Nintendo Life: I recall Atari's CEO, Wade Rosen, once stating that he was open to pitches from indie devs for a new Bubsy game. Is that what happened here with Bubsy 4D?
Fabian Rastorfer: Yeah that's exactly the origin story and what actually happened is on the day of when that when that episode aired, we found out about that being a thing because we suddenly got bombarded online on socials with like, "Fabraz should do a Bubsy game", "Fabraz should do it", "Fabraz could do a good 3D platformer version", and it was so much that we were like, "Stop tagging us about Bubsy!"
But then pretty much like the day after, two days after that, we got an email from Atari requesting a pitch from us. And we thought, "You know what, okay, this could be pretty funny." And so we came up with a pitch. I think it was a really solid idea of how we wanted to approach it, Atari really liked it, and the rest is history.
How was it working on an established series like Bubsy compared to your own games like Demon Tides and Demon Turf?
Fabian: I think the most interesting part was working on both at the same time with Demon Tides and Bubsy, right Ben?
Ben Miller: Yeah, a lot of juggling and sort of switching gears and frames of how you're actually thinking about the work and the project. The platformers are very different in terms of structure and the flow of how you actually have to design levels for them.
Fabian: Yeah, and in terms of handling the IP, it was interesting because in some ways obviously you think the pressure would be high, but on the other hand this is an IP that has obviously had a somewhat troubled history and so we kind of just looked at it very strategically.
I think a very big fundamental decision of ours that had a big impact was agreeing that we're not just gonna have it make fun of itself.
We played through all the games, including the two attempts of a revival in the last couple of years, and we kind of just identified what worked in all of them, what didn't work, where can we inject our own identity into it, and how can we properly give it a revamp. I think a very big fundamental decision of ours that had a big impact was agreeing that we're not just gonna have it make fun of itself. Like we're not gonna make another game that again is very self-deprecating, but instead we're gonna recontextualise it.
And so instead of Bubsy just saying, "Hey, remember how bad our previous games were?", we're gonna age him up and in universe he's now a B-list failed actor. The characters in the world reflect that and make fun of him occasionally for kind of being, you know, a failed mascot platformer in that regard. But without leaning too much into that. Bubsy himself is trying his best all the time, right? Which is almost endearing. And so you start rooting for him. I think that was a very big part of taking his personality without fundamentally changing it, but somehow making him a little bit more endearing.
When Bubsy 4D was announced at Gamescom 2025, it really blew up. What kind of reception were you expecting ahead of time, and how did it feel to see how much attention it was getting?
Fabian: I think we expected a strong reaction, but we didn't expect that kind of level.
I remember all of us were just on our phones, constantly refreshing, looking at all the reactions and being completely addicted to it.
Ben: Because it's a meme, it's a very known quantity, so there was a little bit of...we expected a response because there was the initial response that bullied us into taking on the project in the first place, but yeah, this is a very complicated history for a character that's clearly loved, but also maligned, and there's a lot to unpack there. But we were blown away by the reception, how positive and happy people were with it.
Fabian: I think the fact that it opened the pre-show, too, it was just such a ludicrous concept for Bubsy to be that, but that really helped the explosiveness of it. We were all at Gamescom at the time, mostly at the Atari booth. I remember all of us were just on our phones, constantly refreshing, looking at all the reactions and being completely addicted to it.
And it was very heartwarming to see also how many people were basically saying, "The moment I saw Fabraz's logo pop up, I'm all in." So that's really nice to see, because that's the kind of love that you can only get after working in the industry for a long time and delivering on promises in the past. They trust us in pulling something off here. So I hope we meet those expectations.
Do you think part of the reaction is a more general craving for new 3D platformers? It still almost feels like the big-hitters are few and far between at the moment.
Fabian: I think so, yeah. And the genre is in an interesting spot. We currently live in a in a world where it's been a long time since the last 3D Mario and it doesn't seem like it's right around the corner. Donkey Kong Bananza came out , but it's not super movement focused, it's a little bit more puzzle-based with its destruction concept. So indies are kind of carrying the genre quite a bit recently and there's a lot of really great ones.
Even this year alone we had Big Hops, Mr Sleepy Man, Demon Tides from us, of course. Then later, we've got The Big Catch coming up and Kero Quest 64 – a lot of really good stuff, and what's cool about all of them is that the genre sub diversity is great. They're all 3D platformers, but then they have an addendum and this addendum can vary from any other genre, and I think that's cool.
And how did it feel when people got excited seeing that Fabraz is the team behind Bubsy 4D? Did it add any pressure?
Ben: I think it was more validating and positive than pressure. The pressure was just working on two games at the same time and trying to manage all of these things to actually make sure that it all gets done and it's something we're proud of. It was just very encouraging to actually see people being so positive and excited that maybe this is actually a good one just based on the first few moments and seeing our name attached.
Fabian: I have a lot of trust in my team as well, in general, and I know that when they put their heart and minds to it, they can pull off something great. And so there was never really a doubt that the game is not going to be fun. And I think having the demo out and also people really vibing with the demo and having played it now, obviously that takes some of that pressure away because then we know we made the right choices and now we just have to make sure that the rest of the game lives up to the beginning.
Did you come up against any specific challenges with Bubsy 4D's development?
Fabian: It was really smooth sailing overall. And a big part of it is that we have something called the Fabraz Framework. So all of our games are made in Unity, but we have this framework we carry from project to project. And so the framework between Demon's Tides and Bubsy is the same one, which means that we had a very, very strong foundation to work off. So this means we already had a cutscene system, a dialogue system, the basics of character controls, physics, all that kind of stuff. And then could just build from there. So we had all the pieces and now we could build something new out of it.
It was just very encouraging to actually see people being so positive and excited that maybe this is actually a good one just based on the first few moments and seeing our name attached.
Ben: Part of our first process when we were actually starting the project was to go back as a team to play all of these older games, like Bubsy 1, 2, Bubsy 3D, and actually really enjoying that. But Bubsy doesn't have that much of a consistent identity, so we had to identify what the thing is that we pull out to say, "This is the mechanic, this is the theme, this is the idea that we want to then extrapolate and build on."
And for us it was this momentum that feels very in line with Sonic and the 2D stuff. And then that's what led to the hairball as this very non-Bubsy mechanic, but something that was trying to bring some of that identity and feel from the earlier games onwards. And really the entire gameplay structure around that hairball, that was like the big clicking moment. But was also the one that was maybe the widest swing that we were like, "Is Atari going to go for this in the pitch?", and we were very pleasantly surprised. Yeah, they're on board. Awesome.
How involved was Atari throughout the development?
Fabian: They were overseeing a lot, but they were very flexible in terms of our suggestions and basically there was nothing that we brought up that didn't end up being in the game in some shape or another. They were even open to larger risks, like Ben said. The hairball obviously was a wild, out-there idea. But I think the even bigger one for me is the redesign of Bubsy himself, where we take away his iconic shirts and exclamation mark and instead go for a white jacket and exclamation mark tie. That's a bold redesign.
I think it very much sold this new concept of him, but still the fact that the Atari was pretty much on board from day one — that was already in the original pitch that we gave them — I think shows that they were also willing to be like, "Yeah, let's try something new here, let's give it a chance."
Ben: In the same way that we felt a lot of trust from players, like with the trailer reception, I think there's a very nice degree of trust in our relationship with Atari and how they trust our decisions. So we [trust] them — prototype, play — and it just results in a good game.
What kind of experience from developing Demon Turf and Demon Tides did you apply to your work on Bubsy 4D?
Fabian: Demon's Tides and Bubsy 4D, the main thing that they share is the expressive platforming concept, which is a word that I've used before and probably people are now tired of me saying all the time. But basically, for anyone who doesn't know, the concept is that an expressive platformer is a platformer where you ask yourself the question, "In how many different ways can I cross the same gap?" And if the answer is more than five different answers, you've got something that's expressive, because that means the player has so many choices they can express themselves through the movement.
And this is something that we discovered while working on Demon Turf and fell in love with. And then with Demon Tides, we explored it to its absolute boundaries, I think. And Bubsy is a little more restrained, a little bit more pulled back, but still is at the core of that concept as well. And I think that will be kind of our ball, our end on this exploration, because I feel like we've done a lot that we wanted to do with expressive platformers with these two titles now.
Can you touch on how development has gone for the Switch and Switch 2?
Fabian: So we were not directly involved in the ports. All the porting was done by SneakyBox in partnership with Atari. We were involved in terms of helping with the initial setups and a lot of our framework already helps with porting, but overall they handled all of it. But it seemed to have gone all very smoothly.
Obviously, the Switch 1 will always have concessions to other platforms in terms of visual fidelity, but it runs really nice and stable, it has all the same feature parity. It's just crazy to me that we live in a day and age where we still release on all of these console, like the fact that we're doing Xbox One, Xbox Series, PS4, PS5, Switch, Switch 2... How many generations are we going to combine? Are we still doing Wii U?
I think the best part is that it still forces you to optimise a lot, which is important because even on PC most people don't have the most advanced hardware. And so i think a lot of devs get caught in having games that aren't perfectly optimised and this impacts their how the game performs because people will be sad that it's running in a bad frame rate. So I think in some way it's kind of good to focus on low-end console platforms because it then also forces you to optimise your game well and so then everybody benefits from it, including PC players.
Ben: Yeah, this was the case in Tides and also Bubsy, even when we weren't doing the port manually ourselves, we're being mindful of the Switch and lower-end hardware and how to make sure that we can stagger these experiences. So we look at what to turn on, what to turn off, make sure it's as representative as it can be.
Yeah, just maybe don't apply any DLSS 5 to it.
Fabian: We're not even gonna... I don't know what it would do to Bubsy's face!
Ben: We already yassified him, we don't need more!
Let's talk about the visuals a bit more, though, because it definitely has a unique style. What was your approach here?
We went for a similar aesthetic in terms of anime, toon shading, and I think that's also why some people even recognise our work before the logo even showed up in the trailer, which I think is awesome.
How many generations are we going to combine? Are we still doing Wii U?
But I think the big difference is that in Bubsy, we committed to something quite fun with the planets you visit. The planets all have very, very strong themes. Our goal from the get-go was, "Let's not go for the standard 'green hill planet', 'lava planet', 'ice planet'." And so we went way more wacky. The first planet is all about wool and felt and those kind of textures. The second planet is all about arts and crafts, so paper, cardboard, scissors... And then the third planet is all about factory productions of metals and trash.
I think a big part of the environment identity comes from those concepts that I think [are] really fun to play with, I have to say. I had a lot of fun just making oversized, normal objects and having new platforming around them. There's something very fun about it.
Finally, how is development going for Demon Tides on the Switch? Can we still expect to see it this year?
Fabian: That is going very well. It was a monster to optimise because it's an open world, so that was very, very tricky. We are definitely at a point where now it's mostly stable. We want to give it a little bit more polish and finesse, and we also have to make it catch up a little bit with the PC version again, because we're releasing a big 1.1 patch. And so I want to make sure that that is all included.
But it's going well, and it's definitely still slated for the second half of this year. and i'm really excited to get it out there, especially with the Fangamer physical where it's bundled with Demon Turf – I think that's just such a cool thing to have.
Huge thanks to Fabian Rastorfer and Ben Miller for taking the time to speak with us. Bubsy 4D will launch on Switch 1 and 2 on 22nd May.
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