Security system TAKES CONTROL OF SQUIDWARD'S HOUSE and begins ATTACKING THE CITY, leaving the mayor to give Squidward community service for the damage he caused, EVEN THOUGH Spongebob and Patrick were in his house the WHOLE FUCKING TIME, and were responsible for EVERYTHING! GAAH! FUCK THIS EPISODE! This episode is when the Squidward torture porn started to become a regular staple in Spongebob's episodes and this one is one of the meanest, cruelest, and just plain unfair of them all. All Squidward wanted to do is enjoy one day to himself, but that can NEVER HAPPEN when he lives next to Spongebob and Patrick, can it?

I feel a immense amount of nostalgia for this game, not back then since i was still a fucking sperm cell at the time but back in 2020, we obviously had Covid fucking everything up, so we had to stay at home for a few months, I modded my Wii just in time so i could finally touch some games that i had on my Backlog for while, mostly GameCube games and this was one of the premier games i played, everytime i would finish some work i'd play hours upon hours of this game, evene beating the final boss and 100% the game, so revisiting this game keep in mind this sorta bias.

Also fun fact, i didn't even actually grow up with this version realistically, i grew up with the PC Version, which was more of a point and click mini game adventure game, i would say more on it, but i can't remember anything about it so, eh.

Anyway, Spongeboi. I like him. I grew up prominently in the "Dark Age'' of Spongebob but I do enjoy a lot of the episodes, especially in later seasons and Season 2, 3 and 4. And the movie is really great though but anyway, Video Games.

Spongebob has had a rough transition into 3D, his track record started with an awful tie in game named Curse of the Flying Dutchman, it's the type of game where everything that would go wrong, does go wrong. So what do you do after a middling to awful reception with this game?

You make one of the best damn tie games and platformers in that generation.

Originally getting slightly middling reviews at the time, Battle for Bikini Bottom has since received critical acclaim from fans everywhere, Speedrunners, general platformer fans and even casual Spongebob fans.There's some jank to be had of course and there's a lot of cut content in this game but I can't deny how good Heavy Iron studios translated the world of Spongebob into a great 3D Platformer that rivals the greats.

Story wise, It's not deep, far from it, Plankton has a robot army that turns on him and destroys his culinary, You and your friends go stop him and get Golden Spatulas The premise allows for the game to go through a bunch of locations from the series such as the Krusty Krab, Jellyfish fields, Rock Bottom, the Poseidome, Kelp Forest, Goo Lagoon, The Flying Dutchman Shipyard and the Mermalair along with other locations made for this game such as Sand Mountain, Spongebob’s Dream and Downtown Bikini Bottom based on locations from the series but are original stages. It's just also an excuse for a bunch of characters to be in the game, the interactions with the characters are insanely funny, quotable and charming, it's definitely not the funniest platformer of this era and the episodes themselves probably have better writing, but it's solid stuff.

That being said though, i do have to dock some points for the presentation, while the voice acting is on point for most of the game, the infamous example is Mr Krabs, Clancy Brown was probably to busy destroying his voice for Uka Uka in Crash Nitro Kart, or something like that, point was he wasn't available for this game and instead a very noticeable stand in was used, this stand in was also used for Mermaid Man, I'll allow since Mermaid Man is a bit of a bigger voice actor to get to voice for this game but i'm sure the stand in is a nice voice actor with good talent, but wow is he bad at replicating their voices.

Another issue is how dark it is, it looks on par with most games of this generation barring the repeated mouth movements and janky models (just look at the npc character models for pure nightmare fuel), but for some reason the game looks incredibly dark, distractingly so which is a shame because a lot of the environments look great and varied and just look straight out of the show, it's odd that there's also a lack of cel shading, while the game looks good it's weird a prominently 2D Show has no Cel shading in a 3D setting.

But to be more positive, I really like the music of this game. It's all in all pretty catchy and fits the tone of the series and stage, at hand, a lot of the tunes, despite some of them being repeated, manage to stick in my head even after I play them. It’s not anything I listen to outside of the game since I have too much self respect to do that but it is surprisingly robust with a wide array of feelings other than jolly music. There’s also the sound design, being surprisingly accurate to the show, with bubble transitions and sound effects from the show as a whole being used at verbaten, there’s unfortunately an issue that a lot of 2000’s platformers run that being repeating voice lines nearly all the time, while not too annoying, it does get on my nerves at times especially in some cases where they can say the same line in just a few seconds apart.

In terms of gameplay, Battle for Bikini Bottom is a collectathon, and it’s proud of that fact, levels have a certain amount of Golden Spatulas to unlock levels, You’ve got Patarick’s Socks as the obligatory secondary collectibles which also give you Golden Spatulas when collecting a certain amount of them, there’s also Shiny Objects (yes those are names) which act as the major recurring currency of the game, there’s also Golden Underpants which increase health. All of these and a wide array of boxes to break like you’re a crazed marsupial, makes Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom one of the Collectathons ever, In all seriousness BFBB is a sorta beginners Collectathon due to level design being somewhat inherently linear like Spyro with one set path that gives you a good chunk of Spatulas but has extra sections around the main beaten path that are harder but allow players to get more Spatulas. It helps people ease into Banjo Kazooie, Donkey Kong 64 and even 100% Spyro the Dragon, it’s not a heavily tasking game to 100% in all honesty, heck it’s not even a tasking game as whole, it remains pretty easy throughout apart from some jarring difficulty spikes like the dread ball sections and some stages overloading the place with a tone of enemies.

But in all honesty, it doesn’t really matter, the reason why this, Kirby and de Blob work so well despite being on the easier side is that they’re always adding something new and fresh to the table, whether it be a plethora of new robots to fight in each stage adding to the arsenal, the 6 bosses being a test on platforming and jumping, or a new gameplay gimmick in the way of Spongebob’s Bubble abilities, Slide/bungie sections, each stage having something new to offer like Sand Mountain being Slide Section heaven, The Mermalair being more puzzle oriented, Downtown Bikini Bottom being focused on tight platforming and Spongebob’s dream being a complete compendium of all the things the game had offered so far, or best of all the, 2 additional playable characters.

Spongebob is the character that players primarily play, he can uses a plethora of bubble abilities that he unlocks throughout the game from Bubble Buddy such as an upward airdash with a Viking helmet, a ground pound attack with big bubble feet and a remote controlled missile, He can also turn into a Ball for a limited amount of time like a bad Super Monkey Ball clone.

It’s important in Platformers and games as a whole to keep the high standard of a main playable character. It feels like most games, even good ones, fumble at this, and for some reason, the tie in game got it right. Patrick is the strong character of the group, While being less nimble than Spongebob, he is way more powerful, allowing him to take out Robots more quickly, he can also carry watermelons and ice cubes (that freezes water for a limited amount of time) and throw them, Sandy is the opposite of Patrick as she’s a lot more nimble than Spongebob, she can glide using her lasso and swing on floating texas flags. While they aren’t too terribly in depth, they don’t need to be, using the same base as the same character while adding to it which in turn makes them unique is what playable characters should be in my opinion. There’s also the fact that the way they handle multiple playable characters, with the infamous exception of Kelp Forest which has Donkey Kong 64 ass backtracking, most times extra playable characters serve as pace breaker to the main game.

I think in Conclusion, Battle for Bikini Bottom while not the greatest platformer ever, it’s probably one of the most well made in terms of game mechanics and pure fun, it takes all the tropes of a great collectahon and turns it into a fun tribute to the series before it was supposedly going to end, it’s not the greatest game like I said and it’s not a masterpiece but I highly recommend it.

I find it funny that a tie-in game is better than the Mario game released the previous year that’s crazy.

This game is not perfect, but dear god do I consider it an honorary flawless crystal of collectathon game design, in my heart at least.

This is a game where you do kids game stuff. You collect things, you fight robots, you play 3 swappable characters, and you laugh at squidward. I will not act like this game has some secret special design choice that makes it a cut above, it was mostly just...a really solid platformer!

And it was also my first, I never beat it as a kid, only recently have I completed it on an emulator. The way this game worked, it was so smooth yet so jaggy in the best ways, you had a very nice linear sand box to mess around in, but if you wanted to you could just jump up geometry and use crazy stuff to get around, the game has very little boundaries, seriously watch speedruns this game is broken in half.

The main reason it is here as my favorite game though, is that it instantly inspired me. I had only played edutainment my whole life up until i tried this game and it cracked me open like an egg. I enjoyed the game quite a bit, but what really got me was saving up enough shiny objects to go into the theater, I expected there to be a little level to complete in there...but no, it was a bunch of concept art! I had never seen concept art in my life, and seeing the visual thought process behind levels, enemies, bosses that never made it into the game, worlds before they were concrete in structure, it made me so excited! I started to draw my own levels, make my own robot designs, imagine my own characters running around drawings i made, it was magical.

It gave me brainrot too, as a kid I kept saying "if you wanna do this, press THIS button and you will do a spin attack" to random kids and my parents who had no clue what was happening. This was the start of me aspiring to be a genuine game designer, and even today I type out game design documents in google drive for that fateful day I get to actually make something...

But yeah the game is fun you can bellyflop as patrick and there is a robot with cartoon gloves that spins around and slaps you in the face. Would recommend.

what it’s just a ordinary liscense game....OH MY GOODNESS.

This was a pretty good platformer while also being very faithful to the original seasons of the tv show. The writing and humor of the original cartoon is like the first three seasons. It’s nice to see this game capture that similar level of charm and humor to those episodes. It’s a nice change of pace from most liscense games before and even after that failed to capture the feeling of the source material As a whole it’s clear this game was made by genuine fans of the show. The passion for the source material is one big reason why the game never fell in obscurity like other liscense kids games.

The gameplay itself is solid and pretty fun. it’s a standard collectathon platformer admitly but getting to explore locations from the show is very nice. Controls are very fluid and there are some fun platforming challenges throughout.
The mario 64 mission structure is also a nice addition and leaves the games progression up to the player for the most part.

From a surface BFBB is a bit of a basic game which is true. In some ways maybe even too basic compared to other platformers at the time. Yet it kinda adds to the game. BFBB feels like a laid back simple 3d platformer. Which makes sense because the game was made with kids in mind. Yet even with that said the game has a pretty high skill ceiling. Which is moslty thanks to the ridiculous speed running community for this game. This greatly opens up the game if your looking for a greater challenge within. Or you can be like me and play like a scrub if your looking for a chill experience. that’s not to say the game is completely easy as it does offer nice tricky sections near the end especially the dream level. I guess despite being a game for kids it doesn’t really treat the player as a kid which is nice. My favorite levels were kelp forrest and the dream world.

So overall I think this was a great game. Enjoyable for fans and a good game in its own right.


Also when I was younger looking at the box art I assumed it was a shooter. Nickelodeon make that spongebob fps I need to play some 2Fort styled krusty Krab vs Chum Bucket multiplayer action.

light 4/5

to the tune of All The Small Things by blink-182

Spongebob
Patrick
Squidward
Sandy
Larry
Pearl
Mr Krabs
and Plankton
Karen
Squidward
Gary
and Miss Puff
Plankton
Bongebob
Mr. Krabs
King Neptune

I wish I could count the amount of times I've played through this game since I was a kid, it's up there with Spyro 1 as one of the most replayable games to me. Super fluid gameplay, fantastic level design, well balanced difficulty, amazing soundtrack, quality and funny writing, all of it's wrapped up in a perfect little 5-10 hour package that is even better than the sum of its parts. I like the remake and all, but the OG release has more charm and less bugs making for a perfect platforming experience.