
Ī group of 20+ people worked on the game. Their suggestion to add more secret paths was picked up, resulting in the inclusion of some underground tube ways in the first level. The children were also asked to comment on the game's aspects.

In December 1992, some children who reside near Accolade's office in San Jose, California, were invited to have pizza, soda, and to test play the game. Bubsy's catchphrase, "What could possibly go wrong?", was derived from the development team's quip. After weeks of searching through voice talent tapes, Skeel received a call from Brian Silva who aided trying to find a suitable voice, until Skeel tried speeding up a recording of Silva's voice, which took inspiration from Looney Tunes characters like Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny, and added to the end result of Bubsy's design. He also had difficulty finding a good voice for the main character. They also planned the game to be easy to play but hard to master. ĭirector John Skeel said in an interview that they want to create a game as fast as Sonic and as deep as Mario. After artists Beckett Gladney and Ken Macklin constructed the backgrounds and character animations respectively on a PC program, a group named Solid Software went on to program them for the Super NES.

The Genesis version, which was the first one being worked on, was to be released in late 1992 but Accolade's legal troubles with Sega caused the game to be delayed. Earlier sketches show Bubsy wearing shoes which were omitted in the final design. Eventually burning out on the genre, he came across the original Sonic the Hedgehog and ended up playing it 14 hours a day, for a whole week, in order to find inspiration to do his own take on it. Development ĭesigner Michael Berlyn had previously designed adventure video games, such as Altered Destiny and Les Manley in: Search for the King, prior to his work on Bubsy. In general, the game's gameplay has been compared to the Sonic the Hedgehog games from the Genesis era. The game consists of sixteen levels, and Bubsy starts off with nine lives. The player must maneuver Bubsy through the levels, jumping on Woolies, and collecting stray yarn balls (which earns the player an extra life if 500 are collected).

The game plays as a 2D side-scrolling platformer. Since Bubsy has the world's largest collection of yarn balls, he has the most at stake and sets out to stop the Woolies and reclaim the yarn balls. In the game, enemy aliens called "Woolies" intend to steal Earth's supply of yarn balls.
