Bubsy 3D has semidecent gameplay and sound effects. The graphics in the Atari 2600 are better and there are many bugs.
Gameplay (3.3 out of 10):
Bubsy is a bobcat on a mission to stop the two queen woolies, Poly and Esther, and retrieve rocket pieces scattered around to escape from planet Rayon. Bubsy jumps, glides, shoots atoms scattered around the level, and bops enemies while climbing around on platforms. The only two good levels in the game are the first two. The biggest danger is water. If Bubsy falls in, he instantly loses a life. Bubsy can only take a few hits, but special conditions allow for more hits. When Bubsy stands still for a while, small cartoon shorts come up such as playing with the TV, juggling yarn balls with a lit cartoon-style bomb tossed in, a magic act, and some others. When Bubsy dies from taking too many hits, these 5-second shorts are also rather entertaining. They are the only main entertaining part of the game outside creating custom-made challenges, much of the fun stuff being in the second level where it's possible to jump around on the mountains trying to get as high as possible. The camera is about a 3.7 on the scale. When you jump, the camera tends to point straight down and when trying to get from moving platform to moving platform, the poorly designed camera makes it extremely difficult to do make the jump. Character movement is also awkward as, upon jumping, you can only go in a straight line and Bubsy cannot glide while falling. The game, except the second level, has almost nothing in the way of player freedom. The exception, the second level, is where you can go pretty much anywhere, even on top of the rocket near the exit. There are very few configuration options (sound and music volume).
Bubsy collects atoms, of which can also be shot at enemies or other atoms. By collecting enough atoms, special rewards are given. 50 and it's an extra hit, 100 for an extra life, 150 for an extra hit and access to the bonus stage, and 200 for all 3 (extra time in the bonus stage).
Bugs:
Bubsy 3D has so many bugs in it, I'll only mention a few of them. First, when climbing around in the mountains, there are traps in which you cannot get out of. The only way to get out is to restart the level. Second, when you shoot an atom while in a rocket car, you cannot control anything - jumping from one car to another, a tricky thing to do with the poor camera. Third, under certain conditions, Bubsy goes straight through the land and gets stuck, where the scene is all the color of the fog and it's very tricky to get out of this and sometimes may even result in losing a life. Fourth, when the coordinates cheat is used then you enter an invalid coordinate (one out of the level's bounds or to a level that doesn't exist, the game freezes. Fifth, and my favorite, when a fan is below and a platform is above, Bubsy, upon gliding over it, can get stuck under the platform and if done right, Bubsy will fling up very high in the air, so high that it takes 7 seconds to finally land (7 seconds in the second level, 3 at the highest for the later levels). There are more bugs than this though.
Graphics (1 out of 10):
The first thing you notice in the levels is the poor quality graphics, so poor that it makes the Atari 2600 look better. There is a dense fog in the levels that makes it tricky to see far away. To give you an idea on the graphics, think of a checkerboard pattern, only with the squares being of somewhat different colors. You jump and there are maybe 2 colors visible for the scene, excluding the player character. The woolies tend to all be one color. When facing the mountains, you may see a green color at the bottom, white edges at the bottom, blue edges in the center, and orange edges at the higher area. When on top of the mountains, you see a vast orange plane, all one single color. There are, occasionally, some amount of roughness causing about 5 or 6 colors to be seen and very simple lighting effects (dark when away from the Sun and light when directly facing the Sun, but that's about the best it gets. The platforms are always a gray color with a few exceptions of red, yellow, green, blue ones, and a color-changing blue-cyan one for special purposes. The lack of texture makes it very hard to judge distances.
Sound (3.4 out of 10):
The only semidecent thing with the sound in the game, are the sound effects. The music, is mediocre at best, except levels 1 and 15 which are only slightly better. The sound effects are somewhat better than the music and fair quality at best. The vocal effects are rather annoying, but when Bubsy gets injured (such as from running into a woolie), he makes some somewhat funny remarks (like "where's my attorney" or "I need a new agent").
Value (2.3 out of 10):
Bubsy 3D has little in the way of customization. There are, however, plenty of self-made challenges that could be thought of and numerous bugs that can be found (and exploited). I'm only likely to play the second level as it's the only decent one and a shortcut in the first level, using the mountains near the very beginning, makes it possible to complete within just 5 minutes instead of about an hour. There really isn't that much value in the game.
Tilt (3.8 out of 10):
Bubsy 3D has several self-made challenges available and bugs to find and even after 700 hours of play, I'm still finding new bugs. It's the side quest of finding bugs in the game and accomplishing self-made challenges that causes the tilt to be rather high. The story is rather dull. The game is somewhat original.
Other comments:
Unless you feel like making up your own challenges, or finding some of the many bugs in the game, I would not recommend adding this game to your collection, unless you're after getting the world's biggest game collection.