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Cruiz'in Youtube- June 2016- Interview with Michael Berlyn


doctorclu

3,018 views

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Hey all, we'll go ahead and post this a little early... presenting...

the interview with Michael Berlyn the creator of Bubsy Bobcat!!!

 

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SpongeFox and I had a blast talking to Michael as he talked about a few of his projects from OO Topos his earliest game, projects at Infocom (Infidel, Cutthroats, Fooblitzky, and Suspended) as well as his musical experience "Hot Mustard", and his latest addictive iOS game, Ogg.

 

And naturally lots and lots of behind the scenes on the creation of Bubsy Bobcat, the mascot that Accolade banked on to save their company and succeeded!

 

 

Mike (as he asked to be called, not Mr. Berlyn) really enjoyed the illustrations of SpongeFox as you can see in the interview, so this would be a great time to share some illiustrations that have piled up while I was editing interviews in the last month.

 

Here is what SpongeFox doodled during the interview:

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Ironically Mike mentioned that Bubsy was based in character on a dog they had at the time. These were actually drawn by SpongeFox a week before the interview.

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Only other news is that I am working with Shinto as he wraps up his Bubsy episode for the Atari Jaguar Game by Game podcast. I'm thankful to Shinto for having that episode as a motivation to reach out and interview Faran Thomason and Michael Berlyn in research for the podcast.

 

Been a Tea-riffic experience!

 

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As for where Bubsy kept the yarn balls, the comic that accompanied Claws Encounters seemed to suggest he kept them in his bedroom, where he slept in them, dreaming about sleeping in his yarn ball collection. That same comic also mentioned Bubsy not wearing any pants. Same with the Bubsy II comic, where the license plate on his car read, "NO PANTS". I seem to recall that around then, Finland had banned images of Donald Duck because he didn't wear pants. Bubsy not wearing any pants might have also been an implicit dare for Finland to ban him, too, and generate publicity.

 

When Mike mentioned Ennio, I quickly recalled he was the dog in Tass Times in Tonetown, a game that I got to play a little bit of on the final day of my senior year in high school in 1987, and then he mentioned that exact game. I never got to finish it, though I did make considerable progress on one of the times I played it (there were a few of us taking turns playing). I'd love to be able to play it again, and finally win it. Maybe a version of it will be made available online somewhere (or a version for the Jaguar and Jaguar emulators?) that I can actually play.

 

I suppose that if someone wanted to do a rewrite of Bubsy, the technology probably exists by now to include all the features Mike wanted to include, like Bubsy's shirt displaying varying symbols, depending on the situation. I can imagine a few possibilities when he realizes he's about to drop into a water slide. And perhaps relief at having survived such a ride, albeit ending up drenched. Bubsy growling while shaking the water off his fur, grinning proudly after doing so successfully, then looking perplexed as his fur frizzes up into the ultimate bad hair day was one of the more amusing idle sequences, along with knocking on the screen and causing the image to shake as he knocked while asking, "Hello?". And nothing was put in the original Bubsy game pointlessly - even the exertion to push something eventually does get used on the train and desert levels.

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