Bubsy in: The Purrfect Collection just pounced onto Steam today. And yes, someone actually went and preserved every Bubsy game from the 16-bit and PlayStation 1 era.

This isn’t the full Bubsy canon. Atari and Limited Run didn’t bundle in the two recent experiments (The Woolies Strike Back and Paws on Fire!, both sold separately on Steam). They also skipped Super Bubsy, the Windows 95 port of the first game. What you do get is the ‘90s quadrilogy, across eight versions:

• Bubsy in: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind (SNES, Super Famicom, Genesis)
• Bubsy II (SNES, Genesis, Game Boy)
• Bubsy in: Fractured Furry Tales (Atari Jaguar)
• Bubsy 3D (PlayStation, plus a new “Refurbished Edition”)

That is already more thorough than the old Bubsy Two-Fur (recently de-listed), which only had SNES Bubsy 1 and 2 slapped into an emulator.

Now—let’s address the furball in the room. Bubsy has a reputation for being one of the worst mascots in gaming history.

I’ll still defend the first game. It’s not good, but it’s not bad either. On my Genesis it was a perfectly serviceable platformer. Just don’t stack it against Sonic. Nothing else stacked against Sonic in 1993 anyway.

The sequels? Woof. Every single one of them.

And Bubsy 3D is regularly held up as the worst 3D platformer of all time. The ur-example of what happens when you leap into polygons before you understand them.

So why exhume this series? Because Bubsy never really died. The one-liners are seared into pop culture, and there’s a weird, ironic demand for this mascot who refuses to stay buried. Atari—desperate for their own Mario or Sonic—swooped in, and it’s no coincidence this lands ahead of Bubsy 4D, which is already in development.

The collection isn’t just games. You get museum treatment: scanned manuals, ads, and concept art. Video interviews with developers. Even a full music player for those who like the sound of Bubsy more than actually playing him.

The real curiosity is Bubsy 3D: Refurbished Edition. It doesn’t rewrite history, but it does add analog stick movement, widescreen support, and a proper right-stick camera. Think of it as an “alternative history” experiment. What if Bubsy 3D shipped with controls that weren’t designed by space aliens? The answer: it’s still ugly, but less painful to navigate.

Otherwise you get the usual Carbon Engine upgrades. Save states. Rewind. Bumped resolution and framerate. The sound remains intact, which means you’ll still hear Bubsy yelp the same lines on repeat. Shared-screen co-op is in for Bubsy II. Input support covers keyboard and modern gamepads.

Performance is light. Runs on a toaster with a GTX 750, and it’s already marked Steam Deck Verified. Which means it’s good to go on Linux too.

Price is C$25.99 on Steam. Reception so far is about what you’d expect. The preservation work gets praise. The games themselves, less so. People knew what they were buying though, and reviews are leaning positive.

I’ll say this. I wish Atari had let Digital Eclipse handle the retrospective. They’re the masters of contextualizing bad games and making you care. But Limited Run’s Carbon Engine does the job, and honestly, for a series this infamous, maybe the scrappy approach fits better.

Bubsy isn’t suddenly a good franchise. But in 2025, he’s a cultural artifact worth preserving. Buy this if you’re ready to laugh with history—or at it.

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