Bubsy: The Animated Series Pilot

I apologize deeply for this post. In fact, I feel bad about myself and my life choices for even mentioning this cartoon's existence.

He perfected the Dreamworks face before Dreamworks even started making CGI films.

It's been a while since I talked about an animated adaptation of a video game. There's just something charming about watching a company try to translate my experiences with my various game consoles (minus the swearing, controller-throwing, the unfair deaths, and the uncontrollable sobbing) into something I can watch after I'm done playing said game. One of the reasons I like to talk about Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog so much is because, at one point in my childhood, I was living a life where I was playing Sonic games and playing with Sonic toys and then watching Sonic cartoons and chewing Sonic bubble gum and later reading Sonic comics. Pity me, fair readers, for I was the little marionette gleefully pulled by the strings by SEGA's skilled puppetmaster hands. They had me by the ovaries and they would not rest until they squeezed every penny out of my parents' wallets in order to keep their little girl's hedgehog fix satiated. 

And ironically, now I'm on Team Mario as far as mascot platformer games are concerned and honestly don't give a crap whenever a Sonic game comes out now. Suck on that, 16-bit console wars!

But let's suppose, for a second, that instead of talking about a video game that everybody with a Genesis loved and cherished as a kid (Sonic the Hedgehog) or a video game that, while isn't very well-known, is at least extremely imaginative in its design and offers games that remain very solid examples of the platformer genre (Rayman), I'm going to talk about the only video game that both managed to both appear on the Wiki page innocently titled "List of video games notable for negative reception" and managed to get his own pilot. Bubsy the Bobcat.

Unpopular opinion time. I actually like this game.

Bubsy the Bobcat is not really a bobcat at all. Instead, he's a copycat; a shameless attempt by a company to drink some of the sweet milk leaking from the swollen teats of Sonic the Hedgehog's cash cow. The platformer genre of the 16-bit era, especially for the Sega Genesis, were just infested with creatures like Bubsy, eager to gain a piece of that scrumptious mascot pie. Games like Awesome Possum, Plok!, Ristar, Green Dog, Chuck Rock, Dynamite Headdy...the list is as long and as vast as the mighty oceans that coat our beloved planet. Some were good, some were bad, but many of them contained 'tude. Lots and lots of 'tude.

And yet out of all of those games, some much more deserving of a cartoon than Bubsy (I would personally watch the hell out of a Dynamite Headdy cartoon), Bubsy was the one that got the deal. The only reason people are even aware that this cartoon actually existed is, like me, they were bored one day, searched "Bubsy the Bobcat" on Wikipedia and YouTube, and this lonely pilot turned up. Yes, my mind was blown when I saw that Bubsy had at one point been animated by poor employees just looking for a paycheck. Therefore, I had to talk about it.

Now, even if you're a poor naive fool like me and honestly enjoyed Bubsy's games and start thinking that, hey, since the games were cartoony, this is going to lend itself to some good animation, there is one thing that assures me that this is going to be a pile of crap right off the bat. The cartoon is animated by none other than Calico Creations, the sick assholes responsible for Widget the World Watcher.

Pictured: Failure.

With that being said, I can't delay this any further. It's best to grab this turd with my bare hands and try to shape it into something more palpable than this metaphor. Bubsy the Bobcat!

Bubsy: The Animated Series Pilot

Widget the World Watcher - Widget's Walkabout

Okay, we all have an opinion on environmentalist cartoons. They're preachy, they're rarely entertaining, they have villains that are one-dimensional and seem to only exist to make the Earth cry, they're hypocritical considering 2D animation is one of the most paper-consuming mediums of all time, and they feature annoying children that, all things considered, make us want to burn a rainforest rather than suffer through their annoying mugs for twenty minutes.

By this paragraph alone, you might think that I'm talking about Captain Planet. Sadly, no. If there's one thing I learned about bad ideas in cartoons, it's that they never appear in just one cartoon.

"My head is ridiculously huge!"

Here's a sad thought that not many people like to think about when talking about environmentalist cartoons. Captain Planet is not the only cartoon that's about saving the planet from ecological harm. There were multiple cartoons and specials about this. It's just that the flying blue man is most popular and the most well-remembered, while the others fell by the wayside. This bears repeating. Out of a genre of cartoons that exists, Captain Planet is the best one. There's a group of cartoons where Captain Planet beats them. Captain Planet.

...excuse me. I think I need to go lay down now.

Wait, I should probably talk about Widget the World Watcher here. There's not much to be expressed about a cartoon where the honest to god mediocre videogame adaptations are more well-remembered than the actual show itself. Other than pity. Lots and lots of pity. Seriously, the only other time I can think of a videogame outshining the actual cartoon when the videogame itself isn't very good is Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Gold. It's a sad fate to befall any show.

In fairness to this game, it at least looks funner than Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Gold.

Unfortunately, I think I might've seen a couple episodes of this show when it was actually on the air. I say "I think" instead of being too sure because, unlike Darkwing Duck or Animaniacs or even Street Sharks, the show never left a positive or even a negative impact on me. I mean, I hate practically everything about Captain Planet, but the fact that I hate that show proves that it did something to me and that I have a reaction to it. Widget just exists; and the only reason I can guess that I saw it is that the purple alien looks kind of familiar and, since it had shapeshifting, I was all over that as a kid.

Another notable thing about this show. Like all really dumb shows of the 90's that not many people remember, it's incredibly rare. Out of a 65 episode show, only a handful of episodes are available online, and they're all pulled from VHS videos that, on eBay, run to be about 40 dollars.

That being said, you like kangaroos? Dingos? Bad Australian accents? Then boy, do I have an episode for you!

Widget's Walkabout