Nicktoons Unite!
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| Nicktoons Unite! | ||||||||||||||||||
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 When Nicktoons characters were like the Avengers and the Justice League...
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NOTE: This page will only focus on the PS2 and GameCube versions. For the GBA and DS versions, click here.
Nicktoons Unite! is a beat-'em-up game developed by Blue Tongue Entertainment and Nick Games, and published by THQ. It is the first of the Nicktoons Unite! games, and serves as a crossover between SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly OddParents!, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, and Danny Phantom's universes.
Good Qualities
- Crossovers of characters' worlds in a specific universe is always a novel idea, and this one pulls it off well by having SpongeBob, Timmy, Jimmy, and Danny working together to defeat the Evil Syndicate (Plankton, Mr. Crocker, Professor Calamitous, and Vlad Plasmius).
- Decent graphics, especially for 2005 PS2 and GameCube standards, with many of the levels (except for the Fantastic Voyage of Goddard, which is an original level) looking like they did the their respective cartoons, and most characters designs look true to their show counterpart, especially SpongeBob.
- The story is well-written, like something out of an Avengers or Justice League comic book/movie: the Evil Syndicate is gathering energy to make a Doomsday Machine, so the four protagonists must stop them before they do so.
- Each of the four characters has various abilities and weapons to use, such as Danny's possession powers, Timmy's Cleft costume that lets him move heavy objects, SpongeBob can absorb water and spit it out to activate machinery or rehydrate dried-up anemones, etc.
- You can also upgrade them by talking to Goddard in each level.
- Good soundtrack composed by Stephan Schütze, with an orchestral feel that captures the dark tone of the game.
- Great voice acting, with everyone from their respective Nicktoons reprising their roles here (such as Tom Kenny, David Kaufman, Tara Strong, Debi Derryberry, Doug Lawrence, Tim Curry, etc.)
- The controls are pretty good, as they are tight and responsive, and while the jumping is a bit heavy, the game is designed around with it, making the game really simple to play.
- The PS2 version is one of four games (alongside Tak: The Great Juju Challenge, SpongeBob SquarePants: Lights, Camera, Pants!, and Barnyard) to support the "Nickelodeon Cross-Save" system. By having save data for the other three games on the same Memory Card, you can unlock the following rewards:
- One Game: New costumes are unlocked for the four playable characters (including Mermaid Man SpongeBob, Tuxedo Jimmy, Army Timmy, and Danny Fenton).
- Two Games: Concept art galleries of in-game characters are unlocked.
- All Three Games: A Cheat Menu, similar to the three menus in Mortal Kombat 3 (Kool Stuff, Kooler Stuff, Scott's Stuff), is unlocked so you can toggle the cheats on or off.
- Due to having Danny Phantom that didn't got a 3D game as a playable character, this might be the closest for his franchise to have a 3D platformer.
- It is longer than the other Nicktoons Unite! games, lasting 4 to 5 hours, which is twice the length of the next games.
- Good boss fights that often utilize the characters' powers to their fullest, such as possessing Jack Fenton to defeat Vlad Plasmius, throwing a Bubble Bomb at Plankton's Crab Tank, or banging a drum to knock the Giant Fleabot off its recharging station.
Bad Qualities
- The gameplay, while good, is quite repetitive: you beat up enemies, solve puzzles with the characters' abilities, save a number of civilians, defeat the boss, and then it starts all over again.
- Missed opportunities:
- The game could have greatly benefitted from adding other Nicktoons universes, such as All Grown Up!, My Life as a Teenage Robot, CatDog, etc. This would allow for more possibilities in the story, as well as even more characters to interact with.
- Another missed oportunity is that all four characters mostly play the same for the combat, they could have made a different set of attacks for each characters, and while all of the characters all have their different abilities, the combat is the same, no matter what, despite the animation not being the same for all of them.
- They could have added a double jump, much like some of the next games, but unfortunately, it isn't present. Oddly enough, the Game Boy Advance version had a double jump feature.
- Once again, Cindy Vortex uses her movie design despite her show being out for three years at the time of this game's release.
- The GBA version is terrible, due to awful gameplay, horrible level design and poor graphics.
- While still good, the French voice acting didn't aged well for some of the characters, especially Jimmy Neutron that doesn't sound like his show French voice.
- Plot hole: How can Goddard be inside his own innards in the Fantastic Voyage of Goddard level?
Reception
Nicktoons Unite! received mixed reviews from critics and mixed-to-positive reviews from players (scoring 53/100 and 6.6/10, respectively, on Metacritic), with its creativity and well-written story being praised and the repetitive nature of the game being criticized. However, many fans say that the game would have worked better as a made-for-TV movie.
Trivia
- As this is the first Nicktoons Unite! game, there are several differences compared to later games:
- The tone of the game is much darker than one can expect from Nicktoons, with darker colors, orchestral music, and much more reserved humor compared to later games.
- Only four playable characters stick with the player throughout the game (SpongeBob, Timmy, Jimmy, and Danny), instead of multiple playable characters for various levels.
- Each character, despite having identical combat controls, has three different special abilities, and no one can double-jump.
- This is the only game to include a Recall System, where you could only revive allies a limited amount of times before getting a Game Over.
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