Bob Whitehead and Alan Miller, two former Atari employees who also helped found Activision, founded Accolade in 1984. Accolade both developed and published games and today are probably best known for the Test Drive games as Infogrames kept that series going after acquiring Accolade in 1999. Other high profile games include Star Control, Hardball!, and Bubsy. The Bubsy games aren't considered to be very good, in fact the two sequels were reviewed quite harshly by critics. Despite that the character Bubsy managed to make a mark in a decade flooded with platform game mascots and Retroism even revived the series in 2015, releasing updated versions of the first two SNES Bubsy games for PC.
I spent a fair amount of time playing Accolade's Commodore 64 games, most notably Test Drive, Hardball!, and Mini-Putt. The first Test Drive is a bit unique as it wasn't about racing against other vehicles around tracks. Instead players had to drive up a mountain at a quick pace while avoiding accidents and the police. Accolade games typically had very good computer graphics in the '80s and Test Drive was no exception. The original Hardball! isn't deep in comparison to today's baseball games, having only two teams, one ballpark, and no season play. For the time though, it could be considered to be fairly realistic and if you were a fan of baseball it was definitely worth playing. Mini-Putt was likely the best mini-golf game on the market in 1987 and possibly one of the best mini-golf games of all time but then there really aren't too many games to compare it to...and maybe it's nostalgia talking but I did have many good times with that game.
In June Activision released Crash Bandicoot: N. Sane Trilogy and then in August Sonic the Hedgehog returned to his roots in Sega's Sonic Mania. Now another video game mascot that got its start in the '90s is back: Bubsy! I was going to be sarcastic about the return of Bubsy but I don't know much about the games outside of what I've read, and my memory had me thinking the Bubsy games were considered terrible. However, while putting together this post I found that the first Bubsy game was very well-received and its sequel, as well as the Atari Jaguar game, were decent too. Apparently it was Bubsy 3D that made everyone want to forget about the anthropomorphic bobcat. Bubsy did get a compilation in 2015 of the first two Super Nintendo Entertainment System games for the PC called Two-Fur. Bubsy: The Woolies Strike Back is a brand new game that releases today and returns the title character to 2D, much like the aforementioned Sonic Mania did for Sonic the Hedgehog.
