The Great Bubsy 3D Poster Investigation

Glowing reviews on the poster? I have some questions, let's find the truth.

Bubsy 3D is infamously known as one of the worst games of all time - whether it truly deserves that title is up for debate, but it is definitely not a good game by any stretch.

So, when I saw this poster a little while ago, I had some questions.

In particular, these quotes from magazines at the top of the poster.

Could these be real? With a game as bad as Bubsy 3D, could they really have received three quotes good enough to plaster all over their poster? It made me wonder whether these were actual quotes, or if perhaps they had been taken out of context. I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

So, let’s do that. Let’s track down those quotes and see where they came from.

The first quote we’ll be searching down, is from Next Generation and it says:

… establishing a new standard in the platform genre - Next Generation

I mean, Bubsy certainly did set a new low standard in the platform genre, but I’m not sure that’s quite what they meant. Next Generation had a solid run, printing from 1995 to 2002.

So Bubsy 3D came out in October 1996 in the US, with a European release in August 1997. Reverse image searching the poster online, it looks like it was included in an edition of PSExtreme from October 1996, which makes sense for it to print during the launch window. This means then that the quotes should have printed before those dates in order to show up in the poster.

Looking through Next Generation magazines from 1996, I found that the poster showed up in the September 1996 issue:

This helps narrow it down further, now we know we are looking pre-September 1996.

And here it is, a couple editions earlier, the July of 1996 edition features a full page preview of Bubsy 3D.

The preview is pretty positive, however there is a caveat that is missing from the final quote. In the original article, they stated that ‘each of these elements adds up to what looks like step one in establishing a new standard in the platform action genre’. Notice the ‘step one’. The author was clearly trying to express that Bubsy 3D was heading in the right direction with many of its mechanics - but it was just that - heading in the right direction, rather than being the finished article. Cutting out those few words from the final quotation used in the advert really does strip out some context.

Next Generation would eventually review Bubsy in February of 1997, and Accolade must have felt a little betrayed given they’d quoted them everywhere in their marketing, with them only giving it two stars.

Now let’s take a look at the next quote. For context, the quote is from a magazine called DieHard GameFan and states:

Massive environment, go anywhere gameplay and amazing depth give Bubsy an entirely new perspective - DieHard GameFan

Seems like it will be a bit more difficult for that quote to be out of context. Seeing as how we found the previous quote in a July 1996 edition, let’s start there, as it’s safe to assume that was the month that Accolade were doing the rounds with press for previews.

DieHard GameFan, later retitled as GameFan, ran from 1992 to 2000. They did in fact preview Bubsy 3D in the July 1996 edition, but curiously, the quote is nowhere to be found.

Although the exact quote isn’t in there, it certainly shares a lot of sentiments with the final printed quote used in the advert. The writing of this article appears to imply its the first time they’ve seen the game, so we’ll look at the August edition next.

But there was nothing, no mention of Bubsy in the August edition. In the September edition, they printed a two page interview with the developer of the game, but that quote didn’t appear. Going backwards, there is a smaller preview in the June 1996 edition:

After searching high and low, I couldn’t find the quote. My best guess, is that Accolade paraphrased a quote from their original preview, and that exact quote doesn’t exist. However, if one of you intrepid investigators out there can find it - please comment below, and I will update this article!

They eventually reviewed the game in the January 1997 edition, and gave it some pretty favourable scores.

As a little added snippet, some of the readers were not too happy with their review - check out what this one reader had to say about it:

The person in charge of replying to these letters seemed to have some sympathy with the reader in terms of Bubsy 3D! Perhaps he too agreed the game wasn’t good.

So onto the final quote from PSExtreme:

BUBSY 3D looks to set the new standard in action platform gaming - PSExtreme

It’s interesting how this quote is very similiar to the first one, just reworded a little bit.

In the February/March 1996 edition, they printed a little preview of the game, no mention of the quote but they were very positive:

When they reviewed the game in December of 1996, they were extremely positive, giving it a glowing review:

I should mention at this point that I am relying on the heroic efforts of digital preservationists that upload these old magazines to the internet archive for everyone to read, enjoy, and investigate if you are a strange person like me.

Unfortunately, the June, July and August issues of 1996 are all unpreserved. It stands to reason that the quote must have appeared in one of these issues - but as they are not available to view anywhere (or even buy for that matter) this is one mystery that will remain unsolved. One out of three isn’t bad right?

So, to end this article I want to strongly encourage everyone to scour their old stacks of magazines, and see if anyone has preserved them online on the internet archive. If they haven’t, and you happen to be in possession of one - do the world of gaming a favour, and scan that bad boy, so that we don’t lose these tiny moments of gaming history. They may not be big moments, but they all add up. It’s entirely possible we live in a world where all those missing editions are rotting away in landfill, and we must all be vigilant if we want to preserve these memories for generations to come.