I’ve played the other versions of Atlantis Squarepantis but never the one for the Game Boy Advance. Obviously, it’s a bit nuts a GBA game was even released in 2007 but that was par for the course for THQ licensed games. I think they had a Ratatouille game on basically every console on the market back then.

Altron is a company that hasn’t made too many SpongeBob games, but they did do a lot of Nickelodeon ones (I remember really liking Freeze Frame Frenzy). Most of their SpongeBob games are pretty good. Their Truth or Square game for the DS is a very fun 3D platformer that builds on the fundamentals set by their previous DS game…the game based on Atlantis Squarepantis. This game feels like it's trying to mesh elements from that DS game into a 2D platformer where it maybe doesn’t make much sense. Notable funny differences include the addition of an experience points system to upgrade HP (something that only mattered by the time the final boss was reached where I died multiple times because of the difficulty spike) and the genre in that the DS one is a bit more beat-em-up like.

The game is relatively short (I’ve seen people say 2 and a half hours it took me about 4) but for what it is it isn’t bad. I had some issues with the game design however, a lot of it felt very tedious. For whatever reason the developers felt the game needed a team up mechanic (sort of akin to Sonic Advance I would imagine, a game I have not played) so each pairing needs to be constantly swapped to get past gates to clear obstacles you have to constantly backtrack to. This isn’t the worst thing in the world in the first section of the game where you’re only doing some backtracking (The structure is that there are 3 mini worlds that are sort of open-ended but linear; it's odd). It gets much worse in the third world where it seems like half the time you’re playing the game is spent trying to unlock doors, realizing you don’t have the right character combo, backtracking to the character switching location, (why this couldn’t have been a separate menu who knows) then unlocking a singular door before repeating the process all over again. I described this as “zigzag like” in my notes. Just a lot of weird level design choices present here for a game that is supposed to be handheld with no battery save functionality. I don’t know how they did it but somehow a GBA game was released in 2007 that had a password system fucking lol thank god for emulators.

One of the oddest sections of the game is in World 2 where the game seems to love having minigames within the levels. These are team up events where you will do things like play a Breakout minigame thats absurdly annoying with Patrick and Mr. Krabs, a mini game where Patrick and Sandy do a snowboarding level that feels like the one from Mega Man 8?? There’s a minigame where you control Mr Krabs as if he’s a Micro Machines car (I have never played those games.) These are not actual minigames of course, because the game has those too (the real minigames are alright though some are confusing when on a keyboard and not on an actual console.)

I have quite a few positives regarding the game as well. One thing that immediately stands out is the very nice spritework done by the folks at Altron. They’re mostly pretty well animated and there’s lots of fun gags present in the idle animations (Mr. Krabs has one where he’s in his ticket booth from the special for example.) The music in the game is pretty sick because a lot of it comes from the DS game (I don’t know which game came first in development or if they were designed to be similar thematically). The game ran incredibly smoothly at a nice 60 FPS and felt pretty good to control. I didn’t dislike playing it, I just had some massive issues with its game design principles. It is still much better than the television special it is inspired by (a special that is essentially just the characters walking around Atlantis). Overall not a bad game but one that kind of disappointed me in ways. It might be the best GBA SpongeBob game however (The first two WayForward games might be better actually). I think the game deserves a low 7/10 or so because SpongeBob bias and I still enjoyed it.
7/10

A licensed video game based off of what is single-handedly right up there as one of the worst episodes in the yellow sponge's history sounds like it could be a recipe for disaster.

Thankfully though this GBA game isn't anywhere close to being as near-universally embarrassing as the episode it's based off of was (or even as "Walking Through a Bunch of Places While Pressing Random Buttons for No Reason" heavy which is what poor PS2 and Wii owners were stuck with via a crap minigame compilation) but at the same time it's a somewhat average title.

Essentially it's a cutdown 2D version of what the DS got with some of the fat trimmed out with plenty of platforming, plenty of character swapping and one or two minigames thrown in to break it all up.

It's all fine (the controls are alright and it's all colorful and peppered with that SpongeBob personality) and there's nothing too bad about it. It's just that I'm more curious about checking the DS version of it out and thus it all ends up being another one of those games that passes through my mind and quickly falls into the rabbit-hole of forgetfulness.