Without Mike Berlyn, the studio now known as Bend Studio would not have come into being under the umbrella of PlayStation Studios.

Mike Berlyn created the character Bubsy the Bobcat. He was the designer, programmer, and writer of the first episode (released in 1993) but had nothing to do with the second. He was involved in the third, Bubsy 3D, but we’ll return to that. Beryln was already working in the games industry in 1981 (Oo-Topos) before moving to Infocom and then Accolade. He also co-founded Blank, Berlyn & Co. This studio was later called Eidetic (the name they used for Bubsy 3D and then the Syphon Filter series, the latter of which Berlyn left during the development of the latter) and is now known as Bend Studios. Berlyn has also written books, set up a publishing company, and started a jazz band (Hot Mustard).

Berlyn has worked on dozens of games but is best known for Bubsy. The bobcat was part of a nineties trend. When SEGA released Sonic, many people went for this animal mascot fad. One such result was Crash Bandicoot from Naughty Dog (the studio even admitted it in the concept’s name: Sonic’s Ass Game…). Game Developer interviewed Berlyn in 2005 about his career, and he said: “I kind of got tired of adventure this an adventure that. I saw this game called Sonic the Hedgehog and said, ‘Oh, I can get into this; I can see something.’ So I played Sonic for nearly 14 hours a day for a week. I was just overwhelmed by it. And out of that came Bubsy. Accolade then put out Bubsy 2 and just about killed the franchise. So we came on board and did Bubsy 3D. I took one look at Mario [64] and said, ‘Oh, crap.'”

Berlyn was also involved in the founding of Brainwave Creations in the mid-eighties, the team behind Tass Times in Tone Town. Rebecca Heineman, aka Burger Becky, also worked there back in the day and commemorated him on Twitter. Heineman is also legendary for creating the 3DO port of DOOM in 10 weeks. (That’s a fantastic story in itself…) Others have also commemorated him. For example, George Broussard of 3D Realms or John Garvin, who used to work at Bend.

Berlyn, who died at 73, is survived by his wife and partner, Muffy McClung Berlyn. Their documents are held by the UK’s National Museum of Play. Rest in peace.

Source: PCGamer