Bubba 'n' Stix

Bubba n Stix is a 1994 platformer from Core Design, catalogued here in its Sega Mega Drive version. Core Design was a British studio based in Derby that built a reputation for colourful action games in the first half of the nineties, before becoming famous two years later for a completely different kind of game.

The central idea sits in the title. The main character carries a stick that is not merely a weapon but a tool: it can be leaned on, used to reach places out of range, or applied to the surroundings. That shifts the platformer toward puzzling, since the player has to work out where to plant the stick instead of simply jumping and hitting things.

1994 was both the peak and the beginning of the end for two-dimensional platformers. Sixteen-bit consoles had several years of development behind them and studios knew how to draw smooth motion and cartoon artwork out of them, yet a new generation of machines with three-dimensional graphics was already visible on the horizon, pulling the market's attention elsewhere.

The record files the game as single-player with a platform view. That matches its pace: this is not a race but a steady dismantling of individual obstacles, where a moment of thought is worth more than fast fingers.

OldGame.cz makes the game available to launch in the browser, so the stick can be put to work without tracking down a cartridge.