#better bubsy

It's taken the wind out of my sails a little, but that's what I get for being slow and so scattered with my own project. Shame it wasn't part of the Atari/LRG collection, though.

For anyone who doesn't know what I mean:

It's a ROM hack that smooths down some of Bubsy's meaner gameplay problems.

And I'd been working on my own project like this a little bit at a time (even pitched it to Atari) which I'd tentatively called "Better Bubsy."

I'd worked on it in very small parts for like six years. It was a top to bottom rewrite of the game in Sonic Worlds with a lot of physics tweaks, gameplay tweaks, etc.

Which does actually mean it's still probably a lot more robust than the hack is.

Anyway, Bubsy: Less Bad Edition is probably neat, I guess. I haven't gotten around to playing it yet myself. I don't like fiddling with patches and the site where I get prepatched hacks from hasn't added it yet.

I've personally never had a problem with them, but back in the 1up.com days Jeremy Parish once admitted the reason he never liked the Genesis Sonics was because he could never get his head around how heavy the controls felt. I've thought about that ever since. I think there are small ways you can tweak that so that slower speeds feel better that don't spoil the feeling of momentum and weight.

I've mentioned my "Better Bubsy" project a few times, and its initial creation as a fork of "Simple Sonic Worlds."

And one of the things I did here was actually boost up Bubsy's acceleration by just, like, 5% when he's going his slowest. This gets you up to middle gear slightly faster. I also applied something I think Mario games do, where you don't start accelerating from zero speed. If you push left or right from zero, the game gives you a tiny "push" in that direction so you start moving faster.

They're subtle changes, and meant to be subtle on purpose, but I think it helps make the traditional Sonic physics feel a little more nimble at lower speeds while still keeping the long tail of acceleration that makes high speeds feel rewarding.