With a lot of these advertisements we like to take the obvious and make merciless fun of them, but this Bubsy 3D commercial deserves more than just lame-brain jokes. This advert isn't especially honest and I feel that this is reason enough for it to be included in our on-going list of bad advertising. Never mind that this is a promotion for one of the worst 3D platformers of all time, a game that single-handedly ended the career of Bubsy the Bobcat. Forget for a moment that all of the pictures in this commercial look the same and that the art design isn't strong enough to keep anybody interested. I'm more concerned about its use of quotes, because none of the magazines they referenced gave the game a good review.

If you were to believe the Next Generation quote you would think that Bubsy "establishes a new standard in the platform genre." I don't doubt that they said this, I'm not sure where or in what issue, but I'm sure that it came up in a preview or something. However, when they got around to actually reviewing the game Next Generation wasn't quite a friendly to Accolade's loud mouth bobcat. In issue 26 the staff writer responsible for the review wrote, "Like its predecessors, Bubsy 3D is several platforms short of the top floor." That's not exactly a ringing endorsement for this title, and a far cry from the quote used in this advertisement. For the record, they ended up giving the game 2 stars out of five, so you can only imagine what the writer really thought about this game.

And then there's Electronic Gaming Monthly, a magazine that can't quite figure out whether it loves Bubsy or hates him. "Stunning ... original ... Bubsy 3D climbs back to the top ... check it out!" Wow, now that's an endorsement, too bad it's not quite what those who reviewed the game said. Sushi-X had this to say about Bubsy in issue 89, "No! This is not how you treat a perfectly good mascot! Pretend your controller is filled with mud - this is how Bubsy plays. Folks, this is my first coaster award." Of course, EGM has no problem bashing this Bobcat, in issue 188 they called Bubsy one of the "lowlights" of the Sega Genesis ... even though they gave him 8's and 9's 100 issues earlier. EGM has a track record of loving a game and then hating it (just look at Alien vs. Predator), so maybe this is really more of an EGM issue than a Bubsy issue.

FROM: My Name Is Bad Advertising