SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman
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 "hEy, nO rUnNiNg oN dA bEaCh!"
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SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman is a 2002 video game based on the Nickelodeon animated series SpongeBob SquarePants, developed by Vicarious Visions and published by THQ originally for the Game Boy Advance. It was later released for the PlayStation 2 and Nintendo GameCube, which was developed by BigSky Interactive.
Why It Should Tosses into the Fly of Despair
NOTE: This does not apply to the Game Boy Advance adaptation.
- Poor graphics that are comparable to those of an early PlayStation 1 or Nintendo 64 game, with terrible animations and bad lip-syncing, along with horrendous lightning and washed out colors palette.
- The models on the characters are very uncanny and terrible, even for a 2002 game, since the characters, such as SpongeBob, look very rough and Patrick along with Squidward look deformed, in fact it feels like they came from an intentionnaly bad fan game rather than an official game.
- The colors palette is also very washed out and looks much worse than both SuperSponge and even Legend of the Lost Spatula, since the colors are really bland and not colorful at all, this makes the game looking even more like a Nintendo 64 game.
- For exemple, Doraemon 3: Nobita no Machi SOS! which was released in 2000 for the N64 had not only a better colors palette, but also had better graphics than this.
- The textures are also heavily glitchy and undetailled even for a 2002 GameCube/PS2 game, since not only it looks like a Nintendo 64 game, but also feels like the textures are unfinished due to how poor they look.
- Poor grasp of the source material. Such as Jellyfish Fields (which looks like a canyon), Downtown Bikini Bottom (which looks like a dark city) and Goo Lagoon (which looks like a desert) look nothing like they did in the show.
- Poor controls that are very floaty, especially the jump, howewer they don't make the game unplayable and can actually make it for some fun, such as making shortcuts for skipping some sections.
- A lot of glitches due to the rushed development, such as getting stuck in the platforms or the said textures that are glitchy.
- Poor hit detection that is really inconsistent, especially when you get hit for no reasons other than the poor hit-detection and also because of times where you will almost fail the platforming due to the hit-detection, or the bad programing.
- Squidward's Scarecrow is pretty much a useless set-piece since all it does is drop some coins. And to use it, you need the reef blower, but you don't get the blower until much later in the game.
- In Goo Lagoon, the default enemy causes the music to stop, and after it talks, the music starts back up again.
- Speaking of music, when you wear the jelly-fishing costume, you're forced to listen to the same jelly-fishing theme over and over again, making it even more repetitive and also incredibly annoying to listen after a while.
- Linear gameplay in an open world that feels like it could have been a standard 3D platformer instead, due to how linear it is.
- In Chum World, the NPC clowns and the enemy clowns are the same characters. How can you tell which ones give missions and which ones hurt you?
- Horrible bosses. In fact, there aren't many bosses at all.
- The bosses that are in this stupid and pointless race with Squidward to get employee of the month: you can still lose, but Squidward doesn't even try to win the race. Also, no matter if you win or lose, the game continues as normal as if nothing happened.
- The clown in Jellyfish Fields: all you have to do is hit him once and that it.
- Plankton: just get the letter he has to finish the Chum World stage.
- Bizarrely, the narrator isn't voiced by Tom Kenny despite (as always) voicing SpongeBob in-game.
- The ending is extremely rushed, with no music whatsoever.
- The slide puzzle to find the Dutchman's treasure is too easy because of the borders on the pieces and the timer gives you too much time, it is basically overkilled.
- The PS2 version suffers from a glitch that causes the game to freeze when entering a new or old area (read trivia for more info). It also causes players to lose save files on their memory card, just like the 2004 holiday demo disc did. Many letters and death threats were sent to BigSky because of this, and they addressed the issue. However, after many angry letters, the studio shut down due to THQ blacklisting them. The loading issue that causes this glitch also makes it impossible to play the game on a PS3 console. Oddly, this bug does not occur on PS2 emulators like PCSX2 or Play!.
- This glitch does not happen in the GameCube version, the Game Boy Advance version, and in PlayStation 2 emulators such as the PCSX2.
- In the PS2 version there's a glitch where sometimes dialogue will skip or keep looping over and over, and even after the dialogue is finished, it will keep looping until you enter a new area, which shows just how broken and unfinished this game really is.
- The music resets every time if you pause the game or talk to someone, making it even more annoying to heard it due to how repetitive it is.
- You are forced to complete the game 100%. There is no any% route because you can't go back after Dutchman's Graveyard, since that is the point of no return (that is, unless you use the Level Select cheat code).
- In one section of the game, you have to collect 100 Jellyfish to win a contest. However, the Jellyfishing counter for the level only counts how many Jellyfish you have in that level, and not the total counter, and there are only 84 Jellyfish in the level, causing confusion and leading a YouTube game reviewer, LambHoot (video on the game linked down below) to not beating the game for over a decade.
- To add insult to injury, the very next part of the game has you to collect 50 Jellyfish for Larry the Lobster.
- The reward for collecting all 100 Jellyfish is the Reef Blower, which is only used to get coins from Squidward's Scarecrow and the Golf Minigame to get a letter of SpongeBob's name you would have already got the letter title for the coins.
- The soundtrack is incredibly generic and repetitive to the point of making it pretty poor and one of the worst you will ever hear on a SpongeBob game, since despite having the music style of the show, it sounds way too repetitive to be catchy enough, and while it sounds a bit catchy, it still fails to be decent due to how repetitive it is.
- Speaking of levels, there are only seven levels in the entire game.
- The game is extremely short, as it can be beaten in less than five hours.
- Both versions have severe frame-rate drops in certain areas.
- The game has a large amount of cut content, mostly due to the rushed development.
Redeeming Qualities
- BigSky Interactive was able to bring the original voice actors from the show, which is great, despite sounding off at times.
- SpongeBob can actually glide.
- The GameCube version fixed the loading glitch that was noticeable on the PS2 version.
- The game looks slightly better on PS2, mainly in level models looking noticeably smoother.
- The Game Boy Advance version is actually decent, since it plays more like a 2D platformer, hovewer it can still have some annoying levels to complete.
- It also had better graphics, better controls, better gameplay and having a bit more replay value, although it is even shorter than the console versions.
- The game can still be somehow fun to play due to being broken.
Reception
SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman received mixed reviews for the GameCube version and mixed to negative reviews for the PS2 version by critics, the game had a score of 66/100 for the GameCube version and the Game Boy Advance received more positive reviews, with a 71/100, making it the highest rated version of the game.
Howewer the game received very negative reviews by fans of the show who consider it to be one of, if not the worst game of the entire franchise and consider it a wasted potential compared to Battle for Bikini Bottom.
The soundtrack was also criticized for being horribly repetitive, the graphics and gameplay were also criticized, most critics and players compared the graphics to an N64 or PlayStation game, and the gameplay was criticized to be too linear and repetitive too.
Trivia
- According to the Cutting Room Floor, the reason for the loading glitch in the PS2 version was that Sony had a policy about load times; due to this, BigSky used a trick to shorten them, however later PS2 models made this trick incompatible; due to this, early PS2 models and emulators don't have this bug.
- It was originally thought that the loading glitch in the PS2 version is what caused BigSky to shutdown, however it was later revealed THQ blacklisted them following its release.
- The lifeguard became a huge meme.
- SHIFT, a speedrunner of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, has given these games a cult following by doing "meme runs" of the game.
- Speaking of speedrunning, several people have been speedrunning the game to complete them in 2 hours due to how broken it is.
- The Halloween DVD contains a sneak peek for this game in the special features.
- Another featurette in the Sea Stories DVD shows tricks that the player can do in this game.
- The early logo for this game is a little bit different than the final logo. It features the title on one wood plank instead of two wood planks and the words "of the" are not written in a black circle.
- The Chum Bucket glove is actually missing from the top of the Chum Bucket in this video game.
- One of the moves in this game is similar to the Spindash move from the Sonic the Hedgehog video game series.
- When wearing the karate gear, SpongeBob can perform a move similar to M. Bison's Psycho Crusher move from the Street Fighter series.
- In the game's executable, the move is actually called Psycho Crusher.
- This game features quite a few references to the show, including Mr. Krabs warning SpongeBob about riding hooks.
- The different colored jellyfish seen throughout this video game are:
- Pink jellyfish
- Green jellyfish
- Blue jellyfish
- Yellow jellyfish
- Red jellyfish
- Giant white jellyfish
- The French Narrator sounds different in this game. This is due to Tom Kenny not voicing him.
- The French Narrator, Rusty Scupper, Chum World clown, and lifeguard are heard speaking in this game, but who they were voiced by is not mentioned in the game's credits.
- The PlayStation 2 and GameCube versions have the same gameplay, while the Game Boy Advance version has its own gameplay style.
- There is a level in the Game Boy Advance version of this game called "Gary, Come Home!" Ironically, there would later be a song called "Gary's Song" that's also known as "Gary Come Home" (the same name without the comma or the exclamation mark) featured in the season 4 episode "Have You Seen This Snail?"
- The level "Walking the Plankton" would also later become the title of a season 8 episode called "Walking the Plankton."
- In the Game Boy Advance version, some of the background music heard are remixes of some of the production music from the show.
- This is the first 3D platformer for the SpongeBob SquarePants franchise.
- A previous game, SuperSponge, used 3D graphics, but only for the backgrounds. The characters were in 2D.
- This is the first SpongeBob SquarePants video game to be released for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube, but not on the Xbox.
- Although this was the first official SpongeBob game for the GameCube, it was not the first GameCube game SpongeBob has been featured in. The first GameCube game SpongeBob was featured in was Nickelodeon Party Blast, which that version of the game was released on December 6, 2002.
- This is the second SpongeBob SquarePants video game to be released for the Game Boy Advance, first being SuperSponge.
- The PlayStation 2 version is the only SpongeBob SquarePants video game that uses a CD-ROM (purple underside) for the disc.
- The SpongeBob from Revenge of the Flying Dutchman is the only stand-alone video game iteration of the character that is in a 3D platformer, but does not have a double jump.
- This occurs again in Nicktoons Unite!.
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