Robert R

>Looked like Animal from the Muppets at first. To that I have one word to say: Menomenon! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N_tupPBtWQ

Looks like in the PC Launch Special, Bubsy is wearing the cat's pajamas!

Well well, it looks like they have a darn good Bubsy game with The Woolies Strike Back. Here's hoping they will eventually have a Mac version for it so I can play it. Seeing the climbable walls reminded me of similar walls in that Scratchnapped game featuring Bubsy and which was highlighted a few months ago where that game had something similar. Makes me wonder which game inspired the idea for the other. Same with the breakable blocks. I noticed some additional moves Bubsy can make in the new game beyond the jumping and gliding, like the double (air) jump, and the... I guess I'd call it power pounce. It looks like they have indeed made the game a challenge without being overly difficult. I think I also noticed some woolies that had been pounced on in one area, when he came back to that area, the woolies were back as if they had never been taken out in the first place. Maybe that's by design to make it possible to execute jump and pounce combos on a second try if the player doesn't pull it off on the first try. At any rate, I certainly look forward to whenever the game comes to my system.

As I recall, you have to hit the lobster about 12 times on the tail. The antenna and claws will pop Bubsy, so you have to avoid them. I usually ended up beating the lobster by double-pouncing on the tail six times. And I usually had to get a running start from the left edge to leap all the way over the lobster. Sometimes the lobster would keep advancing, and I could hit it on the tail four or even six times consecutively before having to glide back over to the left side and in front of it again. It certainly is a difficult boss to conquer, but doable. Just very exacting with little room for error.

Addendum: After looking closely through the list provided here again and noticing "Tail's End (ending theme)", and listening to what spunkyradbobcat plays as "Died in The Wool", it's clear that "Tail's End" should be the #25 on the list.

I noticed there was a complete list of music from the original Bubsy game at spunkyradbobcat.tumblr.com. The playlist shown there: 1. War of the Woolies (main theme song) 2. Hill Stream Blues (levels 1-3) 3. Tunnel Vision (underground parts of levels 1-3) 4. Fair is Foul (levels 4-6) 5. The Cattanooga Iron Horse (levels 7-9, trains) 6. Wool Wool West (levels 7-9, canyons) 7. Bluegrass Bobcat (levels 10-12) 8. Woolering Heights (levels 13-15) 9. Day the Wool Stood Still (level 16) 10. Mission: Impervious (invincibility shirt) 11. Shadow Bopping (Shadow Bubsy shirt) 12. Clean Only (level 1-3 waterslides) 13. Wet Peeve (level 10-12 waterslides) 14. Kick Some Grass (level 3 boss) 15. The Maim Event (level 6 boss) 16. Hoedown Showdown (level 9 boss) 17. Wild and Woolie (level 12 boss) 18. Treetop Tyrants (level 15 boss) 19. Polly and Ester, Queens of Rayon (level 16 boss) 20. Field Yield (score tally) 21. Twine Talley (score tally) 22. Whitewater (score tally, levels 10-12) 23. Woolie Keep Trying? (continue music) 24. Died in The Wool (game over) However, on the Tumblr site, it seems that it actually merges "Clean Only" and "Wet Peeve" into a single file, and from "Wet Peeve" on, it's actually playing the music of the next title (i.e., "Wet Peeve" is actually playing "Kick Some Grass", "Kick Some Grass" is actually playing "The Maim Event", and so on, down to "Woolie Keep Trying?" actually playing "Died in the Wool". And "Died in the Wool" is actually playing the victory tune (which goes with the victory animation), which is not listed, but should be a #25 on the list.

One thought that came to my mind when you asked Mike Berlyn if Bubsy's shirt would show any "other symbols", and he responded, "I'll take it to my grave", I thought, "you mean symbols like Q-bert would utter when conked on the head?" That would certainly be a way of expressing annoyance at his enemies...

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.

Ah ha, so that's the significance of the cherry and "No smutty comments, please" - Hansel and Gretel were supposedly tossing cherry bombs, and they didn't want the programmers making the too-obvious joke just set right up on a tee about "popping the cherries". LOL! And yes, despite Bubsy saying "Nothing can stop me now!" on levels 13-15, plenty could and did stop him. Of course he said the same line sometimes in Bubsy II. One thing Bubsy II inadvertently lent itself to was you could just buy your way to as many lives as you could buy by repeatedly putting on the diving suit, going into the water, getting the big marble for 10 trading cards, buy more diving suits, get 10 more trading cards on every dive, then buying all the lives you needed, making the game easy to avoid running out of lives. Another great interview.

This may be slightly off-topic, but last night while playing Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind (the original game), I triggered something I had never triggered before. When fighting the level 15 boss, time expired while I was in mid-air finishing off all the bugs the saucers had released, and after I pounced on the last of them, triggering the victory sequence, when I landed, I also got the out-of-time animation, including the "Aoogah!" sound effect, and Bubsy standing there looking embarrassed while the victory music played and I got my bonus for the yarn balls. Details: I knocked out the last of the saucers with about 4 seconds left, and landed with 1 or 2 seconds left. I knew I had to get airborne and stay airborne until I took out the last two bees and spiders if I was going to complete the level on that life, and succeeded. It probably took 3 to 5 seconds past when time ran out while I remained airborne to finish off the baddies, and then finally landed as I must eventually. It was odd to see that juxtaposition, but I could probably replicate it if I tried.

Yeah, I noticed that, too. For example, if Bubsy was hit in mid-air by a snake's tail or egg it threw, back to the title screen the moment he touched the ground, hardly enough time to see what happened. The original game would show him landing, uttering the "Yikes!", then shattering like glass with the sound effect. Or if Bubsy fell from too great a height (something you would just about have to try to do intentionally in the Jaguar game), he just collapses into a furry pancake, whereas in the original game, he would get up with an accordion-like middle, and walk off the screen accompanied by the sound of an accordion as he walked (another sound effect not in the Jaguar game). And if Bubsy gets popped, you just see him thinned with an uncomfortable expression, and he doesn't fly around the screen like a deflating balloon. We're definitely in agreement on that point. Someone who did a YouTube review of the game even complained about this very point, so we have company.

I guess that's also why several of the effects from the original Bubsy game (like unique music for a Shadow Bubsy or Super Bubsy shirt being in effect, Bubsy saying "Hello?" as he knocks on the inside of the screen, etc.) got dropped for the Jaguar version of the game. One other difference I noticed is that in the Jaguar version, there are only the bottle caps in the candy land levels and the tents in the desert levels that can really launch Bubsy upwards in a hurry, while the original game had something to launch him high in every single level, very handy in getting above enemies. Then again, in the Jaguar game, with all the charging hornets, it could just as easily have been the case that you would get launched right into an enemy on the way up if such upward launchers were in every level. On the other hand, nice that the bug from the original game, whereby if you got over 81 lives, the game treated it as if you had run out of lives the next time you died (or completed the level), is fixed, and correctly keeps track.

Having happened across some Roger Rabbit fan art on Deviant Art, including one named Portable Hole, I remembered the entries here about the Portable Hole, and it spawned an idea for a picture for any of the Deviant Artists to pick up, run with, and draw if they want: Bubsy, having leaped through one of his portable holes, happens to come out the other side into the presence of Roger and Jessica Rabbit with Baby Herman. Bubsy, with his characteristic youthful enthusiasm, is highly excited about getting to meet THE Roger Rabbit. Baby Herman would look wide-eyed at the opportunity to reach out and touch Bubsy's fur. And Jessica Rabbit would eye Bubsy somewhat suspiciously, commenting, "Why is he not wearing any pants?" The way I visualize it, this could be a hilarious picture.

If we ever do get a remake of Fractured Furry Tales, certainly have Bubsy saying something different and witty at the start of each chapter (and fitting for how he's animated for the chapter screen), rather than the same thing for each of the three chapters of a single world. (e.g., "Somebody say there's a giant up here? Uh ohhhh..." instead of "Pilot's license? What for?" on chapter 6, or "You didn't think this would be Reservoir DOGS, did you?" for Chapter 12, or "As if I weren't hyper enough already!" to "Sugar and Spice" as the title for Chapter 13, and save "Nothing can stop me now!" for Chapter 15.) Perhaps something could also be done on the hit detection, so that if Bubsy is higher up than an enemy when contacting it, he'll win, rather than only take out the enemy if on the way down already. I think that would alleviate much of the frustration with leaping to get on top of a charging hornet, but because it contacts you on the way up, you get popped, even if you're on top of it. And certainly landing after getting hit in mid-air shouldn't be the end of any death animation - something else should happen upon landing, whether it's falling over with bouncing eyeballs, getting shattered, or getting flattened. And of course my prior suggestions still apply

It seems to me that a lot of care and attention to detail went into the original Bubsy game, and is my favorite of the Bubsy games for that reason. I mentioned many of the differences I notice in reply #181 - background music for each situation, including each area, each boss, each shirt that provides some kind of protection (invincibility and shadow). And after recently finding apparently the entire soundtrack for the original Bubsy game at http://spunkyradbobcat.tumblr.com, there are apparently even three different variations of the end-of-level victory music, and two different versions ("Clean Only" and "Wet Peeve") that accompany Bubsy in a water slide. (Am I right in assuming that Bubsy's ultimate bad-hair day after shaking off the water was a woman's idea?) Even when losing a life, Bubsy does so cartoonishly, which really shouldn't be much of a surprise. Him being a cartoon character would explain how he somehow wears goggles while on the roller coasters, even though he's not wearing any pants, and has no visible pockets to pull them out of. (Maybe the same hidden pocket he fumbles around in and pulls a watch out of when time expires.) I also got the impression from watching some of the videos on YouTube, and playing the game myself, that the layouts were designed in many cases to reward going all-out. (Scott "BANZAI!!!" Barnes, anyone?) I do find the original game fun to replay, even though I've mastered the game pretty thoroughly (as searching for "Bubsy purrfect" on YouTube should attest). I think I explored every part of every one of those four by 15-to-20-foot maps. Just a couple bugs take a little something away from the original Bubsy - dying with more than 81 lives or completing a level with more than 80 lives triggers a bug that necessitates using a Continue when it shouldn't be necessary. I suspect that has something to do with 81 being 9x9. And others have found that one checkpoint in level 8, if you get it without bopping the Woolie next to it, and die before getting another checkpoint, will drain all your lives one by one by spawning Bubsy right on top of that Woolie. If an update or remake gets made for Claws Encounters, those are definitely two things to fix. On a side note, it looks like Super Bubsy is a remake of Claws Encounters for Windows machines, with Bubsy saying a few more things during play ("Look out, it's Bubsy time!", "Hey, was that Elvis?", "I feel like a furry Huck Finn!"). Bubsy II becomes little challenge when one discovers that in the Ancient Egypt or Medieval areas, you can repeatedly use diving suits to get a super marble in the underwater areas, then use the trading cards from them to buy more diving suits to do so to an even greater extent, and then buy all the lives you need. But, Bubsy II is customizable for how long a game you want, or even just the mini-games. Fractured Furry Tales for the Jaguar is a real challenge, but that also makes it highly satisfying to beat. From the very first level, you are subject to assault by hornets, which you don't see at all in the original Bubsy. That increases the difficulty of Fractured Furry Tales considerably, beyond anything in the original Bubsy or Bubsy II, I'd say. But once you have a strategy for dealing with the hornets, and developing a sense for where they are likely to be (or remembering where they are), the rest of the game becomes more like the original. Though like I said in reply #181, it would be nice to have the audible cues provided by a different background music while a Shadow Bubsy or Invincibility shirt is in effect, which also clues you in to when it's about to wear off. And special background music for facing each boss would be a nice touch, too. Like I said in my earlier reply, maybe the Jaguar cartridges had memory limitations limiting the music and the animations from the original game that could be transferred over (like flying around like a deflating balloon when popped, or getting up and walking off the screen with an accordion middle if Bubsy fell from too great a height without gliding, or an audible "Hello?" when knocking on the inside of the screen). (And hopefully when Virtual Jaguar 2.1.0 for the Mac is working right, I can enjoy the game at the proper speed without having to check and uncheck the GPU every life.) I wonder if I can top my best of finishing with 87 lives to spare...