Bubsy 3D Review

Some context is owed before the verdict. Eidetic starts this in 1995, when nobody has solved a 3D platformer, and finishes in November 1996, weeks after Super Mario 64 and Crash Bandicoot arrive and answer every question it is still asking. The team is working without a map and the choices show it: tank controls, so turning is a separate action from moving, and a chase camera pinned low and close, which is the worst available seat for judging a jump onto a platform below you.

The two decisions compound. Every leap becomes an estimate, every miss feels arbitrary, and the levels are open in a way that makes being lost the default state. The environments are flat shaded and untextured in a year when both competitors are textured and readable, so there is nothing in the world to navigate by. The sheer size of the levels is real work, and the two player mode was a considered inclusion, which the press at the time noticed.

That press was more divided than the legend suggests. The collapse in reputation came later, once players had a decade of working cameras to measure it against, and the judgment has held. Eidetic took the lesson and made Syphon Filter three years on, which is the happier half of the story.