and you have to collect Rocket Pieces to return home. I believe the biggest issue with the game comes down to three problems:
1. Bubsy's Voice - It's not so much as him talking a lot (that's part of his character), but to my guess, with the amount of tutorializing, it's the type of voice he was given is what people hate. See, before Bubsy 3D, Bubsy sounded more masculine, and a majority of his appearances prior to Bubsy 3D was voiced by Rob Paulsen; which I can only describe his vocal performance as Bugs Bunny if he was voiced by Yakko Warner. His voice isn't that great, but it's much more pleasant on the ears by contrast; Rob Paulsen would even think Bubsy is not worse than Coconut Fred. When Bubsy makes a return in 2016 for "Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back", he ends up getting a voice change again, this time his voice is more similar to his debut back in his first game: "Bubsy in Close Encounters of the Furred Kind", which, again, is more pleasant sounding than the "Bubsy 3D" voice.
Lani Minella, best known for voicing Rouge the Bat and Omochao in Sonic Adventure 2, Larry Koopa in the Mario games since NSMBWii, and Ivy Valentine from the Soul Edge/Calibur series, doesn't think fondly of her Bubsy voice. The Bubsy Wiki states that she expressed regret for the role; and did not like the direction she was given for the character. One would wonder if her voice as Omochao was a take that to her Bubsy Performance, especially when you can actually attack Omochao or even carry him around and throw him into a Pit. But yeah, it's not the character that's the issue, but it's more of the change in voice that felt inconsistent compared to other Bubsy voices.
2. The Controls - Let's face it, Bubsy has some serious control issues before Woolies Strike Back. When Bubsy was introduced, Accolade was using Sonic as the blueprint for the gameplay, and the reason for that was to highlight reasons why Sonic is a success. The creator of the character would also state in an interview he wanted the game to be as fast as Sonic and as deep as Mario. There's a catch, though. because of Sonic's speed, he has to have a safety net when running into enemies, hence why the Gold Rings play a role in it. Bubsy has no such safety net, at least in the first game (as well as Fractured Furry Tales). Bubsy did get items that heal him in the form of Bandages in Bubsy 2, the Paw Points in Bubsy 3D, and his own T-Shirts in Woolies Strike Back (giving Bubsy the Mario treatment in the health department for Woolies Strike Back).
It's no secret that Bubsy 3D was a terrible game, due to having tank controls in a platformer meant to have freeform platforming like Mario, and having to take an entire year to complete the game is not a full-proof plan (Super Mario 64 began development in 1993, while Bubsy began development in 1995, so a few years would've been enough to polish it more). In a game like Tomb Raider, of course it would have Tank Controls, but that is to give the general vibe of the world she lives in being similar to that of an Indiana Jones movie. It totally works for Lara Croft, not so much with Bubsy. In honesty, I would like to see what it would be like if Bubsy 3D had Mario 64 mechanics... say like, a Rom hack of SM64, but Bubsy is the Player Model. The free movement would've been more forgiving.
3. The 100% Completionist Ending - Honestly, out of the two endings, The "Bad" ending is better than 100% Completionist ending. Although it felt like Bubsy wouldn't be able to make it, it's better than being sent back in time for no inexplicable reason, other than this: "In addition to procuring 32 rocket {piece}s, the speciment took far more atoms than the Rocket Engines can handle, causing an inverson loop overload of the primary core thruster, resulting in a hyperbolic cascade overreaction that will tear the very fabric of the space-time continum; in other words, the bobcat will find himself hurtling through time to an earlier period in the planet's history, losing track of the rocket somewhere in the dark ages."
First of all, what a terrible way to end a game that gives you the promise of returning him home. Second, what if you didn't have as much atoms as the game thinks you have? Does using a single atom result in sending Bubsy to the Prehistoric times? If I was playing the game as a kid, with the incentive to save him by getting all the rocket pieces, only to be given a fuck-you by this ending, I'd go get myself a refund.
@@robbiewalker2831 Jeebus, that's a lot of thought about BUBSY 3D of all things.
@UnjustifiedRecs Hey, I had to give an explanation as to why people hate Bubsy 3D, since he didn’t give much thought on why.
@@robbiewalker2831 Go outside
As a lover of holy warrior archetypes in various forms of media, Ned Flanders being terrible at everything but having the literal power of God on his side in a wrestling game brings a tear to my eye and fills me with immense joy
You better like Daredevil
Fun fact:
In Bubsy 3D, you can get infinite jumps by holding the select button for about a second in the middle of a glide. Just keep holding triangle and press/hold the select button at the start of the glide animation, wait for Bubsy to start falling (but not too long, try to time it so he only falls for like a frame or two) and repeat to go as high up as you want (at least within the limits of the game).
Grew up loving Bubsy and no one around me knew about him. Became an adult with the internet and he’s notoriously hated. Talk about whiplash
As somewhat of a TH-cam veteran at this point who's been watching since the early days of TH-camrs like the AVGN and Caddicarus, I can honestly say it’s massively refreshing to see a deeper dive into titles like these. I’ve always felt that Bubsy is 3D in Furbitten Planet (yes, I’m a big enough nerd to know the official title) is such a misunderstood mess of a game that deserves more credit than it gets.
It’s great to see someone acknowledge just how deep the PS1 library (and the gaming world in general) is and how little the collective internet really knows of it outside of the big titles and the few smaller titles that get picked up by bigger creators and I think it’s such a shame that the same dozen or so games get picked out as the standouts time after time again.
When a 2.5 hour plus video flies by so fast that I wish it was longer (you could’ve made this video 12 hours long and I think I’d still be wanting more) it’s obvious that I’ve found something pretty special, so Ive subbed and I’ll definitely be checking out your other videos. No idea if you’ll even see this comment, but if you do it’s a big thumbs up from me, keep up the awesome work!
Thank you so much for the kind words, appreciate you watching! 🙏
Has Caddicarus older videos been taken down? I searched for them last year but could only find mostly more recent videos.
@@christallh24 I don't think so? He has a playlist for all of his older videos and the compilation Season # videos.
But yeah, I didn't feel Bubsy was properly covered until Nitrorad. And Caddy has moved on from being a reviewer to just being an entertainer.
@@jailynneverett3972 Going from videogame-review exclusive to just being all-out entertainers is something many of these youtubers benefitted from and gained my respect for! Caddicarus, Jontron, I think the AVGN should do it too. I'm glad they at least could get something out of these old games, a laugh at least, because not everyone has to be a gaming-historian, but it's so much better when they don't pretend to be such a thing
"No one doing the hard work sets out to make a bad game," is a quote from a friend of mine in game dev. And I always think of Bubsy3D (as well as all these others now!) when thinking of that, or playing a modern game that's not for me. Cannot imagine the extra stress of learning how to make a game in 3D in its infancy. Thanks for highlighting these, bringing back some childhood memories, and still giving praise in small places where it's due!
Great comment, and thank you for watching! :)
I love that; thank you for sharing that reminder.
One of my university lecturers had a saying: "those who fail will always tell you how hard they tried."
Most of the Bubsy 3D devs took the L graciously and made Syphon Filter.
Most of them.
I keep forgetting his name but there's that one saltlord whose interview is in all these Bubsy 3D videos who to this day has continued to whine about how hard he had worked, and not how much he had learned.
@@reloadpsiYou're talking about Richard Ham. The originating interview where he rants about how hard he worked, but not on how much he learned, was done in a magazine to market another game with a lot of promise and potential: The often overlooked and troubled online FPS from 2011, Brink. Richard learned a few things at least, having worked on Fable 2, and the Siphon Filter games.
My heart really goes out to the devs of Bubsy3D. Your video has cemented them in my mind as one of the true pioneers of that era. How brave it must be to develop a game with no peers or contemporaries to help answer some fundamental UX questions. In a vacuum, I think it turned out to be a very servicable game that they should be proud of.
You only get one chance to be the first, and they nailed it. Kudos to them.
@@sven_bender I haven't yet watched the video, so perhaps I will feel differently in two and half hours, but Bubsy 3D is not the first, or anything close to it.
Alpha Waves waaayyy back in 1990 is perhaps the first 3D platfomer, predates Bubsy 3D by an entire 6 years (may as well be an eternity for how quick video game tech was improving in this time), and I would argue plays better.
Even just on the PS1, multiple 3D platformers beat Bubsy 3D to market. Both Jumping Flash! 1 _and_ 2 (themselves spiritual successors to Geograph Seal made in 1994), Crash Bandicoot, Tomb Raider (more action adventure, but has plenty of 3D platforming), and Floating Runner all come to mind. I would say all of these play better than Bubsy 3D, though Floating Runner is a tough call.
That's not to say it should have borrowed ideas from these games (though I'm almost certain it _did_ borrow from Jumping Flash!) because most of these would have been revealed and released when the game was deep into development. It's just, others did it earlier, and better, with either as few or fewer existing 3D platformer blueprints to work from. Never mind Mario 64 over there on the competing hardware.
It's not the worst game of all time or anything. It probably wouldn't even crack a top 10 worst PS1 games list were I compelled to make one, and I feel a lot of the criticisms it gets are unfair and stem from a complete lack of understanding of the game, but it's also hardly something worth praising for being first or for nailing anything. It's interesting, and slightly more competent and functional than given credit for, but not much else.
@@321cheesemanI like turtles.....😗
yes of course they tried their best at the time. but let´s be real here, they tried and they failed spectaculerily. it´s terrible game made by very talented people that went on to make syphon filter and days gone. so the lesson here is imo not, oh bubsy 3d actually wasn´t that bad. it most definitly was bad but that didn´t get them down. they got back on the horse and delivered some cult classics after such a spectacular fail and thats commendable
@@321cheeseman…this is why you watch the video before making an argument.
Glad this got back up, I meant to leave a comment before, and forgot to. I think it’s pretty crazy that a lot of the “worst” games on a console are usually disappointing or particularly meme-able, as opposed to being the definitively worst functioning games on the console. The narrative gets controlled by the zeitgeist, opposed to everyone actually playing and evaluating the games.
More of a biggest disappointments race. Sonic 06, Batman & Robin, Bubsy 3D, Superman 64, Duke Nukem Forever all had high hopes and let down masses of fans. A similar effect has allowed more recent games to embed themselves in gaming history like FlatOut 3, Fable 3, No Man's Sky and Cyberpunk 2077.
Video games are a really unique medium in terms of their availability and time cost. If you don’t emulate (and let’s be real, a lot of people don’t because they’re intimidated by it or PC gaming) then you need specific hardware to even access games, plus 10 hours is “short” for this medium (compare with movies and music). I agree with you, but I think the time cost and availability make gaming discourse worse. It happens with everything because people like memes tho. I just think it’s even worse for this medium.
You can see this all over the place. The very top of every "worst of" list will always be completely dominated not by the objectively worst but rather the most widely hated. Look at Steam for instance. At one point Overwatch 2 was one of if not the lowest rated game on the platform.
Objectively, Overwatch 2 isn't even in the bottom 10,000 games on the platform. Hell, it honestly is probably in the top 30% of titles given the sheer quantity of broken shovelware, NFT grift games, and failed indie attempts that are on there.
What Overwatch 2 was, however, is widely hated because of what a disappointment it was compared to what it replaced and all of Blizzard's broken promises. It was well known and it angered millions. That is how you top a worst of list. It's not by being objectively the worst.
I really liked the super level-headed look at Bubsy 3D at the end there. Just seeing it talked about not in an overly negative way was very refreshing.
I spent HOURS of my childhood playing Barbie Super Sports. I loved the vibe and how colorful it was, the outfits, and the music! I would love to play it again to see if i still enjoy it :)
It's honestly quite the vibe, the music is so so good.
LOVING the concept of this one! Popped up randomly in my feed and I was like hmmm... I didn't realize how tired I was of hearing the same old low-effort regurgitated "here's games that suck lol" lists. Really love the more thoughtful treatment you gave this one. Subscribed!
Appreciate the kind words, thanks for watching!
I love videogame reviews! Even if someone doesn't like a game, if they have something interesting to say about it, props. It's also okay just use it for jokes, but be honest about it! It's annoying as hell when they do it while pretending to be experts, and then have people repeat what they said thoughtlessly
Dude I just want to say since I've subbed to you, you been delivering banger after banger; and I really do feel you are one of the most underrated gaming TH-camrs producing content right now.
Appreciate the kind words, thanks for watching! 🙏
I actually never realized that Bubsy was mocked in comparison to Mario 64 and Crash, when I saw how the dates lined up I remember thinking about how unfortunate it was. That they couldn't help that this is the game they made in such an early era, and that these heavy hitters would ruin the reputation.
Being a pioneer is hard! So I gotta respect Bubsy for that!
I can't because again, Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot 1 had their own fair share of developmental troubles (especially Crash 1, because of the strange way Naughty Dog relocated from Boston/Washington DC to California and Universal being really stupid) and they turned out to be GOOD GAMES, Bubsy is terrible. Mainly because Accolade were a terribly managed and horrifically organised publisher. They DID make good games, such as Test Drive and also published a few good games made by Interplay, however they were very poorly run and failed to learn from their predecessors at Atari and their compatriots at Absolute and Activision (yes, all three companies, Activision, Accolade and Absolute were established by former developers at Atari, and the main trait all of them had was that they named their companies so that in the Yellow Book directories, they would appear higher up the list than Atari as they are alphabetically assigned).
@@DR3ADER1The producer of Crash 1 literally made a whole Facebook page to talk about how troubled Crash 1's dev cycle was politics wise
Awesome video, probably the most level headed takes I've seen on Special Forces and Bubsy 3D, I'm always fascinated by the wild west approach to early 3D games, it gave us such vast levels of quality.
I've heard the theory that roughly %50 give or take of a consoles library is shovelware, then the next %25 is considered good, then the top %25 is considered great/amazing. With a library of 4k + games really makes you wonder what the worst games actually are
Something I've thought about recently is that true shovelware is a sign of a consoles success. Before the days of digital distribution, only very very successful consoles would see huge influxes of budget software. The PS1, PS2 and Wii are the best examples of it, everybody was trying to cash in.
So I try not to think of shovelware as diluting the qaulity of the library, more so just an odd by product of success.
@@SeanSeansonfor sure, With the N64 every bad game is kind of a tragedy, because there's only 388 of them. A bad game on the PS1 is just some clutter to sweep out your front door.
barbie horse games had me in a chokehold as a kid. i couldnt have viddiegames, but i lived so vicariously through letsplays
For the era of Simpsons Wrestling, at least, cel shading effectively doubled the polygon counts for models using that. I remember following a DBZ Quake 3 mod back in the day, and reading the developers languishing about how "making it look right" meant they had to simplify models to allow for the outline effect
Thank the gods for programmable shaders, must've been a real pain to pull that off on the Playstations GTE.
I recall it looking amazing in stills in game magazines, but once you saw it in motion you were like "oh dear..."
Dark Cloud 2 used the same method for its outlines I think which is why it's not 60fps like the first game
Thank you for the reupload, I really needed to hear Barbie congratulating you for completing the level
"Awww... I don't have healthcare!" .... Damn, that was relatable, Bubs.
You know you have crafted a great video when it's 2 hours and 40 minutes long, yet people absolutely don't mind watching it AGAIN after having to re-upload it.
I really do just love how open-minded and reasonable you are and how you applied it to everything here. It's so much more interesting to see someone cover The Simpsons Wrestling or MK Special Forces with the mindset of, "I dunno... maybe I actually try to play it? Spend some actual time with it, and look at the controls? Perhaps I should think about it with some context? Having played other games for points of reference? And _NOT JUST_ blindly regurgitate an opinion that's been passed around constantly?" You're really finding a lot of fascinating things to talk about that way.
And seriously, I said it before (the WWE copyright strike), I think it's incredibly cathartic to hear someone actually _have something to say_ about Bubsy 3D, and genuinely defend a lot of points about it even if you arrive at the, "It's a bad game" conclusion. I mean, I own and played Jumping Flash and Floating Runner; I got enjoyment out of both and I never had problems with non-Mario 64 style 3D platformers (a lot of people enjoy Croc too and that has tank controls) and Bubsy 3D definitely looked fine in relation to games _like those_ - though you're right that a double-jump probably would've helped immensely. I'm also *thrilled* to hear someone FINALLY recognize the visuals are actually pretty neat; it's INSANE that everyone just trashed the colorful low-poly look when it so obviously was going for the same kind of abstract '50s and '60s cartoon look, just like that Marvin the Martian cartoon you mentioned. I mean, Duck Dodger 64 was trying to nail this aesthetic, as were games like Blasto, and _actual_ Looney Tunes games at the time, and they all have their audiences with no "professionals" trashing _those_ games for _their_ visuals - it has always been crazy to me that people would single out poor ol' Bubsy 3D. The aesthetic definitely has a cool vibe to it in many places.
If you're Eidetic and you need to craft a whole world for Bubsy to inhabit in 3D, and 3D games _barely exist,_ you're almost certainly gonna look at cartoons for reference, and if you're looking at low poly limits and need to keep other tech constraints in mind, it makes total sense they'd pull inspiration from stylized, abstract cartoons _specifically._ It never seemed like a bad decision; it's so good to hear someone figure this out and say it. It's refreshing to hear someone apply some basic sense to this stuff in 2023, lol. You're totally right that people often misrepresent a game by playing poorly and/or using hyperbole to push a narrative and that sucks when you just want to _actually_ know about it, and hear an _actual_ opinion. I remember learning that lesson when Prince of Persia Warrior Within came out, and so many outlets complained how much he swears and how edgy he was, but I loved it and _I actually played it_ and found out he only swears TWICE; once in the opening stage and once at the end; this lightbulb went off in my head that journalists often don't care and just need to craft a narrative and push out some (bad) coverage, and that's unfair to so many games. You *NEVER* do that; you gave that chance to stuff like Ubik and Pax Corpus, and it's just nice to hear you apply that point of view to games like Bubsy 3D here. You sir, are a true legend on this platform.
I also love how insane you are when it comes to coverage. You covered _so many more games here_ than you needed to JUST to show off other related games, and your _side-games_ get better coverage than 99% of TH-camrs would ever give. You're a true mad man, Mr. Seanson, and we love it! Thanks for putting so much work into your videos.
Anyway, fantastic video! I really hope it stays up this time because I don't wanna write a long comment again, lmao, but gotta please that algorithm and work this good definitely deserves some serious engagement.
What a lovely comment, thanks so much for taking the time to write it! Appreciate the kind words and support! Much love
I have never played Bubsy 3D but the colors look striking and beautiful because PS1 graphics are what's "nostalgic" now.
EVERY SINGLE TIME when it comes to nostalgia a lot of the most hated stuff of an era will end up being fondly remembered looking back in time. That's why I'm weary whenever people collectively hate on something that's "bad" or "too mainstream/annoying", even modern "bad" games as overtime there will be folks looking at said game at face value.
i've only ever seen the first level of Bubsy 3D in reviews, so i can't even give the game a fair shake. 2D Bubsy sucked on Genesis, though.
@@giselletorres4156 Bubsy 3D has always looked like shit (not so much the colors but the jitteriness of everything the level geometry looks straight up unfinished) and you're seriously telling me with a straight face there will be a time people will unironically like say Big Rigs or Super Monkey Diabouken or SQIJ? Christ I think I just found the Chris Stuckmann of gamers
2:21:55 that walking in wet shoes sound is the noise the woolies make! So although it is very strange sounding, that's why it keeps seeming to come from different directions as you move around--it lets you know where the enemies are
Also I fully agree with you about this game, including what Bubsy himself is like; I love Lani Minella's performance as him!
Lani would go on to voice other iconic characters such as Rough the Bat and Omichao for the Sonic games and voiced all the characters in the underrated Sega Saturn game Astal, a personal favorite of mine. Not only that, she was also the person who got John St John casted to be the voice for Duke Nukem.
@@BlazeHeartPanther Minella is also known as the main actress who voices Nancy Drew in the eponymous Nancy Drew games. She also voiced Commandant Steele in Borderlands 1 and Ivy Valentine in the Soulcalibur series.
Phew, glad to see this comment because I was always very sure that the noise is actually the enemies and not the music itself but the video kind of made me second guess. But honestly, just whipping up some extracted OST already should confirm that this is just the enemeis you hear. I get it though, since they are everywhere in levels, people mix it up and think that's in the music itself
I like this approach. Even "bad" games have redeeming features and have to be considered in context of their release. And also, some of them can be very fun to play, even if unintentionally.
I'm so glad you got this back up so quickly! I didn't even remember any WWE footage in the original ffs.
This is another great video, glad I get to finish it now and discover the glory of Bubsy.
It's almost like it's an incredibly Inconsequential small clip that is like a drop in a whole ass two and a half hour video
But TH-cam will be TH-cam and be a pain in the ass
They suck so much. I watch a couple channels devoted to combat sports/performance & they've wrecked or robbed or prevented some really wonderful videos covering the art + sport of fighting + the fighters. They're so needlessly irrationally pointlessly grabby about things that are fair use.
It's not even like the fighters + other people who do the kayfabe + crew the infrastructure + matches ever even benefit from WWE just yoinking or shutting down any material on the fighters or sport or their history/lore --- almost of the stuff that uses WWE is either making it a cool edit or meme or they cover the sport + care about it deeply, & care as much or more about the wellbeing of the fighter-performers. So it feels like another way they get to keep their fighters down & throw their weight around in the culture + in the sports world.
Apparently Canal Studios is equally bad. A channel was trying to upload a deep dive into a 90s film, "Jacob's Ladder", & Canal just shut him the F down. After rounds + rounds of the usual re-edits around the trigger happy legal behemoth threats, the creator was begging Canal to just let him please release the video he thought was one of his best, saying he was totally fine with being demonetized, he just wanted people to see it, & it was positive about the film --- he wanted to share it bc he loves the film & the framing of the video was an exploration of his theories about Jacob's Ladder being an influence on the Silent Hill franchise, particularly the original SH2. I h8 how they can be legally wrong but they have the money to intimidate. It's so needlessly stressful on creators & I've heard a few implicate those release-block-claim loops combined with unresponsive YT staff who don't seem to understand their own product/platform/ToS.
Ugh sorry apparently I had a lot of feelings.
fuck the WWE (the wrestling one) and copyright shenanigans in general. welcome back
As a lifelong PlayStation fan, this channel has been a treasure trove. I love the the long format style with well thought out commentary.
Simpsons Wrestling has always been a guilty pleasure for me. Also, i would love to see a part 2 for the other games you considered to cover for this topic.
Reliably thorough and fantastic work as always, and I was especially nodding "yeah! YEAH, THAT'S RIGHT!" during your opening points...I hate how many experimental or nuanced or mixed bag games get dismissed entirely as trash just because one lazy and shallow take gets accepted and parroted by people who never played them, turning one hasty opinion into common consensus.
Add in how many factors ENCOURAGE content creators to exagerrate a game's badness to turn it into a punchline, and you end up with more people smugly and certainly talking about how purely bad game is than there were people who ever actually played and tried forming their own opinion on it.
I got radicalised by a guy in college years ago who kept saying certain games were bad because Yahtzee didn't like them. It's been brewing up in me for years 😂
@@SeanSeanson As a long time Zero Punctuation/Fully Ramblomatic fan, even Yahtzee himself tells people that his opinions aren't definite and should be taken with a grain of salt, especially with certain genres or franchises he personally dislikes. So the idea of someone basing their entire opinion of games on his admitted exaggerated riffing is utterly insane to me. :/
"Who gives a shit if a game is good or bad as long as it makes you happy" REAL
Because a bad game is a bad game, you can't polish a turd by drawing smiley faces on it. I recall playing a lot of terrible games as a child that I liked then (mostly licensed dreck), I will not play those games ever again because they suck so much. Childhood denial is a powerful drug.
@@DR3ADER1bro only plays GOTY’s.
@@DR3ADER1"Good" and "bad" are arguably subjective terms. Sure there's conventions on what's commonly seen as good, but at the end of the day, it really comes down to personal opinion
@@rockettaco Incorrect, "Good" and "Bad" are objective by definition. And are qualified by quality standpoints, design standpoints and most importantly, practical positions.
@@DR3ADER1 Again, there's commonly defined conventions of what may make something good or bad, but personal views will differ between multiple people.
Yeah sure, I'll watch it again. The Bubsy segment really opened my eyes about game development.
Edit: I forgot to add. The reason I found this channel was because one day I was scrolling through a list of weird videogames and found Men in Black for the PS1. Never in my entire life had I heard about such a thing and thought to myself "You know what? Let's go. Life is short, let's get nuts. No videos, no reviews, no spoilers." Well long story short the game was balls but I decided to check again and the only channel with a proper review of it? You guessed it. Sean 2: Son of Sean. And what a find it is.
I always loved that harsh, colorful polygons from early 3d games. Bubsy was one of the first games I played on the PS1 and never understood the massive hate it got. Another one that borrows the psychedelic aesthetic and plays quite the same is Mort The Chicken
I've heard a lot of people big up Mort over the years. It certainly looks like a trip!
@@SeanSeanson, it's only because of Pizza Tower, that's it.
I think the reason the outlines tanked the performance in Simpsons Wrestling is because - from personal experience in using Blender - a common way 3D models are given outlines like that is by duplicating the model, scaling it up slightly, inverting its normals, giving it an all-black material, and setting it to render behind the original model. While this does produce the outline effect relatively well, it also effectively means the game is rendering each character model TWICE, which could be the reason behind the major performance hit.
Those goddamn greedy pandas! I'll be watching this tonight so it's perfect timing! Can't wait!
I'm just glad we finally got some bubsy action.
How's the metroid video coming along? It's gotta be a huge undertaking, but you handled castlevania and lotr better than any extra long form video game essays I've seen, so I'm eagerly awaiting the final product.
Sad that you needed to reupload the video to get around the blatant misuse of DMCA, but glad that the video is back. Keep up the amazing work!
So weird how people received South Park Rally. I had it on the N64, and it for its jank and odd gameplay, I kind of really enjoyed it as a kid? I come back to it and I kind of love it for how Disgusting it feels, it's PUTRID, but it's still playable enough that I can play with my friends through Parsec... Nowadays I can understand, but it definitely doesn't feel like The Worst of the bunch in this video, so I think it deserves the position given to it.
Oh, and the music kind of goes off REALLY hard at times and I dig that, it's actually all tracker music, according to the PC release of the game, probably transcribed/converted between each console port.
A new SeanSeanson video? Yes, this is ineed a good week.
Also like, great video! I very much appreciate your fair and unbiased shake at ANY game regardless of previous consensus. You truly manage to bring out the light side of any game in a way that makes me want to try them.
Some of my favorite games are ones that got bad reviews at the time, sold bad or actually have obvious flaws, but oftentimes they feature *something* unique to them that I really like. Gotcha Force has awful voice acting (child actors apparently, so understandable), arguably repetitive gameplay and music, as well as a rather plain story. It sold poorly, it usually gets reviewed poorly, but the specific combination of stuff it provides makes it one of my favorite games, to the point I replay it annualy. The early Monster Hunter titles *always* got flak for being clunky and way too hard, but they still ended up gathering an audience that wanted its specific feel, including me.
I rarely watch the funny rage reviews anymore, but when I did, I sometimes found myself being rather intrigued by certain aspects of the games torn apart. Heck, recently, I found a very passionate review on Quest 64, one of those games I thought sounded interesting but were set in my mind as "one of the bad ones".
Sidenote, I always hesitated to say it but yeah, I do find Bubsy funny. I like eye-rolling humor.
Bubsy getting stranded on an alien planet then proceeds to attack the inhabitants mercilessly. What a dick XD
The barbie game you attributed to dice was actually created by sandbox studios, a developer that made many licensed children's games on PS1 before being acquired by DICE in 2001 to become a support studio for battlefield. So those barbie games aren't really made by dice, but rather a studio that was later acquired by DICE.
They also worked on the Shrek game for Xbox prior to or at the same time as the acquisition and it's often mistakenly attributed to dice themselves.
To be fair I said it was Dice Canada, which was the name sandbox changed to after the acquisition.
It would be like the difference in saying a game is made my Ubisoft Montreal or Ubisoft Montpellier, it's the one blanket but I know they're two different studios.
I'm so happy this is out there. Sean your giving justice to awesome misunderstood games.
It's light years ahead of the same old rehashed "bad game lists". I love this "undercard/underdog" re-evaluation thing he's doing here. Love this format.
Can confirm this is still an excellent video and you're right, Bubsy -looks- fine. I recommend a look at the Arcane Kids release "Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective" to anyone who hasn't experienced it.
Holy SHIT what a throwback, I haven't thought about that in years! I had to look it up to remember it, but like the first few seconds of gameplay was all I needed to remember that, I think I remember Vinesauce playing through it back in like what, 2015?
THANK YOU FOR TALKING ABOUT HOW BAD TWIN STICK CONTROLS WERE
People look at the reviews for Alien Resurrection and laugh at them for hating the controls, but that style frequently felt like crap until closer to Halo. Controller layout is only part of the equation.
Halo is a landmark title for a bunch of reasons, but its contribution to good console FPS control is so undervalued.
Kyle and Stan kind of breaking character to question their iconic call and response is absolutely something I'd play through an entire South Park game just to see.
so refreshing to see someone not completely throwing 3 square mile floors of shit to bubsy 3d, it really puts it into a new perspective on how much it has going for it, even if the game ended up poorly made it still shows the potential it could've had if it just didn't start development in a clumsy period for 3d games
Now we know what WWE stands for: Worst Weird Ediots 😤😤😤
Will totally watch this one again.
Sean, your content is so wholesome, expertly researched and immaculately commentated. i've been a big fan for around a year now and I just wanted to say that your videos have been really entertaining and meaningful to me for this past year and I count you among my favorite youtubers. I've found myself eagerly awaiting for your next video consistently. If things weren't so hard right now, I'd definitely be a patron already, but I am planning on it once I manage to secure some financial stability.
Aw thank you so much! Appreciate you watching :)
This has to be so painful having such a long video, considering it was doing pretty well, get tagged for a few seconds of footage. TH-cam copyright is a mess.
I've already seen this but I'm gonna let it run again, for algorithm magic :)
It sucks but it is what is. I won't let it get me down! Appreciate you checking it out
I got the south park game BRAND NEW at Walmart in 1999 for N64 only 5 bucks and actually had fun especially the multi-player mode..i love the game for being so different and having the damn near the full cast of characters from the show playable and voice acted too
The fact that the Barbie game has metal gear VR missions is insane
"And you know what? I get it." *Proceeds to show Scorpion.*
Yeah. Like idk how I even kept playing the game five minutes in, but when I saw the FMVs, it was so Mortal Kombat. So I kept playing.
i received south park rally by a well-meaning relative for my 6th birthday. i bet they just saw the bright and cheery cover art and assumed south park was for kids, which probably wasn't unheard of at the time.
i think i played it for about 5 minutes before ramming into a cow that subsequently exploded all over the screen, which led me to turn the game off, never playing it again and im pretty sure i had a little cry about it, too.
My mom bought this game for me on a Christimas (I think it was in 2001 or 2002) alongside my PS1, and she bought it for the same reasons lol, she was pretty shocked when she saw the content, but never took the game from me.
I think the reason Bubsy 3D gets slammed a ton - aside from being attached to a punching bag of a videogame franchise - can be chalked up to game feel. You could have the most ambitious project of 1996, but if it doesn't feel good to play, it doesn't feel good to play.
you're nice
This is prob my fav channel devoted to retro gaming. The ps1 is my fav console and im pretty happy to see someone do such detailed breakdowns of its many facets. I'd love to see you do the inverse of this video and talk about some of your favorite ps1 games, not just the ones that everyone loves. Id love to hear your takes on cool games for the system that mean a lot to you. Thanks for all your incredible work. Wish you the best, love the vid!
I never really gave a good game topic much thought honestly, but I think doing this gave me a better appreciation for the really good stuff so it's something I'll keep in mind for sure.
Appreciate the kind comment and thanks for watching! :)
I was a big fan of Bubsy 1 on the Megadrive, so when Bubsy 3d came out I was super excited. My mum wouldn't let me get the game because it had really really poor ratings in the PSX magazines at the time, so one day I snuck the game into the pile of rentals at the video store and managed to get it past her. She later caught me playing the game and thought it was the funniest thing ever, BTW I did not have a great time with Bubsy 3d and she could tell XD
Excellent video! Sorry the original upload got nuked, but I really love how much time and consideration that you put into these games.
Fun Fact: the voice actress that voiced bubsy in the 3d game is also Rouge the Bat from Sonic Adveture 2.
I don't know if I'll ever be able to live with that information.
She was also the voice director for Duke Nukem 3D and voiced all its female NPCs.
Lani Minella is a very accomplished voice actor.
She also voiced ivy from soulcaliber
That's right she voiced both ivy and her fursona😂
@@reloadpsi oh my god it's her??? that's cool!!
The creator of Bubsy Michael Berlyn sadly passed away in March 2023 after a 8 year battle of cancer and I say he deserves more respect even though Bubsy is often become a huge joke when first discussed on his games. Michael made the original title out of passion while playing the original Sonic for 14 hours a day for research to convince the higher ups at Accolade to get it approved.
He did return to the franchise on Accolade's favour to found Eidetic (Later Bend Studio) to develop a new Bubsy title in 3D and he and the small team of 8 people did as much as they could to envision on what a 3D would look before it became mainstay in video games. After seeing a demo of Super Mario 64, Michael wanted to restart from scratch but got denied by Accolade as Bubsy 3D become a joke and largly negative reception. He then played a minor role in creating Syphon Filter although he didn't wanted to be credited after the failure of Bubsy 3D.
One more thing, he was often one of the pioneers of the text-based adventure games with Zork and wanted to branch forward to platformers, and this is where Michael got the idea to do Bubsy.
Later on in his life he enjoyed a relaxing break from the industry focusing on casual games and even founded a music band called "Hot Mustard" on jazz. (Most Interesting)
I would recommend watching the Did You Know Gaming video on Bubsy and Michaels career as a whole focusing on the creation, the popularity and the fall of the franchise, really interesting and sad story to a guy who wanted to develop a good game but Accolade kind of milked the franchise to the ground as well as the company with it.
RIP Michael Berlyn 1949-2023
I always liked Bubsy 3d and don't think it deserves quite the reputation it has. It has a distinctive style and aesthetic and while it lacks fluidity, it controls competently enough. If you had tried playing similar games on the PC in the early 90s, something like Bubsy 3d would have seemed quite sophisticated.
It may shock you to hear but honestly Barbie games from what I’ve heard just have spectacular soundtracks. Honestly i feel like it’s weirder for Barry to have a bad sound track
The PC games in particular have crazy soundstracks, so good.
It's a shame that you had to reupload this (darn you, WWE) but I'm more than happy to watch it again!
Your integrity in giving all these games a fair shot, placing them in their proper historical context and highlighting their strengths and troubled developments -- especially Bubsy 3D, which has been so maligned -- is to be commended. I'm glad this video has so many views; nuanced, loving voices like yours are rare and should be treasured. Thank you for all you do!
It's always been funny to me how many bad games people think there are , but they lack the necessary perspective to really understand gaps in quality. Very early on I learned that Cosmic Race was the rock-bottom on PS1 and nothing really even comes close to it.
Every other game has some unique redeemable quality. Cosmic race uses dev kit assets for graphic and public domain music, the most baffling control scheme on the system and has an overall design that works mostly, but not very well. The levels are 8-10 times larger than they need to be for no reason, there are no effective differences in character choice. It is soulless exercise to make busywork for some people that were getting paid to do something for someone for reasons unknown to me.
The gall is that they attempted to sell it.
With that consideration things have to be very bad relatively, we have to go down to Iron and Blood, which is frustrating on multitudes of levels to even explain and purely inexcusable claptrap like Barbie Explorer, something that actively hurts our culture.
Bubsy 3D and Masters of Teras Kasi are like masterclass products in comparison. Further I find it completely baffling that something as high quality as Star Gladiator could even be taken into consideration. Unfortunately the only way to really solve this inconsistency of understanding is to put the games in the hands of the players.
That just isn't reasonable. Maybe something like a very easily accessible peer-reviewed collection of them would help provide real context... mostly it is up to people like Sean to spread the word. Even "bad" games are important. Any work even one person spends months creating is highly likely to have value or at least provide entertainment as it was intended, and it's only fair that these works be given their equal chance to show what they have.
Amen brother, you get it.
I've only ever seen Cosmic Race in action but it generates a tremendously negative aura. I'm looking forward to it.
What a fantastic video. It's great seeing someone give Bubsy 3D it's flowers. I genuinely love bad games for so many reasons, and it's weirdly difficult to explain that to people. I really like what you said at 6:33 about Batman & Robin, it's really no surprise to find "Bad Games" being weirdly innovative or ahead of their time. I feel like people almost actively dislike looking at past failures that went on to influence games that succeeded, and I really don't know why. Dark Souls is kind of impossible to not mention here, it's both the most glaring example, and biggest exception, of this attitude. It is deeply bizarre to see Armored Core and, impossibly, _King's Field_ develop an active fanbase online.
If you haven't, please, please play "Bubsy's Back! Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective" from ARCANE KIDS (also made the infamous Sonic Dreams Collection). The best way I could describe it is a deeply bizarre, sorta-faithful Bubsy 3D Tribute / Pseudo-Walking Sim / Educational Game about Bubsy well, visiting the real life James Turrell Retrospective held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2013~2014. It's very, very funny, and deeply weird.
It also... bizarrely now works double-duty as a time capsule for both that _very_ specific James Turrell exhibition, and the former LACMA building that was, very controversially, demolished in 2020. When Unity Web Player support was discontinued, ARCANE KIDS even went back and added an epilogue for the downloadable version where Bubsy begrudgingly visits Michael Heizer's "Levitated Mass" which, yeah all my homies hate Levitated Mass it's just a big rock
Thank you for the kind comment! And yeah I still find it hard to believe Fromsoft is this darling of the gaming world nowadays. A group of people making some of the most niche and hardcore games imaginable, and they made it big by sticking to that formula. A real Cinderella story, and I couldn't be happier for them!
I'll definitely check out Bubsy's Back! Bubsy 3D: Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective. I've always admired it from afar, but I think after finishing Bubsy 3D I owe it to myself digg into it properly.
Appreciate you watching! :)
Bubsy 3D is still shit, and Richard Ham's comments about the criticism still reinforce my position on the game. However, Batman and Robin was just Batman Arkham Knight, only 18 years older and made with less knowledge of how to make good 3D games in the British Isles and Mainland Europe. It's also coincidental that both games were developed in London, the only difference being that Probe was from Croydon and Rocksteady is from Kentish Town, on opposing sides of the City (South and North) and the River Thames.
This got me thinking about Batman & Robin. The clock system and free roam is mindblowing in a pre-GTA III world. Even Driver 2 wasn't doing what Batman & Robin was. I see you covered it in an older video, I'll have to head back!
Oh you just mentioned in the video. Very good!
@@systemmonitor5295 gotta give these videos continuity somehow haha
Me: "I'm sorry no, I haven't got time to watch any movies or TV series or sporting events."
Also me: "Can't wait to sit down and watch 2 and a half hours of Bubsy the Bobcat"
You're right that people focus on the North American viewpoint, but perhaps that's simply because there's more people from that region making content. I certainly never see Japanese people making lists of top games (in English, something we'd see, I mean.. surely they do in Japanese). Europeans seem to be grumpy about not being represented, but I think they can simply make more videos from their own perspective.
I notice a lot of people really like to complain about America's popularity. I can see where some of it comes from, but you also need other regions to actually BE POPULAR to be talked about.
Japan is popular, for example, but not really in the sense of us seeing the opinions and thoughts of actual people there, when it comes to games. We have videos about the people there who made games, but few from the ground level. So of course we're not talking about their top ten lists of games.
Europe is much the same, but there's less language barrier so I think it should be easy for people over there to share with us if they want to.
Oh for sure, a major part of the problem lies in the lack of euro centric videos on the topic, or at least ones that make it big on the platform. That could be down to interest in the topic itself, but if we want people to care about these games, we have to take the time to show them why, in the same way people do for American and Japanese games.
Love the genuine passion and attention to detail you're putting into your videos.
They're like the absolute peak of listicle videos, to the point where it almost feels like an insult to call them a listicle.
I love a good listicle so the comment is much appreciated, thank you!
Excellent video as always! Your vids are just as fun as they are informative, and I appreciate the hard work that goes into them (I'm sure it's a lot more difficult getting these vids together than it looks!) Much love & support from NZ, hope you're doing well in these crazy times!
Ay thank you, much love!
You are the most consistently feel good, level headed, funny and kind people on here. Each video is a joy to watch and while I’m new to the channel and can’t remember how I found you, I’m so glad I did. I hope you get all the success you deserve☺
thanks you for the kind words! appreciate you watching :)
Death didn’t ride a pale horse. He rode a 50hz PAL game.
Wait I’ve been here before…
Really enjoying this video! I love bad games...there's usually something to enjoy, be it art or music. Sometimes ya just gotta dig for those absurd and inspired moments. My favorite bit so far: "sitting in the dark, in silence, playing barbie explorer is a strangely harrowing experience" 😂
Me in the future talking to my child: "Look, this is Sean Seanson's son Sean Seanson, son"
Torneko and Azure Dreams really took a lot of unjustified flak from reviewers back in the mid nineties. People who didn't knew what the Rogue genre of games is and never played a full rogue (not a rogue like). I love Rogue games, I play Shiren on the Nintendo DS to this day, it has the Final Puzzle mode where it gives you a challenge very much like the original Rogue with of course it's own peculiarities. Torneko also gives you a full Rogue experience on the More Magical Dungeon mode which I enjoy quite a lot and translates well to a phone touchscreen. Let's not forget about the Azure Dreams race that happens to this day and has many contestants and newcomers that are always welcomed into the community.
Gain Ground got and still gets shit on because it's such a unique game
Lovely video as always!
I'm honestly surprised that Shrek Treasure Hunt wasn't mentioned as it's often talked about in "Worst PS1 games" conversations, that one gave me a pretty bad time as a kid.
That being said, I think that Bubsy is in a rather similar place to something like E.T. 2600. Taking it at face value, it's definitely one of the worst games in the system for someone to pick up and play. Giving the context in which it was made makes it understandable that the game was done in such a way, but I feel like it still doesn't really... "redeem" the game?
The thing I'm trying to say is that a game can be both bad and charmingly bad, and there's really nothing wrong with that. As mentioned several times through the video, it's better to have a "so bad it's funny" game than a dull, bland and mediocre game. And I think that Bubsy 3D falls in between the two. Either way, that was a pretty good plot twist with the developers, I actually never realized that they were behind that other game lol.
Thank you again for the great content!
Exactly! Its bad, but charmingly bad. A uniquely bad game made with good intentions! Appreciate you watching :)
I mean Fall Guys is one of the most played games, and it's literally Bubsy 3D
As someone who rented and played Superman 64 as a kid, yeah, it is the worst N64 game. lol
Primus trying to cover a Primus song!!! 🤣
im autistic and i remember having a hyperfixiation phase with bubsy, specifically the Bubsy 3D Game, i was so interested in what were other people opinions even if they were the same, about the game development, what were it's inspirations into making it, but at the same time it was **sensory hell** to me, something about the colors fighting in my eyes and the music while it isn't that bad, it hits and scratches my brain in all of the wrong ways for me, but like a car crash i just can't stop watching it. You video surely was like refreshing air hearing about Bubsy 3D that wasn't the same thing other people said with different words.
I love the Playstation 1, i grew with it and it means a lot of me the videogames made for the ps1 no matter how good or bad they are.
Appreciate your insight! thank you for watching! :)
Ah, the video the WWE doesn't want you to see 😂. I'm glad I can now see this to its completion! Thanks, mate!
As someone who both loves dunking on a good shitter of a game, but also loves giving them a chance (sometimes), I can definitely appreciate the mindset behind this video. Like, somewhat recently, I played Balan Wonderworld, which the internet loves to dunk on (due in no small part to its association to Yuji Naka, who is a mess of a human being). I actually went on to 100% the game and found a lot to love (and even went on to read the novel afterwards), and while the game is definitely not without its problems, it's also genuinely pretty fun with some cool art and music (and I feel like a lot of hate towards it is because, again, of Yuji Naka, who a lot of people know for arguably stealing credit for creating Sonic the Hedgehog, so I just feel bad for Balan being credited mostly to him, when other people did most the work).
I too enjoyed Balan. I think it's a game that will get a lot more love as years go by.
That little Hugo the Troll mention before Barbie was enough to send me on an hour long nostalgia trip.
All roads lead back to Hugo
I really appreciate your outlook on video games. Too many people just get really heated at bad video games and that's all they spend their time doing. Nothing wrong with disliking or even hating some bad games, but the level of anger and rage baiting is so insane on the internet that some make it their entire personalities. I'm happy "bad" games exist. They tend to be pretty interesting and sometimes show an alternate way to handle something, even if the result isn't always ideal.
If you'd like to watch someone with a similar outlook to yours, I'd recommend DNOpls. He plays pretty much anything and everything, and never gets mad. Dude just like video games.
Since this channel loves framing things into perspective, consider how expensive some of these shit games were, in 80s money no less. Imagine as a kid saving up for weeks if not months to buy a brand full-price game and it's crap, that's it, and you're stuck with it, the anger at a lot of shitty games is completely deserved
@@zenksren8206 Sure, but most people complaining about something like Bubsy 3D didn't even buy it when it came out. A lot of the bad games are only being judged by people that just learned about them a few years ago. At some point you just gotta let that sort of hate go. There's much more valid things to be mad about.
I see you got the 1 2 3 on the wwe . Internet champion!
Great video, man! Spot on about the USA kinda driving the ratings conversation on YT etc, also the SAME for South Park, I preferred the older seasons, they were kids, they had the innocence of kids, the stories were original and weren't mostly based on current events. It's a shame the creators want to get rid of anything season 4 and below, I found it to be their best work.
I get the impression that Bubsy would be a decent-ish game if it had better controls and other QOL improvements. I do agree that the visuals are quite a vibe, and I think the recent appreciation for early 3D graphics (like ENA) makes it more appealing as well. The low framerate animations also add to the aesthetic as well. It's actually kind of insane how much game developers were able to get out of early 3D. I can't imagine it was the easiest thing to learn back then, let alone making it run realtime in a game engine.
The issue was that Eidetic focused primarily on resolution, not the camera, or the movement, or the level design, in fact, they ONLY focused on having the "highest" resolution of any PS1 game.
The issue was that Eidetic focused primarily on resolution, not the camera, or the movement, or the level design, in fact, they ONLY focused on having the "highest" resolution of any PS1 game.
I love your series on PS1 games and respect that you defend Bubsy as an early 3d game. I love Quest 64 because it was one of my earliest game experiences and has unique mechanics and a wonderful atmosphere. Keep preaching the gospel of playing it for yourself and making your own opinion!
We respect Quest 64 and Brian in this house 🙏
this was fantastic! i always appreciate when weird old games are given a fair shake and i think you did a really good job explaining why they got such a bad reputation and how they can still be appreciated in a modern context. just curious, what is the little bird platformer being played at 1:52:02?
Aw thank you, appreciate you watching!
It's called Kyoro-chan no Purikura Daisakusen. It's a very cute little platformer based around a Japanese food mascot, well worth checking out!
Bubsy 3D looks like the kind of game a kid in a TV show would be playing.
I absolutely loved Barbie Explored when I played it on PC as a little 4 year old baby. I think the controls didn’t bother me because, to a 4 year old, ALL game controls are confusing and unintuitive, but I think the pretty environments, slow pacing, and cool theming gave me room to come up with my own stories and ideas to play make-believe with it.
I’m also certain the menu voiceover thing was put in for accessibility, since they were expecting 4 year old babies like me to be playing the games.
Edit: also, I did 100% complete it. But I can’t guarantee I did so without help from my parents. All I remember is spending a looong time collecting gems, finishing the final level and seeing the end cutscene, and then being a little confused when I collected all the collectables and nothing happened.
You're legit a god for 100%ing it
Love your videos Sean, it's a nice assistance when I work. Keep it coming, looking forward!
Okay so it seems like Eidetic had everything against them. They had no experience working with 3D games, didn't have enough time to complete and fix everything, and had no clue about the competition and their games. The fact that it works at all, and can be played is nothing but a miracle and should be praised to be honest. It's not a good game but let's face it Eidetic never had a chance from the beginning. So I understand how you can feel bad for them because I do too now.
I was finally able to sit down and watch this masterpiece of yours :) lovely video and good message, I defo need to try some of these games, I was playing Simpson Wrestling as a kid and I loved it. Looking forward to another video essay, you just do it differently, Sean, I keep getting back to all of your videos and I cannot stop to watching them. Thank you so much, from all of us for your precious time that has been always spent well and converted into hours upon hours of quality vdieo content.I guess, sometimes it might be tedious, exhausting to go through all of this, but please, keep it up, do it for fans, do it for the VIBE
Ay much love
I think it's good design to have Barbie reading the menu options. It's aimed at really young kids, some of whom can't read yet lol
yeah that's my own ignorance showing tbf
I’m glad to see someone give a shoutout to the Bubsy 3D soundtrack, some of it isn’t bad at all. I can’t forgive the game (in terms of playing it and I have played it - I do respect the development behind it) but yeah
None of these are as bad as the Sabrina The Teenage Witch PS1 game in my opinion
it's VERY bad.
@@SeanSeanson I think the worst PS1 game is a tie between Sabrina The Teenage Witch and the Roswell Conspiracies
Official PlayStation Magazine US gave it 1/10. The review is a 14-minute walkthrough before the critic decides they had enough.
Man I've watched this through at least ten times and that stupid clip of the jetpack guy falling off the dock always gets me lol
Well then, I guess I'm going to watch it again.
I'd be surprised if there were any good Barbie games. It's fookin' Barbie. Inoffensive is probably the best that can be said about them. Although my wife did play one on Windows 95 that was pretty ok. Shame it was a buggy mess that crashed every 2 seconds.
There's a Barbie metroidvania on the DS if you can believe it. Don't know if its any good but at least people are trying to make a Barbie game for the gamers haha
Well since I get to make another comment, I might as well take the opportunity make a japan only games viewer wheel nomination (tho I'm not entirely sure if you've covered this game before or not lol.)
Gekisou Tomarunner (1999), which is another one of those racing/platformer hybrids, and it's pretty damn good too.
Ohhh nice, pick I'll get it added for you now!
Worth noting the followup release "TomaRunner vs L'Arc-en-Ciel" which adds members of the titular Japanese rock band as playable characters (there may be other differences, but I never actually played it). Looking forward to seeing either one covered, as iirc, I suggested that one too :)
@@w1ntermode theres no way I can talk about one without looking at the other ;)
Honestly when you compare these games to stuff nowadays like asset flips, blatant scams, or pay to win games, it really makes you appreciate the effort put into every other game out there. Even stuff like Bubsy 3D. I'd take that one any day over something like... The Slaughtering Grounds or all those scummy mobile games.
If anything, I think this is just an example of how important first impressions are. People only have so much patience and if you don't wow them in the first fifteen minutes then you can't expect them to stick around. And with most of these games, I think that is the main reason why they are so hated. Which is a shame, but that's just how a majority of people's minds work.
Dropping a like on this one cuz i was blessed enough to watch the whole thing before it got yanked