recently, i came across an alleged cancelled bubsy game titled BUBSY THE BOBCAT PART III ‘no more Mr Nice Guy!’ or, as it’s more commonly referred to, bubsy 3. this intrigued me, but, well… i’d say the details don’t quite line up, but that’d be an understatement.

the evidence that this game ever existed is comprised of three screenshots, all posted by a user by the name of steven78 to the nintendoage forums on june 23rd, 2016.

the screenshots show a placeholder title screen and file structure, a document containing what appears to be a pitch document, and some code, respectively. there’s not a whole lot to talk about here; the only thing that is of much interest is that pitch document (if you can manage to read it). it says that one mark eyles was the person who created the initial game concept. it even states that he personally presented the bubsy 3 design document to images software, the developer. oh, good! if only someone could just ask him about-

so what did mark eyles, the alleged creator of bubsy 3, the man himself, have to say about it? he says he’s never worked on a bubsy game.

as if that wasn't enough, there's another problem, too. the pitch document mentions that "[they] are currently looking for a major league publishing partner for the product." this is a rather curious statement, as at the time the bubsy series had only seen two publishers: accolade and atari. accolade was the ip holder. atari published their bubsy game by getting accolade to license the rights to them.

that being the case, there would've been no point in shopping the game around to other publishers. accolade was the only one who could have possibly approved it. it just doesn't make sense.

well, that's that, then! it must be a hoax. pretty open and shut case, huh?

not according to some members of the bubsy fandom. the bubsy wiki page for bubsy 3 doesn’t even once suggest that it could be a hoax, instead opting to call the Mark Eyles Problem merely “interesting.” and as far as i can tell, the publisher issue hasn't been considered at all. this article exists simply because someone had to say the obvious. i’m sorry, bubsy fandom. you’re gonna have to let this one go.

10/14/2024: addendum

on bubsy 4

in an interview for gamasutra in 2005, michael berlyn (creator of bubsy) said that he had pitched bubsy 4 to sony. sony said:

and so they agreed to make syphon filter. alright then.

that’s not the end of this, though. ten years later, in an interview for retrovolve, berlyn said at that time he was working on two different pitches; one for a game called sparky and bolt apparently being pretty far along. he mentioned pitching sparky to sega, who rejected it for not being edgy enough. he also pitched it to accolade:

so depending on when you asked him, bubsy 4 either totally existed and he even pitched it, or it never existed at all and he didn’t even want to consider it. he recently passed away (rest in peace), so i suppose we’ll never really know!

1. this furry animal product being crash bandicoot, of course.
2. berlyn was not involved in the creation of bubsy 2, and he hated the game, saying that it "just about killed the franchise."