‘Twas the night before Christmas 2006, and my brother and I were flunking science class. We’d just been collared by a prefect for attempting to play hookey in a trash can, but feeling like an actual problem child in Bully – or, as our PAL version of the PS2 game was called, Canis Canem Edit – has always been one of the game’s biggest draws for a goodie two-shoes like me.
It’s been years since I first took to the streets of Bullworth as Jimmy Hopkins, and through this scrappy transfer kid-turned-antihero extraordinaire, I lived out my most rebellious pre-teen fantasies. These included (but were not limited to) breaking into a psych ward, being halfway decent at math, and punching the everloving crap out of dumb bullies who don’t pick on losers their own size. The game’s playful script and quirky quest design means that I’ve dipped back into it countless times since 2006, either on PC via Steam or whenever I can be bothered to dust off the old PS2. But I don’t need to replay Bully every year to remember what a gem of a game it is; its legacy is testament enough.
Even as we look ahead to GTA 6 and all the upcoming PS5 games of 2025, I’ll never understand why Rockstar let such a brilliant IP go without a second helping – especially when there’s no game quite like it. Consider this my official plea in the vain hope that the publisher rectifies its most gravest of errors: for the love of god, you guys, please just give us Bully 2.
Hall pass
Teenage GTA. That’s one way to describe the overall form of Bully, where the open world, quest-driven structure of the best Grand Theft Auto games envelops the town of Bullworth like a form-fitting school blazer. Guns are swapped out for slingshots, you have more than a few zits sprouting on your forehead, and a ratty skateboard is your main mode of transportation as players trade heists for homework. Truthfully, I don’t think the game’s US title describes Bully as well as its European alternative. Canis Canem Edit, Latin for “dog eat dog,” feels a far more accurate representation of who Jimmy is, what he stands for, and his tenuous place in the academy’s food chain. It also feels like a far better title to kick off a whole franchise of its own.
It’s speculated that all plans for a Bully sequel were dropped in the years leading up to 2010, if they ever existed at all. To me, that sparks hope that someone at Rockstar could pick them up again someday and finish the job. The fact that the 2006 game is coming to the GTA+ Membership scheme this year has Jimmy’s name on everyone’s lips once again, and I’m not sorry to say that I’m one of those starry eyed Bully 2 hopefuls.
I’ve said that no game is quite like Bully, but you do start your journey much as you might do in the likes of GTA. You’re a low level gangster of sorts – or in this case, a nobody new kid. You’ve got no street cred preceding you, no clique to protect you – unless you count Gary, which I certainly do not. Everything you get in Bully feels hard won and even harder kept, compounded by the fact that you’re a literal teenager with teachers, prefects, and the weight of your parents’ disappointment constantly weighing you down. Much as a GTA protagonist goes from grunt to icon over the course of the game, Jimmy becomes the stuff of playground legend among his peers. He’s the edification of faking it ’til you make it, using the bullies’ own tactics against them not to goad his fellow pupils, but to enact some sense of order in a school overrun with corrupt mini “gangs” of its own. In that way, Bullworth is a microcosm of Vice City – albeit with no strip clubs in sight – and Jimmy is would-be kingpin Tommy Vercetti.
Endless summer
Bullworth and the Academy itself are such fascinating places in their absolute mundanity…
Alas, kids don’t stay kids forever, and that means we’d probably bid farewell to Jimmy Hopkins in Bully 2. But if Vice City can resurface in multiple Rockstar games, a thematic lynchpin that holds the fabric of the GTA universe together, who’s to say Bullworth Academy can’t do the same for Bully? Bullworth and the Academy itself are such fascinating places in their absolute mundanity, exposing the corruption in the school’s social hierarchy and drawing parallels to that of the adult world itself. There’s so much more to be explored here simply by changing the player’s perspective. What if we played a female student, for example? Or a townie kid who actually craves the rules and regulations scoffed at by so many of Bullworth Academy’s ungrateful student body?
There could still be ways to keep Jimmy around in some shape or form, even if not as the protagonist. I’ve always wondered what happened to him after he graduated from Bullworth Academy – if he even made it that far, of course. Perhaps Bully 2 could see a clean cut adult Jimmy take office as Mayor of Bullworth, his crusade against injustice finally extending beyond the classroom? Nah, I can’t see it either. More likely he’d be a bum squatting in that lighthouse by the beach, heckling Academy students and bitterly remembering the time he ruled the school. Hell, maybe he’d get set up behind the old yellow bus to become the new strange old man on campus, passing the baton and teaching Bullworth’s latest punching bag how to land a sucker punch.
Maybe Jimmy wouldn’t feature in Bully 2 at all, but that’s not to say his playground legend would leave the school with him. Canis canem edit, after all; it’s a food chain, and the links go on and on. I only hope that someday, someone at Rockstar sees fit to remember that and pick up where 2006 left off.
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