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.