Admittingly, ''The Woolies Strike Back" has some great tracks as well, such as "Sushi Air Drop".
Base-Breaking Character: Bubsy himself. As mentioned in Memetic Loser below, any brief look into the internet's opinion on this series will find a lot of hate for the character with some considering him the absolute worst of all the Mascot with Attitude characters or simply annoying. However he does actually have a pretty extensive fanbase too, which can be seen by the sheer volume of fanart of him on DeviantArt, among others who view Bubsy as a lovable, wise-cracking & hilarious character outside of the criticism and hate he'd typically get.
Condemned by History: Believe it or not, Bubsy 3D has undergone this. Due to the game releasing only shortly after Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot (1996), it actually received mainly mixed reviews, even having some on the higher end of the spectrum up to 93%. While reviewers did criticize the elements it would become infamous for in later years, at the time, it was seen as at least okay. It wasn't until years had passed with the release of far more refined 3D platformers that the backwards design of Bubsy 3D propelled it into infamy as among the worst games ever made.
Cult Classic: The first two games towards Bubsy fans for being average/decent games.
Difficulty Spike: Every third chapter in the first game threw every obstacle at you that it could, and doesn't ease up.
Discredited Meme: Bubsy fans were not happy when Sonic fans made jokes out of the Sonic Forces
Fanon Discontinuity: Even the fans of this series wish that Bubsy 3D never existed.
First Installment Wins: Generally speaking, the original Bubsy game is still considered the best by fans.
one exists with Felix the Cat, as the two have a respectable amount of fanart together. some of those fans being a fan of both also helps, Felix The Cat fans might even be the least cruel when it comes to Bubsy fans.
a minor one exists with Bonkers, assuming the Bonkers fans get through the usual shenanigans and outside of the usual rivalry.
A few Bubsy fans might throw a fit with Sonic The Hedgehog fans, especially since the fans of the latter made fun of the Custom Character from Sonic Forces being Bubsy, not helping is that BUBSY IS SLOWLY RECOVERING FROM THE HATE ALREADY AT THE TIME, even worse is that the first two games are based on Sonic.
With JonTron and Tacoman, for obvious reasons (with the former being responsible for starting the hatebase in the first place).
On the other hand, Bonkers fans would also draw hate out out of the bobcat
Game-Breaker: The Nerf Ballzooka in the second game gives you a long-range, high-damage attack.
The magazine ads that mentioned that Bubsy was a washed up hack of a character might be seen as this if you're an unironic Bubsy fan.
The Devs of Bubsy II hanged Bubsy plushies on the ceiling with pencils stabbed in them, this gets quite harsh after Bubsy's reputation started diminishing, this became very depressing after Micheal Berlyn's death and Bubsy getting bought by Atari shortly after, it would be even more depressing if you are an unironic Bubsy fan.
Coincidentally, in Bubsy 3D, Bubsy is voiced by Lani Minella, who would eventually go on to be the first voice actress for Rouge from the Sonic Series. Let us repeat that...Bubsy voiced a SONIC character. Just let that sink in.
People who joked up Bubsy making his re-appearance in Sonic Forces didn't actually expect a newBubsy game.
Some of the old magazine ads for the original game joked that Bubsy was a washed up hack of a character. Considering his legacy, it feels like foreshadowing.
one of Bubsy's abilities is to glide, shortly after Bubsy's release, we have Knuckles The Echidna, where one of his abilities is being able to glide.
One of Bubsy's lines in The Woolies Strike Back (or at least unused), is "i miss New Coke", fast forward to five days after Paws On Fire's release, and New Coke returned.
It's Short, So It Sucks!: Despite having surprisingly alright gameplay, Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back had rather less-than-stellar reception because of its incredibly short length, especially for its pricetag. It can be beaten in an hour or less.
Bubsy, being representative of the pitfalls of Sonic-knockoffs, and contributing to their downfall with the infamous Bubsy 3D. Fan games like Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective, which make a complete mockery of the character, speak volumes about his legacy.
Bubsy is a loser even in his own games, having very few abilities aside from a difficult to control glide, struggling to hurt even basic enemies without getting hurt himself, and dying in one hit from everything - and this doesn't just mean "enemies," it's everything - even benign things like stray manholes kill him and he's possibly the only 2D platformer protagonist to die from fall damage.
After the incredibly unexpected announcement of Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back, many gamers were quick to make remarks (some sarcastic, some sincere) about how ludicrous it was that a franchise as thoroughly dormant as Bubsy got a new game before many other more popular dormant franchises did.
"Bubsy pulled aTurbo on Sonic", a conspiracy theory from 4chan about Bubsy replacing Sonic in modern games and presumably being the reason they weren't as well-received.
Nightmare Fuel: One death animation in the first game is Bubsy shattering into glass shards. A certain romhack of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 featuring Bubsy used it as the only death animation, so being forced to stare at it again and again, longer during the inevitable Game Over screen remains uncomfortable.
Once Original, Now Common: Upon release, the first game was hyped critically due to the lavish amount of personality granted to Bubsy through the game's plentiful animations and voice clips, something that was yet to be a norm in video games of the time. It got quickly surpassed by games like Earthworm Jim and Crash Bandicoot, and then decades of even more advanced games.
Polished Port: The PC port of the first game, titled Super Bubsy, features high resolution graphics and a somewhat larger field of view, in addition to featuring the cartoon pilot episode as a bonus. The only downside is that the music is done with MIDI, so its quality is heavily dependent on your sound card.
Popular with Furries: It'd be more accurate to say "Mostly only furries un-ironically like Bubsy". After getting past his personality, a few furries do find his design interesting. He's not popular exactly but he is popular enough for a Mascot with Attitude (most of which are forgotten as "Sonic clones").
Fall damage in the first game is by far the biggest complaint that most gamers have about it, as the game seemingly encourages players to go all-out, Sonic the Hedgehog style, which will likely end up getting Bubsy killed the first time they come to any sort of drop.
Bubsy's top speed in the first few games. Definitely the biggest sign of his Sonic-inspired Mascot with Attitude status, Bubsy takes seconds to reach a full sprint, which also results in him coming very close to the edge of the screen... only Sonic has ways to harm enemies while moving, especially post-Sonic 2, levels designed to accommodate his speed, and rings to save him when taking a hit. Bubsy has none of those things. Consequently, you have two choices: either stop moving every time it looks like Bubsy is going to start running and inch your way along, or die repeatedly from Bubsy sprinting into enemies that you couldn't see because they're only visible for about three frames before he hits them. The second game downplayed this with a health meter, though given its even more random and hard-to-predict obstacle placement than the first one, it's still pretty easy to lose a life.
Arnold the Armadillo's bonus levels in the second game. He must be guided through a truck's engine from top to bottom, flipping switches that guide him to the right path. The fans that control his movement are either too powerful or barely responsive which make for an aggravating experience. Only the middle exit will reward the time bonus; it's negated if he exits over a wheel.
Sequel Difficulty Drop: The Woolies Strike Back is much easier than previous games in the series, thanks to the camera being zoomed out more, One Ups being more common and a lot of the Fake Difficulty that plagued the previous games being axed entirely.
II's level design was more complex, and Bubsy begins with less lives
Fractured Furry Tales managed to be even more of a pain in the ass because of hornets coming here and there and because of how Bubsy is even faster.
Sequelitis: The first game might be passable enough for the time, but things swiftly went downhill in the following entries:
Bubsy II suffered from the developers seemingly not having any clear idea what they were going for, resulting in level designs and themes that felt derivative of other popular franchises, and a bad case of Gameplay Roulette with none of the gameplay styles feeling properly developed. Add to that mediocre graphics and the game running shockingly poorly for console standards of the era, and the result is something that feels more akin to a half-finished tech demo than an actual game.
Fractured Furry Tales was criticized for its forgettable level designs, massive amounts of Fake Difficulty, and somehow being the least graphically impressive of the pure 2D entries despite being released on the Atari Jaguar.
Bubsy 3D was where the wheels fell off completely, with its incredibly clunky early 3D platformer design, and the most annoying aspects of Bubsy's personality being turned up to the point where they became near-unbearable.
The first game is sometimes considered this, if a bit difficult (though that was far from unusual back then).
Going full circle, Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back is considered this by most due to addressing the prior issues of the series, but retaining other issues and being extremely short for its price.
Special Effect Failure: We could spend the entire page talking about the graphical style of Bubsy 3D, but let's keep it brief. Unshaded and untextured polygons, animations having single-digit frames. It's telling when the (at the time) high resolution of 480i60note Which, on the PS1, was almost always reserved for FMVs given the immense processing power it required. is the most it can brag about
Surprisingly Improved Sequel: While people are divided as to whether or not this actually makes the game fun to play, Bubsy: Paws On Fire was this to many people, with some considering it to be the best game in the series.
Tainted by the Preview: The trailer for The Woolies Strike Back took a significant amount of flack for making the game look like a generic and unimpressive platformer. Which might not have bothered that many people, if not for the fact that the trailer also contained a Take That! aimed at the Sonic the Hedgehog series... which had just made a hugely-acclaimed return to form with Sonic Mania, making the trailer's timing incredibly poor and ensuring that The Woolies Strike Back would face even more of an uphill battle to win over gamers.
Tear Jerker, They Wasted A Potentially Good Franchise: The series could have been a decent franchise (Potentially might be even the One Piece of video games!), but his devs fucked him over and his creator abandoned him, the sequels kept getting worse, Accolade's decision on rushing Bubsy 3D is when things took for the worse, which shattered the franchise, Jon Tron did the final blow, and now the series won't go back to where it was, especially that the fact the first game almost became redeemed if it weren't for Sonic fans mocking Bubsy for Sonic Forces.
Vindicated by History: The first game has gained a reputation as average (as well as better than a number of the other Sonic clones, if not by much), and Bubsy himself has fans, with some even giving him sympathy and making him out as a Woobie. A teaser image from Sonic Forces (specifically a teaser image for the customizable character◊, which looked an awful lot like a Modern-esque Bubsy) pushed the character back into the forefront, as did the announcement of his new game.
Arnold the Armadillo from the second game so very much.
The Woolies' Professor Nylon from 3D, as he's constantly interrupted in his speeches.
Bubsy himself can be this, since most of his lines in the first two games imply he's a struggling actor who can't catch a break. Given what happened to his series, it's oddly prescient, the amount of hate he recieves nowadays (especially with an unironic fan getting made fun of just for liking the game).
YMMV items for the cartoon:
Audience-Alienating Premise: As if a show about Bubsy wasn't enough to turn people away, they also added his equally annoying niece and nephew, and all three constantly torture poor Arnold.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The kid's first creation with the helmet is a rollercoaster that they ride on. At one point, the coaster seems to go through some sort of wormhole or something (not unlike the thing at the opening of Doctor Who), then it suddenly is back on the rollercoaster track and there's no explanation.
Bile Fascination: An animated cartoon based on one of the most annoying video game characters of all time? What could paw-sibly go wrong?
Designated Hero: Bubsy is a self-absorbed Jerkass who is so idiotic that he frequently treats his sidekick Arnold like an inanimate object (he even mistakes him for a wrench at one point; showing how moronic he is), making it very, very, very hard to root for him but for him to lose instead, mainly because of his stupidity.
Designated Monkey: Arnold Armadillo, the only sympathetic character in the entire episode who is not only one who is very fearful, but suffers throughout from getting a HECK of a lot of slapstick-induced abuse throughout (because of Bubsy most of the time) that it's honestly hard to laugh at his accident-prone nature, especially without deserving it at all where he just wanted to have nothing to do with being around Bubsy.. The fact that his fear of trucks (which seems to be post-traumatic stress) is Played for Laughs and being a very fearfulcharacter only makes it more cringeworthy.
Oblivia and Ally Cassandra, mainly for their designs.
Fridge Horror: The armadillo-killing truck has a picture of an armadillo with a circle and slash through it, meaning who ever is driving is running them over on purpose. Even worse, armadillos seem to be fully sapient in this world, meaning there's basically a Serial Killer on the loose, and nobody cares enough to do anything!.
Memetic Mutation: Bubsy's iconic (or infamous...) line from his pilot, "What Could Possibly Go Wrong?". It's become a popular reaction pic and often has the "Po" replaced with "Paw", which is pretty much par for the course for the franchise.
There's a very odd part where Buzz is talking and Sid is standing next to him. Even though Sid's mouth is very clearly moving, we don't hear any of his voice, which almost makes it seem like he's lip-syncing or something.
Too Bleak, Stopped Caring: Almost all of the characters are unlikable assholes, and the few that aren't tend to go through a lot of undeserved suffering, particularly poor Arnold.
The Woobie: Most notably Arnold, the one character that hates Bubsy, thus making him relatable, spends the entire episode being the subject of all the slapstick in the form of being tortured by Bubsy's bratty niece and nephew, crashing through a roof, getting beaten over the head, and getting electrocuted twice. He apparently suffers from some sort of post-traumatic stress due to trucks that run over his race, killing them, and none of the punishment he receives is warranted to any degree. He deserves absolutely none of it and it makes the show almost cringeworthy to watch this poor character go through such a mess.
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