Regularly labelled as "one of the worst games ever made", the PS1 title Bubsy 3D has surprisingly found itself back in the news fairly regularly over the last year and a half.
To begin with, there was the announcement of Bubsy In: The Purrfect Collection last year — a new video game collection from Limited Run Games featuring some of the character's earlier titles, as well as a "Refurbished Edition" of Bubsy 3D with analog screens and the option for widescreen.
And then, following that, there was also the reveal of the upcoming Bubsy 4D, a brand new platforming title from the indie company Fabraz, which is scheduled to release next year and is seeking to continue the series from where Bubsy 3D left off, in the hopes of rehabilitating the character in the public eye.
Considering both of these titles seem like they aren't shying away from acknowledging the game's complicated legacy, either trying to address its frustrating flaws or simply making gags at its expense, we've been curious to know what the original devs' take on the revival projects are.
So we reached out to Richard Ham, one of the original designers on Bubsy 3D (who now runs the board game channel Rahdo Runs Through), who seemed fairly happy to answer some of our questions about the infamous title.
According to the message Ham sent us, he wasn't actually aware that these two projects even existed, being slightly out of the loop with the world of Bubsy in 2025. Nevertheless, he didn't seem angry or annoyed to see how the game has become a punchline of sorts, being full aware of Bubsy 3D's position in the world of gaming.
Instead, his reaction to the news seemed to be excitement, with the designer hoping that by releasing these new titles, it would draw more attention to the work and legacy of Mike Berlyn (Bubsy's creator and his own personal mentor who passed away in 2023) and hopefully lead to "new fans".
Ham told us, "It makes me happy to know that Bubsy is getting another chance because Mike Berlyn is no longer with us. It's nice to know that what he created might find new fans out there."
Interestingly, as part of our chat over LinkedIn, Ham also shared some details about a cancelled Bubsy 4D game that was briefly in development at Eidetic, linking us to an unlisted playlist of videos he put together where he answered some fan questions about his involvement with the character.
Bubsy 4D, according to Ham, was a game that sought to solve some of the original mistakes that Bubsy 3D had made, by lowering the resolution to allow for fully textured environments, and changing the controls to something more akin to Super Mario 64.
"We did start working on a prototype for Bubsy 4D," Ham recalled in one of the videos, "Where you controlled Bubsy using the same graphics, the same enemies, but we made two main changes.
"We made a new level. It was running up the side of a volcano trying to jump over paths of lava and dodge shots from woolies. It was a very simple level. It was a test case. But we did two things.
"We introduced the new Mario 64 controls, and it was amazing how good they worked even though we didn't have an analogue stick. And the other thing was we took our resolution down from 640x480 (which is what we shipped with for Bubsy) to a more traditional 320x240 resolution, which is what Crash Bandicoot and most other games of the time ran in. So we were able to put textures everywhere on the wall."
According to Ham, the idea for this game would have been to see Bubsy time travel, with the fourth dimension in the title referring to time. The volcano from the demo, for instance, was said to be Mt. Vesuvius, with ideas also being floated for levels based on the Old West, the modern day, and the future.
The reason this game never came about was that the publisher Accolade didn't particularly want to risk another Bubsy 3D situation, and instead 989 Studios asked them to work on another title, which eventually became the very first Syphon Filter.