Amazon.com Review: The Nickelodeon's hit undersea cartoon series SpongeBob SquarePants concerns a plucky and perky pants-wearing sponge who has a noble dream: he wants to be the world's greatest fry cook. In his debut Game Boy Color game, SpongeBob has decided that the best way to meet that goal is to go on a 2-D side-scrolling adventure in search of the lost spatula of the Flying Dutchman. The problem is that the game is just too repetitive and dull.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Legend of the Lost Spatula plays like most any other 2-D side-scrolling adventure. SpongeBob has to recover the four oven dials to unlock the Flying Dutchman's oven. En route, he must explore Bikini Bottom (his homeland) and fight all kinds of mean crustaceans and other sea critters using a burger-flinging spatula and a jellyfish-catching net (there are four other wacky weapons). He must get past a few puzzles and deal with boss creatures as well. Pretty standard stuff overall, maybe too standard.
SpongeBob SquarePants: Legend of the Lost Spatula lacks the inspiration of a Mario or Rayman title, and barely comes close to the humor and whimsy of the excellent cartoon show on which it's based. Still, the violence is cartoonishly entertaining, the characters are vibrant, and the graphics are quite good. Fans of the show might be able to overlook its faults, but the game could have been better. --Andrew S. Bub
Pros:
The graphics are colorful and vibrant
Not too challenging for kids
Cons:
It doesn't live up to the show's humor and style
The gameplay is tedious and uninspired
Amazon.com Product Description: Fans of the hit TV cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants will no doubt be happy to see the show's absorbent star on their Game Boy Color. Based on elements and characters of the show, SpongeBob, a fry cook at the Krusty Krab, is looking to become the best darn fry cook in all the land... er, sea. To achieve this, he'll need to recover the Flying Dutchman's golden spatula. Players will direct his search through the undersea city of Bikini Bottom. SpongeBob must find hidden clues, unlock secret levels, and feed hungry ghosts while avoiding jellyfish and other hazards.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - Bad Game, Too Easy!!!!!!
This game was a very big disappointment. It's not that it wasn't fun. It was fun. The problem is that it was too easy. I finished the whole game in four hours. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. The next time you play, it's exactly the same. The stuff is all hidden in the same places and the exact things happen in the exact way. There is only one level, it doesn't get harder each time you play. Take my advice and don't buy this game! Watch a Spongebob cartoon instead.
Rating: - Great fun
In 30 words or less...great fun for my son and I to play while on vacation. He liked the graphics, I liked the ease of play.
Rating: - Way to easy!!!!!! But kinda hard not really!!!!!!!
Hello everybody, I got this game on Monday the 21st of this year (2003)!!!!! I almost beat it on that day but I had to go to bed!!!! So the next day I played the rest of it and it took me like 47 mins. that day so in total that's about 7,8 or 9 hrs. and 47 mins.!!!!! It was like a peice of junk!!!!! And there's no way to make it harder!!!! Now don't take me wrong I'm a huge fan of Spongebob but I think they could make this game alot harder!!!!! (And I'm not with an adult so nobodys helping me with this review!!!) And I don't believe anybody that says it's to hard!!!!! So, Thank you. And if you survive please come again. Good-bye!!!!
Rating: - short and not all that sweet
Well, let me start out the review by revealing that I'm one of the many twenty-something year old SpongeBob fans out there. So when I saw there was a SpongeBob game for Gameboy Color, I just had to check it out. What followed was almost a throwback to the old NES days of mediocre 1-hour games that dragged things out through mundane repetition and frustrating difficulty.
On the good side, the graphics are colorful and do a decent job of representing the look of the show. You also get to talk to various characters from the show (although the extent of the conversation is usually just a one-sentence comment). Unfortunately, the decent job of creating a SpongeBob look/feel is about the only good thing THQ managed to pull off here.
The gameplay is..well..rather poor. It boils down to standard platform gaming with fairly stiff controls. Usually, the levels scroll upwards or to the right, leaving you to jump from platform to platform while dodging and/or attacking enemies until you simply reach the end of the level. Platform jumping can be a nightmare as the screen will often scroll past moving platforms in mid-jump, leaving you trying to blindly guess where the platform is so you can attempt to land on it. Fighting enemies isn't much better. Despite several different weapons, some enemies are hard to kill (often due to sluggish controls), and getting hit is often unavoidable (usually knocking you off a platform and sending you hurling back to the bottom of the level so you get to experience the dull repetition of ascending the whole area over again). You can also only get hit twice, meaning you'll find yourself dying often despite the plentiful supply of healing items (extra pants) found in each level. In short, the areas themselves are boring and repetitive, the gameplay is frustrating, and you're usually forced to play the levels again and again until you manage to survive. Of course, there are a few bosses thrown into the mix, but they aren't exactly noteworthy and do little to add value to the gameplay.
So why did they make game so tough and frustrating? Well, it appears to be an attempt to drag out what is actually a rather short game. I'd say there are only about half a dozen short levels (hard to count since everything is sort of connected as one area), which probably took me somewhere between 1 and 2 hours to complete even with all of the repetition.
Well, the bottom line is that SpongeBob fans might want to cautiously check it out, but they shouldn't expect too much. Younger gamers will probably find the game too repetitive, difficult, and frustrating to hold their attention. Older gamers will probably find it dull, repetitive, frustrating, and short. Overall, the game does an extremely poor job of capturing the fun that most fans would expect from the SpongeBob license.
Rating: - Totally cool
This game is not that bad, although I don't think it should have the road closed signs when you are trying to get to the next place. The charictors should say more intresting things insted of like "Hi spongebob" (Perl says that). Dont buy it without reading some intresting reviews. Its fun other than the things I mentioned. I'm writing this on my own not help with a parent. So trust me on this one.
- Bad Game, Too Easy!!!!!!
- Great fun
- short and not all that sweet
