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SpongeBob's Atlantis SquarePantis (Wii) is a chaotic collection of minigames loosely based on the TV movie of the same name. You'll find yourself driving tanks, snapping photos, platforming, and engaging in other bizarre activities as various members of the Bikini Bottom crew. While fans of the show might enjoy the humor and references, the minigames themselves vary wildly in quality, and the overall experience feels somewhat disjointed and unpolished.
This review contains spoilers
I remember david bowie and laughing at the little oompa loompa lookin ass guy running during the credits.
weirdly fun
There's like a fun game here that doesn't have to be artificially lengthened, but the glacial pacing ruins whatever enjoyment I got out of any of the varied styles of gameplay there are here.
Based on, and releasing the same day of (at least on the Wii; for some reason the other platforms didn't get this until a few months later) the TV special of the same name, Atlantis SquarePantis is pretty much just 4 different minigames with slight variations, and it's quite fun when it's not overtly annoying.
There are 4 different "game types" here; driving, exploring, walking and shooting.
The driving games open the game midway through the special (for some reason) and all you do here is drive a tank around, shooting things. There's another driving minigame later in the game where you drive a bus around and collect toolboxes.
The next gametype has basically no variations, and is the "exploring" type. You play as SpongeBob and Patrick at first, swapping between each other and using special abilities in order to progress and help each other out.
Later in the game you get the chance to play as Sandy, Squidward and Mr. Krabs.
I enjoyed Sandy's special ability as you spun the Wiimote in circles to use her lasso and that was fun.
The third gametype is "shooting", where you use your Wiimote as a pointer and either take pictures, shoot gems with bubbles or shoot guards with ping pong balls.
Think Pokémon Snap; you're on rails just spamming a button.
Also, it's A to shoot and B to reload so it's very easy to just hit both at once in order to get unlimited ammo.
The last and probably worse gametype is the "walking" games.
These are DDR style "hit the button when it scrolls over the right part of the screen" minigames, but it only uses music once in the whole game.
The other usages of this are just walking.
You watch your characters take a tour of Atlantis and you have to watch the top of the screen trying not to hit the wrong button since when you run out of "lives" you have to redo it from the beginning.
Trying to remember where the 1 and 2 buttons are when you don't use the Wii often made these kinda difficult.
The final level was one of these but it played the credits over it, and they got Nolan North to play the character you're watching walk, so you get to hear his Deadpool voice.
When you complete the game you can use tokens that you get for completing levels to buy things.
One of these is the Arcade, which features some boring ass games.
There's a weird Space Invaders x Snake game that moves really slowly, a platformer game that was fun (but rather empty), a "collecting" game where you grab lights while avoiding red blobs, which is immediately followed by a game where you have to avoid those lights (which is really annoying since you have to stop yourself from picking them up).
There's also "SwapBob SpareFace" which is just a Mr. Potato Head simulator that gives you the bare minimum unless you go back and get more tokens (which I won't be doing).
There's also a concept art viewer because of course there is.
This game has no impact and is pretty useless.
Mr Krabs has zero speaking lines, not even by an impersonator. David Bowie's character's sound-alike sounds like Matt Berry, too.
You play most of the game with the Wiimote horizontally, with only the shooting levels making you aim with it, but the back of the box says it has Nunchuk support, when it really didn't.
If you wanna play every SpongeBob game, then go for it.
Also something to note is that the GBA port of this game released in 2008; 4 years after the DS launched.
Is this one of the last GBA games? Probably.
There are 4 different "game types" here; driving, exploring, walking and shooting.
The driving games open the game midway through the special (for some reason) and all you do here is drive a tank around, shooting things. There's another driving minigame later in the game where you drive a bus around and collect toolboxes.
The next gametype has basically no variations, and is the "exploring" type. You play as SpongeBob and Patrick at first, swapping between each other and using special abilities in order to progress and help each other out.
Later in the game you get the chance to play as Sandy, Squidward and Mr. Krabs.
I enjoyed Sandy's special ability as you spun the Wiimote in circles to use her lasso and that was fun.
The third gametype is "shooting", where you use your Wiimote as a pointer and either take pictures, shoot gems with bubbles or shoot guards with ping pong balls.
Think Pokémon Snap; you're on rails just spamming a button.
Also, it's A to shoot and B to reload so it's very easy to just hit both at once in order to get unlimited ammo.
The last and probably worse gametype is the "walking" games.
These are DDR style "hit the button when it scrolls over the right part of the screen" minigames, but it only uses music once in the whole game.
The other usages of this are just walking.
You watch your characters take a tour of Atlantis and you have to watch the top of the screen trying not to hit the wrong button since when you run out of "lives" you have to redo it from the beginning.
Trying to remember where the 1 and 2 buttons are when you don't use the Wii often made these kinda difficult.
The final level was one of these but it played the credits over it, and they got Nolan North to play the character you're watching walk, so you get to hear his Deadpool voice.
When you complete the game you can use tokens that you get for completing levels to buy things.
One of these is the Arcade, which features some boring ass games.
There's a weird Space Invaders x Snake game that moves really slowly, a platformer game that was fun (but rather empty), a "collecting" game where you grab lights while avoiding red blobs, which is immediately followed by a game where you have to avoid those lights (which is really annoying since you have to stop yourself from picking them up).
There's also "SwapBob SpareFace" which is just a Mr. Potato Head simulator that gives you the bare minimum unless you go back and get more tokens (which I won't be doing).
There's also a concept art viewer because of course there is.
This game has no impact and is pretty useless.
Mr Krabs has zero speaking lines, not even by an impersonator. David Bowie's character's sound-alike sounds like Matt Berry, too.
You play most of the game with the Wiimote horizontally, with only the shooting levels making you aim with it, but the back of the box says it has Nunchuk support, when it really didn't.
If you wanna play every SpongeBob game, then go for it.
Also something to note is that the GBA port of this game released in 2008; 4 years after the DS launched.
Is this one of the last GBA games? Probably.
First game I ever beat by myself