The video game industry has seen some big surprises over the past few years, but none have hit me harder than Bubsy 4D. The talkative bobcat has had some remarkable staying power since the well-documented disaster that was Bubsy 3D, and yet I still never expected him to get a full-blown sequel in my lifetime.

An even bigger surprise than Bubsy 4D existing at all is that it looks and plays fantastically (which I can confirm in my nearly six hours with the demo), and is far from the joke it so easily could’ve been. Atari has always had a shocking amount of love for Bubsy, an admiration clearly shared by developer Fabraz, who has put its expertise in 3D platforming to very good use here.

Fabraz Has More Respect For Bubsy 3D Than I've Ever Seen

Alongside sharing an exclusive behind-the-scenes video about Bubsy 4D’s expressive platforming with TheGamer, I had the chance to sit down with Fabraz founder Fabian Rastorfer and head programmer Ben Miller to talk about Bubsy’s impending return. As it turns out, that return began while Fabraz was already in the middle of its most ambitious game to date, the recently released Demon Tides.

“We basically got bombarded by fans when there was an open call for it,” Rastorfer tells me. “So then we were like, this is a potentially interesting avenue to explore. We very strategically tried to figure it out - how can we work on two games at the same time without sacrificing either? We found this really good way of doing it in a timeframe of 15 months for Bubsy 4D. We were very diligent about it, and I’m very proud to say that we managed to pull it off without any hitches - we did those 15 months of development, and the game is what I wanted it to be.”

While it’s easy to hear the name Bubsy 4D and assume it’s some kind of memey joke that’s banking on 3D’s notoriety, the team at Fabraz is taking the bobcat’s legacy refreshingly seriously. Bubsy 3D’s mistakes are a very open book at this point, but the developers revisited the whole series and found that there’s a lot of “merit” beyond the usual dunks and digs.

Although Miller missed Bubsy 3D and all of the memes around it, he actually grew up with the 2D Bubsy games and has a lot of love for what they tried to do in spite of their flaws. While playing through the series as research for Bubsy 4D (which was some of the devs’ first time with Bubsy), Fabraz found a surprising amount of good qualities in Bubsy that went some way to explaining his surprising staying power.

“The way I always present Bubsy 3D to people is that, if you want to try it now, treat it as a masocore platformer where the controls are part of the challenge,” Rastorfer says. “Once you accept that, there’s something kind of interesting in it. That was the spirit of Bubsy 3D - devs trying to figure out a genre that didn’t exist yet, that was basically undefined. There was a lot of spirit in innovation, even if they ended up with decisions that, in retrospect, were the wrong ones. You can’t fault them for that because those rules weren’t established yet at all.”

In fact, beyond just giving Bubsy 3D a bit of a break from all the negativity, Rastorfer and Miller came away with a lot of respect for the game and how much “ambition” it showed during an early time for the 3D platforming genre. Technical details, like it being one of the few PlayStation games without vertex wobble because of separate rendering processes, impressed the team, as did the bespoke death animations, full cutscenes, and unique gameplay ideas, such as collectibles being used as ammo.

Even if those ideas never ended up coming together in the right way, along with it being “obviously overshadowed” by Super Mario 64 doing everything right and changing video games forever, there was a clear amount of ambition behind the scenes.

Bubsy Has Been Lovingly Reinvented As A "Washed-Up Uncle" In Bubsy 4D

Fabraz may have more love and a greater understanding of Bubsy 3D than most of us, but as the reveal trailer made very clear, the team still allows itself to poke fun at Bubsy’s past from time to time. Having your tongue planted firmly in your cheek is unavoidable when dealing with Bubsy, but Fabraz also wanted to defy expectations and lovingly reinvent the character.

Instead of remaining as the young, quippy, and on top of the world mascot we saw in previous games, Bubsy is now older and a bit washed-up - which is reflected in the huffing and puffing as he jumps around - but still believes he has a shot at stardom. The team wanted to make Bubsy endearing, move him away from just being a punchline and, as Miller puts it, show “there’s something to this guy that’s persisted for this long”.

“The first thing that we realised is that, let’s be real, there are so many other mascot platformers from that time who have never got a revival, let alone three,” Rastorfer points out. “That speaks for itself that, even if Bubsy is the butt of the joke, there’s something appealing about the character in some way or another that made people go back to him.”

When figuring out Bubsy's character with his new voice actor, Sean Chiplock, the team purposefully made him sound like he's "constantly panicking that he's about to fall".

Of course, there are still meta jokes about Bubsy’s previous games, including an option to play with tank controls that the bobcat will actively call you out for, but Fabraz doesn’t see Bubsy 4D as a roast, and instead wants to prove that there’s more to Bubsy than his storied past. “Respect was part of the identity of the project from day one”, Rastorfer says.

Bubsy 4D's Strange Hairball Is Something Fabraz Has Wanted To Do For Ages

The reinvention of Bubsy didn’t stop at his newfound unc status, though, as the team also had to figure out how a modern Bubsy game would play and how it could build on the groundwork that the rest of the series laid. Bubsy 3D was obviously part of that exploration, but Fabraz took a lot of influence from the 2D games as well, which Rastorfer and Miller compare to Sonic the Hedgehog.

“We were trying to lean more into that feel from the earlier games and how we could extrapolate that to 3D,” Miller tells me. “When we were playing the older games, we wondered what the mechanics are that you can pull out as iconic to Bubsy. There’s the glide, but otherwise not a lot. So we looked at things that would build onto the character that make sense, like the pounce. Things like the wall climbing, playing into the cat identity, stuff that feels like natural extensions for how you’d update this character to feel really good in a 3D space while feeling true to being a silly cartoon cat.”

Bubsy has a lot more movement options in Bubsy 4D than he’s ever had before, but the most notable addition to the roster is his hairball move, which sees him turning into a more pleasant and mobile version of that thing that cats hack up from time to time. This is Bubsy 4D’s “gotta go fast” mode, and is more important to the game's flow than its silly appearance might suggest.

The strange hairball idea is something that Rastorfer has had in his head for “years”, as he’s always wondered about making a platformer where you’re just a ball that’s rolling around. While figuring out how Bubsy’s moveset could be updated for expressive platforming, Rastorfer concluded that a hairball made just about enough sense as a move for a bobcat who is known for leaning into jokes. Make no mistake, though, the hairball is a crucial part of Bubsy 4D’s gameplay that aims to set it apart from other platformers and add some “spice”.

“It was also part of the exploration of trying to differentiate and make sure that this does not feel like another Demon Tides,” Rastorfer explains. “There’s a lot of identity that’s similar, but then the actual actions dramatically change up the gameplay. Once the hairball clicks and you realise you can jump in and out of it to get these incredible bursts of momentum, that’s when you realise this is a different type of game.”

Beebz, Luci, Runa, Midgi, and DK in Demon Tides.

While Bubsy 4D and Demon Tides obviously share some similarities, considering they come from the same studio, were developed in the same time frame, and are both focusing on free-flowing movement in the same genre, Fabraz aimed to make the two very separate experiences. This is already seen in their approach to level design, with linearity in Bubsy 4D and a whole open world in Tides, but it goes beyond that.

Miller points out that the hairball is a big example of this, as, despite it functioning similarly to the speedy snake transformation in Turf and Tides, it’s something that you can weave in and out of instead of having to dedicate yourself to it like with the snake. This was a purposeful design choice that plays into Bubsy being more loose and fluid, like a cat that’s just trying to figure out how to get around for the first time.

“The mechanical identity between the two is different because Beebz is a lot more powerful and has a bigger range of what you can do, but is more controlled,” Miller says. “You go through a lot of sequences, combos and strings that open up the space. Bubsy is just everything is always available, and you’re just scrambling and making it work - it’s a lot more frenetic and frantic, but you can always reel it in.”

Another example of Bubsy 4D differentiating itself from Demon Tides while working with a similar set of tools is with its Blueprints, which are collectibles that can be used to give minor upgrades to Bubsy, like being able to walk on air or regain health by catnapping. On paper, this sounds similar to the moveset-customising Talismans from Tides, but they’re more additive and act like classic upgrades in Bubsy 4D.

“They’re a little bit more reined in,” Rastorfer explains. “One of the reasons why Demon Tides was such a massive project for us at the end was because of the open world concept. The other thing was the talismans, because if you have 50-plus of them that can remix and have up to five at a time, and they are all additive, it creates an unbelievable amount of testing to make it work. So with Bubsy, it’s a little more laid back because you’ve got 15 of them. We use that opportunity to inject humour since it’s such an important part of Bubsy.”

Rastorfer also confirmed that Bubsy 4D is meant to be more “bite-sized” than Tides with a selection of 16 levels. It’ll take most players around five to six hours to beat, but there’s far more to it with speedrunning and optional challenges.

Fabraz Loves Schmoovement As Much As We All Do

The phrase “expressive platforming” comes up a lot when talking about Bubsy 4D, but there’s another term that’s become synonymous with it and Fabraz’s other games - schmoovement. Both refer to the fast-paced flow state that the smooth movement and platforming invite you into, and it’s a phrase I often see being tied to Bubsy and Demon Tides. So how does Fabraz feel about it?

“We like it,” Miller says. “Open shut case. We lean into it a lot with our games of just trying to get a good-feeling moveset and combinations of actions coming from our own time playing games. There are a lot of reference points tied to it as well - one that I like to drop in is that I played a lot of Devil May Cry growing up and that had a sense of flowing between actions and rewarding stylish choices. I think how we approach some of our moveset design is in the same place of something you can do a dozen different ways, but make it your own and do it in a cool way.”

Even though Bubsy sadly doesn’t say “schmoovement” himself in Bubsy 4D, Rastorfer agrees that genre names are “intangible” and that it doesn’t really matter as long as it gets the spirit across. Considering Bubsy 4D continues Fabraz’s tradition of tight, flowing platformer, schmoovement certainly fits the bill.

I was already plenty excited about Bubsy 4D after playing far too many hours of the demo myself, but chatting to Rastorfer and Miller filled me with even more confidence in the bobcat’s revival. Bubsy 4D really does seem like it has a chance of changing how everyone talks about the series going forward, which is a tall task considering the Bubsy 3D of it all.

“We’re confident in what we’re making, and I’m always very confident in my team’s work, so there’s no real nerves,” Rastorfer says. “Obviously, there’s the legacy of it and how people are going to approach the game, which I have no control over. Are they going to go into it thinking, I don’t like Bubsy games, so I won’t like this one? How is that going to impact their experience of it? I don’t know, but I’m very happy with how the game turned out.”