Bubsy II (lost build of unreleased Game Gear port of 2D platformer; 1994)

The port's title screen.

Status: Lost

Bubsy II is the second game in the Bubsy series, and was released for the SNES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive on October 28th, 1994, with a Game Boy port in 1995, and a PC re-release on December 17th, 2015. The game's reception was similar to that of the first Bubsy game, which it was critically acclaimed at the time, but in recent years the reception has grown more negative, with the entirety of the 1990s Bubsy games now being heavily criticized.

During the development of Bubsy II, another version of the game was being developed alongside the versions that were released. This version of the game was to be released on Sega's handheld console, the Game Gear. From what is available of this version of the game, it appears to be nothing more than a colorized version of the Game Boy port. The Game Boy port of Bubsy II can be seen colorized if it is being played on a Super Game Boy, but the coloring on the Super Game Boy version appears to be far more basic than that of the Game Gear port, as the Super Game Boy version just puts a red tint over everything.

Nothing else is known about this port of the game, as the only evidence of its existence is numerous screenshots in a post on the Nintendoage forums and the SMS power forum.^[1]

The screenshots were posted by someone who goes by "Steven78" who apparently had a ROM dump of the prototype (along with a large amount of other unreleased games). The original poster has since been inactive on the forums and has not been seen since 2017, which means they may not return with more information about the game.

The port itself has never been released, because the dumper doesn't want to release the ROM with many memorable prototypes, though due to Bubsy's rising relevancy with the release of Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back on PS4 and PC on October 31st, 2017, there is still a chance it could receive a release, be it official or unofficial.