This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/hawkshaw1024 on 2024-09-27 21:11:14+00:00.
In late 2015, a massive indie RPG called Super Space Funeral 4 & Bubsy was released, to a mix of confusion and outrage. Why? Well, keep reading and you’ll find out.
Content note: This story touches on discussions of transphobia, involves tasteless portrayals of fictional transgender characters, and contains some really bad words relating to sex work. I debated if this needs the heavy tag, but almost all of that stuff is aimed at fictional characters, not real people. Links that go to possibly heavy stuff are tagged, though, and I censored slurs in the quotes. If you’d rather something wholesome that’s still related to the LGBT+ community, why not learn about Oceanspirit Dennis? Space Funeral 4 is kinda gross.
(0) Background information
People will occasionally remember Space Funeral 4 and ask what happened. Usually, they don’t get an answer. Despite the massive waves it made at the time, discussion of the game has just… sort of vanished. Little information survives, except for inscrutable third-hand references.
Before we start, let’s all agree to be adults about this, and let’s not harass anyone involved in this story. Cool? Cool.
To my knowledge, there is no comprehensive write-up of those events. Most sources have been lost to bit rot or been intentionally destroyed, but I managed to track down enough material to put together a rough and superficial outline. How did it come to be? Why it was like that? Whence the backlash? Well, let’s find out.
Okay, so, Bubsy the Bobcat is a videogame character from the “mascot platformer” era. He received two good games in the 90s, plus one more mediocre one, followed by the franchise- and company-killing mistake known as Bubsy 3D. There was a failed TV pilot in the mix as well. Making fun of Bubsy 3D is a tradition as old as YouTube, leading to early hits like JonTron’s 2012 Bubsy Collection video. This strange afterlife eventually lead to Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective - a well-received art-platformer from 2013. Fun fact: The word “Bubsy” will appear 147 times in this write-up.
RPG Maker is a nifty little piece of software that you can use to make JRPG-like games, without needing to know much about programming. It’s not as powerful as more universal game engines (like Unity or Godot), but it also has a much lower barrier to entry. There’s been a thriving community of RPGMaker developers for decades now, and occasionally that community produces a breakout hit. A few examples from the last 10 years include OneShot, LISA: The Painful, Fear & Hunger, and Omori.
Another famous RPGMaker game is Space Funeral, a 2010 art-game by Stephen “thecatamites” Gillmurphy.
(1) Space Funeral and Earth Birth (2010-2012)
Space Funeral is an arthouse classic, best understood as a commentary on fantasy tropes and faux-nostalgic retro games. It uses wildly clashing graphics, stolen pop songs, and absurdist writing to unique effect.
Stephen “thecatamites” Gillmurphy: It wasn’t so much about the sprites or art in particular of RPG Maker so much as a kind of classicist way of dealing with that stuff, which is like the idea that videogames reached their peak in the output of a few large companies in the 90s and ever since it’s all anyone can do to ape those things as closely as possible[.]
In the game, you explore a garish broken wasteland full of strange creatures. Your party consists of “Phillip,” who is a perpetually sobbing bald man, and “Leg Horse,” who is a gruesomely mutilated ex-human. (Don’t worry, he’s fine.) An intense atmosphere of dread hanging over it all, even with the surreal humour, and it turns out that the world is actually post-apocalyptic. An artist named MOON was exposed to the world’s platonic ideals, couldn’t handle their impossible and unreachable perfection, and decided to break the world apart to create room for art and self-expression. You kill her, and the world retvrns to normal - a generic fantasy kingdom made out of stock RPGMaker assets. Is this a good thing? Who knows! Roll credits.
MOON: Nothing could be created which was not a pathetic mockery of the objects of the city. The finest works paled in comparison. In the face of such beauty I felt corrupted, an animal. Our world meant nothing. We were all graceless, creatures of slime.
If you want to know more, here is a Let’s Play, and here is a review. This sort of thing is like catnip for artists, and if something becomes popular among a community of creative types, and the creator is cool about things - well, you get fan works. The first big fangame was released in 2013 by DuckStapler, and it was called Earth Birth.
DuckStapler: A satanic ritual summons Phillip and the Leg Horse from their purified land of Space Funeral into the corrupt land of Earth Birth where the evil forces of Science threaten to overtake the good forces of superstition. Dracula tags along with our protagonists halfway through the game.
Earth Birth is longer than Space Funeral, and improves on that game in many ways. The combat is more interesting, for example. However, while the game is well-made, it doesn’t have much of a vision of its own. That’s fine and all, but it misses the point a bit - if there’s any specific idea that Space Funeral really wanted you to engage with, it’s that creativity and self-expression are more important than technical skill, and that imitation is a dead end. That’s what messed MOON up so much!
(2) Super Space Funeral Deluxe (2012-2014)
One of the people active in the Space Funeral community was SqrlyJack - a webcomics artist, shitposter, animator, squirrel furry, and Michael Jackson superfan. Squirrel + Jack, see? Also a trans woman who wasn’t yet out for most of the story, so don’t be confused if sources use “he” or “they.”
SqrlyJack began work on her own Space Funeral fangame in October 2012. (Archive) Super Space Funeral Deluxe was going to be a straightforward “16-bit” remake of Space Funeral - basically the same game, but with spruced-up graphics and some new content.
SqrlyJack: Also because I was planing on upgrading the graphics, I was going to downgrade the ending graphics. hahaha!
After the release of Earth Birth, SqrlyJack decided to take Space Funeral Deluxe into a different direction. New areas, new party members, and sexy furries in the form of “growlf sex workers.” Dracula hangs out with them, in case you’re wondering. You know, the vampire? He drinks the wine and he smokes the weed. (Archive)
SqrlyJack: Its like he gets worse and worse in each game
The title was changed to “Super Space Funeral 4: Deluxe Blood Red Edition,” since this was going to be a proper sequel now. A demo came out in April 2014, and was received warmly. (Archive)
The demo spans from the beginning of the game in Scum Vullage to after the first dungeon. Even though it’s only the prolog and the first chapter of the game, it’s still quite a lot for a Space Funeral game. Enjoy the demo!
Note that it covers just the remake stuff, with very little new content.
(3) Enter the Bobcat (2014)
You may have been wondering where Bubsy comes in. Well, it’s early 2014 now - Bubsy Visits the James Turrell Retrospective has released, and the character is back in the pub…
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1fqy95h/game_development_super_space_funeral_iv_and_bubsy/