Bumbler Bee-Luxe

Bumbler Bee-Luxe
DeveloperDadgum Games
PublishersDadgum Games
StarPlay Productions[2]
PlatformMac OS
ReleaseAugust 25, 1997[1]
GenreMultidirectional shooter
ModeSingle-player

Bumbler Bee-Luxe is an insect-themed multidirectional shooter video game,[3] developed and published by American studio Dadgum Games in 1997 for the Mac. In 1998, it was re-released in several game compilations from StarPlay Productions.

Gameplay

Bumbler Bee-Luxe is a 2D shooter in which the player is a bee protecting its hive from invaders.[4]

Development & release

The game was developed and published by Dadgum Games, a company founded in 1996.[5]

Bumbler Bee-Luxe was also released in two game compilations from StarPlay Productions: Extreme Mac 12-Pack (which also contains Marathon and Glider Pro)[2] and Extreme Mac 6-Pack.[6]

Reception

Next Generation reviewed the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "The only downside is that the background never seems to change [...] and sometimes, due to the color scheme, we lost track of enemies against the honey-combed background. Overall though, an excellent effort."[4]

Paul Pettitt for MAClan Journal commented that "Bumbler Bee-Luxe is an almost pointless game of being a bee and getting flowers."[8]

Josse Bilson for MacFormat gave the game a rating of 75% and said that "Odd as it may sound, no, despite first impressions being stacked against it, this is not a terrible game. You are a bee, locked in your hive, the last line of defence against a relentless insect onslaught. ... Dadgum has employed clever thinking and efficient programming to squeeze lots of graphics, sound and gameplay into just over 1Mb of space (with advanced compression and real-time decompression to reduce the actual size of the application), keeping as much of the data as possible in your Mac's cache. Forget any worries you have about the fact that Bumbler comes on a floppy disk - instead, be thankful that the overheads of a CD are not passed on to you, and you need only a laughable amount of RAM. ... Like Asteroids, the simplest ideas can make the most endearing and addictive - games, and Bumbler Bee-Luxe is a fine, budget-priced example of this. There are no multi-player or network modes and you get exactly what you see, only it moves at a cracking pace. Try the demo - you might get bitten but you definitely won't get stung."[9]

Peter Cohen for Macworld in 2003 called it an "excellent game".[10]

References

  1. ^ "Recent News". Dadgum Games. Archived from the original on February 11, 1998. Retrieved June 13, 2023.
  2. ^ a b "Extreme Mac 12-Pack CD-ROM". archive.org. Starplay Productions, Inc. 1998.
  3. ^ "Bumbler Bee-Luxe". Incredibly Strange Games. February 17, 2010.
  4. ^ a b c "Finals". Next Generation. No. 36. Imagine Media. December 1997. p. 176.
  5. ^ "About Dadgum Games". Dadgum Games. Archived from the original on February 11, 1998. Retrieved June 13, 2023.
  6. ^ "MacMall Advert". MacAddict. No. 34. June 1999. p. 89.
  7. ^ Savignano, Lisa. "Bumbler Bee-luxe". All Game Guide. Archived from the original on November 16, 2014. Retrieved November 28, 2025.
  8. ^ "Exterme pack 12" (PDF). MAClan Journal. p. 2. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 25, 2003. Retrieved November 28, 2025.
  9. ^ Bilson, Josse (December 1997). "Bumbler Bee-Luxe: It costs $25, it fits on a floppy and it's Asteroids with a bee firing from its behind. So it's terrible, right?". MacFormat. No. 57. p. 110. ProQuest 2864429208.
  10. ^ Cohen, Peter (March 2003). "Bullets Are Forever". Macworld. Vol. 20, no. 3. p. 50. EBSCOhost 9149235. ProQuest 199343678. Retrieved 2026-01-01 – via Internet Archive.
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