SpongeBob SquarePants: Legend of the Lost Spatula
released on Mar 05, 2001
SpongeBob SquarePants makes his first appearance on Game Boy Color in the Legend of the Lost Spatula. As the wacky-but-popular character from the TV cartoon you'll head out on an undersea quest to find the Flying Dutchman's Golden Spatula in order to become the ocean's greatest short-order cook. More than 10 stages full of adventure and side-scrolling action make up this epic treasure hunt. Along the way, you'll meet and interact with many of the show's popular recurring characters like Mr. Krabs, Squidward, Sandy Cheeks, and Patrick Star. Keep an eye out for hidden clues to the Golden Spatula's whereabouts as you make your way through each stage, but also be wary of enemies and obstacles. Colorful cutscenes tell the story between levels, and you can use the password system to save your progress through the game. SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS: Legend of the Lost Spatula is only compatible with Game Boy Color systems.
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HIDEO_KOJIMA✓ @HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN
Hi Sponge Bob
Hi Sponge Bob
Last year I embarked on a journey, to beat every single SpongeBob SquarePants video game ever made. I started in chronological order and that brought me to this monstrosity of a videogame which immediately made me cancel my journey and go on a SpongeBob sabbatical retreat to rethink my life and the decisions I had made.
Narratively, the game is simple, SpongeBob essentially goes on a fetch quest to collect oven knobs across Bikini Bottom. This allows him to access the Flying Dutchman's lair, retrieve the golden spatula and become the Master Fry Cook.
Legend of the Lost Spatula is a platformer in all of the wrong ways. SpongeBob is floaty to control, the tiny Game Boy screen obscures the distance of your vision, which prevents you from making accurate jumps, leading to you taking leaps of faith. More often than not, levels are vertical, so you can spend upwards of 10 minutes climbing a level, just to miss a jump, sending your square ass plummeting back down to the depths below.
The game is open world but is unclear in what it exactly wants you to do. Although the open world nature seems like a positive, it can actually lead you to feeling confused as to why this is relevant to the plot, and can lead you to enter areas that are tougher immediately from the beginning which would lead to a highly frustrating time as you familiarize yourself with the dogshit controls.
Enemies are designed in the most punishing fashion. Their placement happens to always be in unforeseen areas and near safe spots when platforming, which if you happen to unfortunately leap into an enemy when traversing between platforms can send you all the way to the beginning of a level. Trust me, you will be undoubtedly hit by enemies over and over again, this game requires you to memorize upcoming platform sections, where the enemies spawn, and their movements.
On top of their placement issues, the weaponry available to SpongeBob is awful. The bubble blower has an attack pattern like a knight from chess, the net launcher only works on certain enemies, the hitbox from the net is inconsistent.
In order to refill these weapons, you'll have to collect treasure chests, which can contain pants (health) and ammunition. Or just randomly provide the phrase "April Fools" before disappearing??? Such a weird writing choice for a SpongeBob game, and further proof to my theory that this game was made by sadists who wanted to troll any and every unlucky soul who considered playing this game.
There's also an item that allows you to see inside of treasure chests, which is by far one of the most useless items in any game I have ever seen because it is necessary to open pretty much every chest you come across, and it saves you a lot of time to just open them rather than navigating through menus to equip and unequip the glasses prior to opening?
The ONLY positives of Legend of the Lost Spatula are the accurate and well-crafted artwork, and some of the music being decent at best. Everything else besides presentation is absolutely horrendous. This game, if not already, should be notorious for it's ruthless game design and is a contender for the most frustrating Game Boy Colour game of all-time.
Narratively, the game is simple, SpongeBob essentially goes on a fetch quest to collect oven knobs across Bikini Bottom. This allows him to access the Flying Dutchman's lair, retrieve the golden spatula and become the Master Fry Cook.
Legend of the Lost Spatula is a platformer in all of the wrong ways. SpongeBob is floaty to control, the tiny Game Boy screen obscures the distance of your vision, which prevents you from making accurate jumps, leading to you taking leaps of faith. More often than not, levels are vertical, so you can spend upwards of 10 minutes climbing a level, just to miss a jump, sending your square ass plummeting back down to the depths below.
The game is open world but is unclear in what it exactly wants you to do. Although the open world nature seems like a positive, it can actually lead you to feeling confused as to why this is relevant to the plot, and can lead you to enter areas that are tougher immediately from the beginning which would lead to a highly frustrating time as you familiarize yourself with the dogshit controls.
Enemies are designed in the most punishing fashion. Their placement happens to always be in unforeseen areas and near safe spots when platforming, which if you happen to unfortunately leap into an enemy when traversing between platforms can send you all the way to the beginning of a level. Trust me, you will be undoubtedly hit by enemies over and over again, this game requires you to memorize upcoming platform sections, where the enemies spawn, and their movements.
On top of their placement issues, the weaponry available to SpongeBob is awful. The bubble blower has an attack pattern like a knight from chess, the net launcher only works on certain enemies, the hitbox from the net is inconsistent.
In order to refill these weapons, you'll have to collect treasure chests, which can contain pants (health) and ammunition. Or just randomly provide the phrase "April Fools" before disappearing??? Such a weird writing choice for a SpongeBob game, and further proof to my theory that this game was made by sadists who wanted to troll any and every unlucky soul who considered playing this game.
There's also an item that allows you to see inside of treasure chests, which is by far one of the most useless items in any game I have ever seen because it is necessary to open pretty much every chest you come across, and it saves you a lot of time to just open them rather than navigating through menus to equip and unequip the glasses prior to opening?
The ONLY positives of Legend of the Lost Spatula are the accurate and well-crafted artwork, and some of the music being decent at best. Everything else besides presentation is absolutely horrendous. This game, if not already, should be notorious for it's ruthless game design and is a contender for the most frustrating Game Boy Colour game of all-time.
My first game I played all the way through on twitch, and it was average at best
This game already tried way too hard to force in as many spongebob references as it possibly could, but I think the fake chests saying “April Fools!” is the most baffling way I’ve ever seen fake chests handled.
This game's nothing special, really. The jumping and level design are both notably kinda poor. I have a soft spot for this anyway though, particularly the music. Probably would be harder on it if I hadn't played it a long time ago. Takes me back to using shitty online emulators like PlayR and getting mad because they wouldn't work well at all lmao.
This is a weird action platformer with an emphasis on exploration. You're often directionless-ly exploring Bikini Bottom trying to find whatever the game is asking you to find. You get power-ups along the way that give you new abilities and ways to fight enemies. There's some boss fights here, too, but they often have one weakness and can be a little tough to manage. This isn't really a game worth playing, especially nowadays when there are way better Spongebob games out there.