Every word of the following sentence is true, and we have double-checked: a genuinely promising Bubsy game launched on May 22. Bubsy 4D is out now on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, Switch and Switch 2 — the bobcat's first full 3D outing since 1996's Bubsy 3D, a game so legendarily bad it has spent three decades as the industry's favorite punchline.
Here's the twist: this one was built by Fabraz, the indie studio behind the excellent Demon Turf and its follow-up Demon Tides — a developer with a real sense of momentum, charm and level design. When Fabraz announced it was taking on gaming's most cursed mascot, the reaction went from confusion to genuine curiosity, and the early demo impressions did the rest: word of mouth says this is, at minimum, the first Bubsy game that is fun on purpose.
The design leans modern-platformer-smart: a strong visual identity, character customization, and modes built with speedrunners in mind — the community most likely to turn a good 3D platformer into a long-tail cult favorite. Fabraz clearly studied what made its own games click and applied the same physics-first philosophy to a character best known for losing control of his own franchise.
There's something quietly heartening about the whole thing. Mascot platformers of the '90s mostly deserved their graves, but Bubsy was always more meme than monster. Giving the worst resume in platforming to one of the best indie teams in the genre is the kind of joke that only works if the game is good — and apparently it is.
Thirty years of "what could possibly go wrong" finally gets its answer: nothing, this time. Nothing went wrong.