Bubsy Level Maps

[doctorclu]

"Hello Doc!

 

Can you help me with Bubsy for the Jaguar? I have to play it with my young niece almost every week, but we do fail to complete any level! I even looked into the manual but can't find a hint about how a level is completed and on the internet i can only find the level-codes. Are there any maps available?

 

Best regards

Matthias"

 

Well, I got this message earlier today, and I realize this is very crude, but it will show roughly how the first level plays out. I will try to come up with a better way of doing this in the future.

 

But for now, for the curious, the level one map of Bubsy.

[Isgoed]

Well, I don't know how to complete the levels, so I can't help you with that

 

I am curious how many people will be able to help you out, as this game is not everyone's favorite I believe..... but who knows

 

Nice map though...

[else]

Beautiful looking game, too bad the control is so sloppy. I've tried really hard to like it, but I just don't enjoy dieing every 5 seconds. Move left, die. Move right, die. Jump, die. Okay, I've exaggerated a bit, but only a bit....

[doctorclu]

The trick to Bubsy is as follows....

 

Like in Joust, be the one on top. You must pounce the opponent.

 

To best do this, hit one button for "jump" and immeidately follow this with "glide".

 

So you get used to this combination a lot in Bubsy. You Jump, and then glide. Jump, glide. You find an opponent.. jump, and then GLIDE down on top of them, making sure to land on their head.

 

Granted the glide is a bit erratic, but after a while you get used to it, and it became essential.

 

What other tricks are there? Looking ahead (the last red button) by holding the "look" button and looking around is also quite essential.

 

Aside from that, memorize. Bubsy never changes where the opponents are, and that is a good thing in this case. So soon you can more gracefully land on three opponents in a row, and your score has an extra +100 more points with each person you hit while staying airborne doing it.

 

That is the basics. Jump.. glide. Advise to help in the first level...

 

1) Yellow jackets (bees) are actually easy opponents once you get used to them. Just make sure you are airborne when you charge them, and make sure you are actively gliding left or right towards them. Takes some practice.

 

2) Tweedle Dee and Dum are tough.. at first. Make sure to jump and glide onto them, timing which balloon is being let go (balloons have a poison gas in them that will kill Bubsy if he hits them.)

 

3) Snake... usually you can see just on the sides of the screen before he notices you. The eggs he throws are fast and deadly. But, remember, they face one way and cannot turn. If you can make a good jump and glide over them, landing behind him (or if the snake is on a table, run underneath him) you can come up from behind, taking all the time in the world to pounce him.

 

4) Rabbits are a pain. They usually run around on those tables, and that causes more problems...

a) be careful that you don't land on ornaments on the table. Steer around them, and time the jump on the rabbits so you are no where near the ornaments to get in the way.

b) Make sure you GLIDE on top of the rabbit. If there was ever a picky opponent, it is the rabbit. Glide down and land right on his head! >Poof< no more rabbit. I hates wabbits.

 

5) The chesser cats... forgot that as one of the unfriendlies on the map. Will have to change that. They appear out of no where, spit a bit, (deadly saliva I guess) and then vanish. Best advice is, once you remember where the cat appears, just get to the right or left of where he will appear, then once he does, just jump him before he has a chance to stick that tongue out. Easily done.

 

6) The FLAMINGOS! Heheh... they are flamingos not ostrigeges.. heheh... oh well. Just make sure to land on the mo-hawk on their head. Careful that you don't land on a table while trying to get them.,

 

What gets you killed?

 

1) Water

2) Falling too far

3) Falling on sharp things

4) landing too soon on something else other than your opponent. (IE. you try to jump on a flamingo, but you miss the mo-hawk on the flamingo and land on a table instead just short of the flamingo... then flamingo walks into you, and >pop<, no more Bubsy.)

 

And with Bubsy it is all about timing, so put time on your side and GLIDE down on your opponent. Once you get that down, Bubsy is very enjoyable.

[doctorclu]

I found this interesting, so thought I would tack this on to my older Bubsy message.

 

Apparently the Fractured Fairy Tales was not the original idea of Accolade for the Atari Jaguar, as you can see here...

 

http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/12/05/03/0373.php

 

"//// From Accolade's press release, announcing their games for the

Atari Jaguar:

 

Atari Corp. together with Accolade Inc. of San Jose, Calif., a notable

publisher and developer of Sega and Nintendo video games, Thursday

jointly announced a licensing agreement that will enable Atari to

bring five proven, hot titles from Accolade to consumers on the new

64-bit Jaguar Interactive Multimedia System by Fall 1994."

 

"Bubsy in: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind - The world's supply

of yarnballs is seriously threatened in one of the year's most popular

video games, and it is up to Bubsy Bobcat, "a hero for cryin' out

loud!" to put a stop to the yarnball plundering Woolies."

 

Interesting. The truth is, Fractured Fairy Tales for the Jag is a slightly zipper game than the Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind, and yet, CEFK is a longer game, has more voices and animations for Bubsy, and a few other things. I wonder if they tried to make CEFK available for the Jag, realized some limitations, or just realized there was too much recoding involved and decided to make a new game all together.

 

Either way I find it interesting. Makes me wonder how far they might have gotten on CEFK before scrapping that and making the Fractured Fairy Tales game?

 

(For those not in the know, Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind was on the Super SNES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.)

[doctorclu]

For anyone doing a search for Bubsy and finding this message of my mapping project, I just wanted to add that this message was followed up by another Atariage message...

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...=85838&st=0

 

The idea of making maps for Bubsy is not completely gone, but it will be very very time consuming. so in that message are detailed the links to video captures of the Bubsy levels. Hopefully YouTube and the links are still active when you read this. These movies were designed to help other players of Bubsy, or those that might have wondered what the game was like but did not have it yet.

 

The levels in summary:

 

Levels 1-3

 

Levels 4-6

 

Levels 7-9

 

Level 10

 

Level 11

 

Level 12

[Rick Dangerous]

In levels 1-3 there is a skip in the video around 1:22 that is messing me up. Going to give this one another try tonight. I need a "slow run" rather than a "speed run"....lol

 

And another one at 2:00. I need a video with no skips. This game is a freaking labyrinth!!

Edited January 28, 2015 by travistouchdown

[doctorclu]

I have recently been doing YouTube live streams and would like to do a level by level guide to Bubsy.

 

Anyone interested can be notified when and where the channel will be and can chime in with chat comments.

 

The videos will be added to a package on I'm creating on how to play Bubsy which I'll publish at some point.

 

Could do this as early as Thursday night.

[Rick Dangerous]

Had to add this courtesy of Doc Clu. Trying to get all my resources in one place for tonight.

 

Okay okay... someone suggested earlier that if later levels were played first Bubsy would have been more enjoyable. So FIRST TIMERS TO JAGUAR BUBSY... Take a suggestion from another player... play the segments in thisorder...

Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves:

chapter 7 - 812615
chapter 8 - 781367
chapter 9 - 126712 Genie Boss - Easy!

Jack and the Beanstalk

chapter 4 - 958936
chapter 5 - 739294
chapter 6 - 184792 The Giant - Kinda Difficult

Alice in Wonderland

chapter 1 - 111111
chapter 2 - 392652
chapter 3 - 458227 Mad Hatter - Fairly Difficult

Hansel & Gretel

chapter 13 - 672328
chapter 14 - 782389
chapter 15 - 672345 Hansel & Gretel - Hard

Extra Credit:
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea
Chapter 10 - 236721
Chapter 11 - 673167
Chapter 12 - 792323 Large Lobster - Quite Hard

This is the order after playing it that it should have gone in, really based on the levels and more so the bosses. So start with Ali Baba and see what you think of it from there. Many have liked those levels best.

[doctorclu]

Yeh that would be the order I would like to re-arrange the levels in at some point. Someday, if I ever figure out how to decompile (mostly done... I believe) and recompile the source... someday.

 

The time is set for 8:15 CST or 9:15 EST tonight.

 

Live Streaming YouTube link will be posted here later on today.

Edited January 28, 2015 by doctorclu

[doctorclu]

The channel for tonight will be...

 

 

See you there!

[doctorclu]

Would like to thank all who tuned in to the live stream tonight as we covered the Alice in Wonderland and Jack and Beanstalk levels.

 

Next time we'll cover Ali Baba and the 40 Thieves.

Edited January 29, 2015 by doctorclu

[doctorclu]

I've edited the live stream from last night into two videos :

 

Alice in Wonderland Levels

 

Jack and the Beanstalk Levels

[Seedy1812]

I found this interesting, so thought I would tack this on to my older Bubsy message.

 

Apparently the Fractured Fairy Tales was not the original idea of Accolade for the Atari Jaguar, as you can see here...

 

http://www.atariarchives.org/cfn/12/05/03/0373.php

 

"//// From Accolade's press release, announcing their games for the

Atari Jaguar:

 

Atari Corp. together with Accolade Inc. of San Jose, Calif., a notable

publisher and developer of Sega and Nintendo video games, Thursday

jointly announced a licensing agreement that will enable Atari to

bring five proven, hot titles from Accolade to consumers on the new

64-bit Jaguar Interactive Multimedia System by Fall 1994."

 

"Bubsy in: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind - The world's supply

of yarnballs is seriously threatened in one of the year's most popular

video games, and it is up to Bubsy Bobcat, "a hero for cryin' out

loud!" to put a stop to the yarnball plundering Woolies."

 

Interesting. The truth is, Fractured Fairy Tales for the Jag is a slightly zipper game than the Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind, and yet, CEFK is a longer game, has more voices and animations for Bubsy, and a few other things. I wonder if they tried to make CEFK available for the Jag, realized some limitations, or just realized there was too much recoding involved and decided to make a new game all together.

 

Either way I find it interesting. Makes me wonder how far they might have gotten on CEFK before scrapping that and making the Fractured Fairy Tales game?

 

(For those not in the know, Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind was on the Super SNES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.)

 

The Jaguar Bubsy Game started out as the Genesis + Snes CEFK. All the control logic and graphics ( and animations ) of the Bubsy game were used in the Jag version. ( based off the Genesis 68000 code ). Once the first level basic map ( more like programmer art for the level than full on graphics ) it was decided it was not going to be a port. The Ali Baba level was the first world/levels created and Hansel and Gretel was the last one. Due to a limited time scale once we got into full flow we had 3 weeks to get each world ( compromising of 3 levels) completed. Right at the end of development it was decided to add speech at the start of the levels but we did not have much rom left, that is why you only get one per world and its not of the greatest quality.

Edited February 9, 2015 by Seedy1812

[doctorclu]

Wow, great to meet someone from the Bubsy team. I've had fun decompiling the Bubsy rom so I have a few questions if you don't mind.

 

1) Who are you and were you one of the graphical designers of the game? (I can understand if you want to stay anonymous.)

2) I would be really curious to know:

A) What program you used to edit the maps?

B) What graphics editor was used for the character animation and basically how that worked?

 

And perhaps you can answer the $6 question: Why was the "!" on Bubsy's shirt yellow instead of red?

 

And if I read the above you were working on each world for three weeks, so basically Bubsy was programmed (let's see 3 weeks x 5 worlds /4 weeks=3.75) in roughly four months? Very tight schedule.

[Seedy1812]

If I was being cryptic I would say look in the credits and see if you can guess who I am But I am not that cruel. I am Andrew Seed the lead programmer on the game. There were also another 2 programmers , Nigel Conroy who did the frontend and highscore screens and Karl West who did the bosses.

 

As I said the game was originally going to be the Snes/Genesis version and we received the code and artwork for that and initially I had the first level up and running ( no baddies ) as a test bed that things were working.. Then it was decided that it was going to be a new game. So we kept as much as we could. The art we received about Bubsy was touched up as we had more colours available ( I think we upped it to 32 colours ( I think ) for bubsy and the rest of the 256 for the map ). I would guess that baddies would be in CRY or RGB.

 

We came up with the theme and fleshed out what was going to be in each world. The only issues we had was with mermaids and any perceived tit bounce such as the genie as it was family game.

 

We used an in house map editor written by Martin Randall, the graphics were drawn using dpaint and we had our own program for sprite cutting and animation. No new Bubsy animations were created but just touched up. As for the ! on the shirt I have no idea. I would guess that's how we received the shirt,

 

I would say that the schedule was more then double what you think. Initially I was the only person working on the game for a few months - getting the genesis code working on the Jag and then more people were added to the project when needed. The first world we created took more than 3 weeks but then we had it fairly solid. In reality we started the world blockset and the baddies on the first week ,by the start of the second week the maps had been started and I started on the baddies AI. I would have 2 weeks to get the AI down ( we knew how things were going to behave before the artist drew them ) and spend the rest of the 3rd week bug hunting previous bugs, As for the bosses I wrote systems so that Karl could concentrate on the game and not how things work under the hood. The bosses and their graphics were done behind the level work.

[GT Turbo]

Doctor Clu Number one on Bubsy !!

[doctorclu]

If I was being cryptic I would say look in the credits and see if you can guess who I am But I am not that cruel. I am Andrew Seed the lead programmer on the game. There were also another 2 programmers , Nigel Conroy who did the frontend and highscore screens and Karl West who did the bosses.

 

Andrew Seed! Ah so you're the one I had to beat in the high scores when I first started this game. (For those that have not played Bubsy Andrew has scores recorded on the high score screen). But I saw your name quite a lot in other areas. Great to finally talk to you and been a fan of your work for a while. I've studied the Jaguar Bubsy game to understand how my favorite game was made, so maybe you can answer these questions too.

 

As I said the game was originally going to be the Snes/Genesis version and we received the code and artwork for that and initially I had the first level up and running ( no baddies ) as a test bed that things were working.. Then it was decided that it was going to be a new game. So we kept as much as we could. The art we received about Bubsy was touched up as we had more colours available ( I think we upped it to 32 colours ( I think ) for bubsy and the rest of the 256 for the map ). I would guess that baddies would be in CRY or RGB.

 

We came up with the theme and fleshed out what was going to be in each world. The only issues we had was with mermaids and any perceived tit bounce such as the genie as it was family game.

 

I'm glad you came up with a new game. The first Bubsy game was fun but with a new story for the Jaguar gave Bubsy, who I have since collected thanks to enjoying the Jaguar game, a unique third game. While some of the improvements of the code from Bubsy 2 might have been nice with being able to be hit three times instead of one, the controls were not as fluid in Bubsy 2. The controllers in Bubsy 1 were a bit more enjoyable, and fun (with a lot of practice) in the Jaguar version.

 

So cool stuff. Over my playing of the first Bubsy game and Jaguar Bubsy I noticed some things that made me figure a lot of the original code was there:

1) All the Bubsy character animations. And that was nice because you could play Bubsy 1 and 2 and then go onto the Jaguar, have a familiar character, and play some more.

 

2) Part of the character animation left in was Bubsy's ability to push items, which there are no items to push in the Jaguar version, but always thought that was funny.

 

3) I like how the background mechanics stayed in the game. The manhole covers in the first Bubsy game that Bubsy could step on and when they popped into the air would also shoot Bubsy in the air. That mechanic became bottle caps in the last Jaguar Bubsy world. Liked that.

 

Of the character design files I was able to pick out RGB and CRY files. Viewing the character files were interesting, and the files contained multiple images like they were on one long vertical sheet, much like a strip of 35mm film. I was always curious how the animation in the game knew how to reference an image on the file itself. I noticed the Bubsy font was a similar setup.

 

As for keeping it family friendly, was there ever a "unfriendly" version? I only ask that because there has been a lot of fun unearthing an inhouse Intellivision version of Astrosmash which was... more adult in theme.

 

We used an in house map editor written by Martin Randall, the graphics were drawn using dpaint and we had our own program for sprite cutting and animation. No new Bubsy animations were created but just touched up. As for the ! on the shirt I have no idea. I would guess that's how we received the shirt,

 

Dpaint... Deluxe Paint. Wow, been a while since I heard of that one. I looked it up and I was hoping between that (which was on about all platforms back in the day) and this picture that Faran posted I am guessing this was done on the PC's at the time, but then I saw Atari TT's in the testers cube so curious to know which.

 

As for the custom editors: That makes me feel better about my efforts to look at the maps. I was trying to get to know the maps setup to hopefully create other fun fan made Bubsy games, like for example, maybe porting Bubsy 1 to the Jag at some point. The best I was able to read on the maps so far is what you seen in this link. Was cool to finally see them in one complete picture, and we even had some fun trying to get to a hidden area on the Jack and the Beanstalk levels. In the end we concluded that room was self enclosed and not accessable.

Ive swapped names to get the levels in a different order, to say, have the Ali Baba levels first in the game, I noticed that the game itself plots Bubsy on a point of the map. The map seems to indicate what is ground (or solid) in it's own way. All and all cool.

 

I'm sure the custom editor for the map and animation is long lost, but good to understand the challenge ahead of me on the maps and animation.

 

 

The Bubsy shirt has been a fun topic of Bubsy fans for a while. I used to say there was 10 Bubsy fans out there, but I have since discovered in the past decade there might be at least 10 more. There was one picture I thought was cute where they have the Fractured Furry Tales shirt in the background, a momento of the Jaguar adventure (shown in the picture above.)

 

As a fan project I was thinking of making a Bubsy manual with a comic book much like they have in the Bubsy 1 and 2 manuals. In the fan made manual Bubsy is reading the fairy tales to the twins from Bubsy 2. While reading the books he finds that someone messed with the fairy tales. And while Bubsy was kinda liking the changes of the Mother Goose stories, he suddenly finds the "!" on his shirt was changed from red to yellow. To which he explains "Ok, now it's personal!!!"

 

Interesting note that goes along with that, the intro screen and game has the yellow "!", while the final winning screen has the red "!" so it all kinda fits.

 

Technical theory: As you mentioned above the Bubsy art was converted from the 32 color to the 256 color. The red in the "!" might have been lost in that translation.

 

Also what came to mind is that the Genesis version might have had some color effect being triggered for the "!" and yellow was the base background of that effect. Maybe a flicker effect to help the "!" really stand out (since they were trying to be EXTREME with Bubsy in the 90's.) When converted to the Jaguar all that remained was the background base color.

 

 

I would say that the schedule was more then double what you think. Initially I was the only person working on the game for a few months - getting the genesis code working on the Jag and then more people were added to the project when needed. The first world we created took more than 3 weeks but then we had it fairly solid. In reality we started the world blockset and the baddies on the first week ,by the start of the second week the maps had been started and I started on the baddies AI. I would have 2 weeks to get the AI down ( we knew how things were going to behave before the artist drew them ) and spend the rest of the 3rd week bug hunting previous bugs, As for the bosses I wrote systems so that Karl could concentrate on the game and not how things work under the hood. The bosses and their graphics were done behind the level work.

 

Cool.

 

Do you remember what differences/challenges there was in getting the Genesis code to work on the Jaguar? I'm sure controller routines were one. Was it all straight up 68K code or were there some hardware tricks they tried on the Genesis that had to be bypassed or translated on the Jaguar?

 

Talking to people over the years it has been clear that the graphics and sound would be quite different between the Genesis and Jaguar, which is why it is VERY understandable that you all came up with a different story. Why not at that point. However you mentioned you got the first level to work without bad guys? How did that go?

 

(And I know this was like .. wow.. 21 years ago, but anything remembered would be fascinating.)

 

So to understand, say if I ever wanted to port Bubsy 1 using the Jaguar Bubsy setup, what was it like converting the background art and map information? And when the in house editor was made, was it using the mechanics of the Genesis code or did the code itself have to be adjusted to work with the new editor and it's format?

 

Sound files and effects can be tricky and I understand that the Genesis uses a completely different sound chip than the Jaguar. Ultimately I (and others) are glad that .mod files were used for the music. A lot liked the Amiga feel of the game that way. Had the honor of talking to Trevor Raynsford in 2009 I believe about the mod player used in Bubsy, Raiden, Zool, etc:

 

The part about the boss was really interesting. Sounds like a boss module was created to activate at the end of the level. When playing Bubsy for ... a few years... I believe I can see where the boss routine kicks in. Basically you get to the end of the level, and somehow the character trips a routine. For example:

1) Alice levels - Bubsy runs to the far right which activates the Hatter routine.

2) Jack levels - Bubsy flies through the center of the screen, which activates the Giant routine.

3) Ali Baba - Bubsy runs through the middle and a bit to the left and the Genie rises up.

4) 20,000 leagues levels - Bubsy runs to the far right, which activates the "Rock Lobster" as one book put it.

5) Hansel levels - Bubsy runs to the far right to activate Hansel and Gretel.

 

You can see a slight change or lag when the boss module activates and the boss appears (Appearing from the right, dropping from above, or materializing.)

 

Anyway, awesome to hear how that boss segment works. I've noticed that the boss sprite files were seperate from the other sprites of their levels. At some point, knowing the boss module is different, I might try renaming the boss module to get the lobster on the Alice level or something.

 

Hmmm... that makes me appreciate the Ali Baba boss even more. In that one, unlike the others, the lamp is there before the boss appears but is crucial to defeating the boss. So was the lamp part of the level map, and when the Genie appears a boss module lamp appears that is superimposed over the map version of the lamp that can be modified and eventually shattered?

Edited February 10, 2015 by doctorclu

[doctorclu]

*** Correction ***

Genie: Checked a video and found that the "lamp" and Genie both appear after Bubsy runs to the extreme left of the screen. My bad.

 

Now my understanding of the boss module is 100% consistent.

 

I was thinking over lunch how I don't tend to play games as much, but I sure find it interesting on how they are made.

[Seedy1812]

doctorclu, on 10 Feb 2015 - 5:45 PM, said:doctorclu, on 10 Feb 2015 - 5:45 PM, said:

 

Of the character design files I was able to pick out RGB and CRY files. Viewing the character files were interesting, and the files contained multiple images like they were on one long vertical sheet, much like a strip of 35mm film. I was always curious how the animation in the game knew how to reference an image on the file itself. I noticed the Bubsy font was a similar setup.

 

 

If you look at the Bubsy graphics ( or bubble ) the start of the file has an array of Object Processor objects (32 bytes ) for each sprite ( based from address 0 ) . The first long word of the file is also the offset to where the graphics start (so you can easily calculate how many sprites there are ). By doing this I only need to change a few fields ( x,y , flip etc ). So when the file is loaded I update the start address of each sprite.

 

 

Also JHD files and JSP is like the bubsy graphics but split into JagHeaDer and JagSPrite .

 

Bubsy.JPL is JagPalette

Edited February 10, 2015 by Seedy1812

[Seedy1812]

The maps are made up of two layers ( so Bubsy can go behind things )

 

BSET?.BTR if block definition - off the top of my head I am not sure for its format but it will be something like

 

Number of entries (tiles)

and then for each entry

{

16 bytes Y offset , -1 mean fall through

?? bytes extra info eg slope

}

 

BSET?.RGB palette info but bottom part is overwritten by bubsy palette

 

BSET.DAT blockset graphics

16*16 8 bpp - block 0 is transparent.

 

Each entry of the WORLD?.MAP is made up of foreground and background tile which is read from the corresponding .MPR file. This brings me to CTL file. This contains the objects in the world for horizontal level they are ordered by X and for Jack ( vertical ) then by Y. The first word is number of entries and then for each X,Y,object type. The object type is a table in code per world.

[Seedy1812]

Anyway, awesome to hear how that boss segment works. I've noticed that the boss sprite files were seperate from the other sprites of their levels. At some point, knowing the boss module is different, I might try renaming the boss module to get the lobster on the Alice level or something.

 

The boss file only contains graphics. The bosses are just like any object in the level their logic is part of the game.

[doctorclu]

Seedy, been meaning to get back and comment on your responses and thank you for that. All I can say is some good technical behind the scenes information. And I definately appreciate the basic theory on how the maps work. Probably take years of tinkering from time to time to fully get it.

 

Hey one thought that came to mind is if you remember any fun stories that happened while working on this, that would be fun to hear. I noticed that one early picture of the Genie looked quite a bit different. Do you remember if there were any drastic differences of the character or level design (aside from originally wanting to be the original Bubsy game deciding to make a unique game)?

[Seedy1812]

Atari / Accolade had to sign off on the "story" for the game so we had to come up with the worlds and bosses at the start. Once this was thrashed out there was no real design changes. The only thing which they changed was the Mermaid was originally drawn topless and I think a bikini top was added or her hair covered things up and then the Genie had too much tit bounce so that had to be changed - both were minor art work changes.

 

The project went pretty smoothly - quite a few late night from Steve , Dave and myself.

[doctorclu]

Would have liked to see the earlier versions of those more adult images. I'm sure you were not trying to go over the top on that, just motion for the Genie and showing Mermaids as they tend to be depicted. I mean we are talking 16 bit graphics, what can you really make of it?

 

I do remember one thing at the moment I can talk about. I got a hold of some source for Bubsy at one point and in the remarks there was originally plans to make for the Jack and the Beanstalk levels a Bean Pod that exploded. Can you tell us some of the design ideas for that one and why it was cut out of the game?