He lives

 In a pineapple under the Sea

I'm trapped in a supposedly lovable hamlet known as 'The Pineapple Under the sea', with my worn-down mouse clicker and underdeveloped child-brain. I'm desperately commanding a weirdly 3D yellow Sponge around a flat world reminiscent of one of my favourite TV shows. Nothing seems to add up, every item elicits the same lazy responses. I can't leave the house. All I want to do is get outside and start living that 'adventure' which the game box promised. What was on that box again? Something like a Krabby-wagon flying out of an explosion. Where were either of those two elements? I'd never quite grow into the biggest lover of point and click adventures, but our relationship together is never quite as frayed as it is now. With the haze of more than twice my life span of perspective, it feels like I struggled for weeks, and being a stupid kid I just might have, but the result was me putting down the game with a huff and never buying a SpongeBob game again. So what I'm trying to say is that me and gaming Spongebob ain't exactly the tightest knit pair.

But switch that up for the TV show baring the same name, and man I am a Sponge freak. (Or rather I was. I stopped watching long enough ago not to remember and yet not long enough ago to still retain any respectability) Steven Hillenburg's cartoon was one of those few shows out there which was fun and silly enough to appeal to me at pretty much any age, and never really slipped and make itself feel dated. And that's despite one of the very first, and most enduring, jokes it tells being based around a famous French marine researcher who wouldn't have been familiar to children when the show started and is still only mildly familiar to me now as a trivia note. But Spongebob didn't care about relevancy or slipping right into the exact scene which was popular to the kids at that age; the show just wanted to tell jokes they thought would be funny. (As it turns out, that is the most evergreen approach to a kid's show. Who'd have thought?)

When Steve Hillenburg died, it was the quite the gut-punch even for people who, by that point, had moved on from the show in their lives, just because the sheer proliferation of the image of Spongebob as an immutable totem of childhoods everywhere had become rigidly implanted. It became a real litmus test, if that were ever even needed, for what generation one was on for how they reacted to the news, those who cared really felt it, those who didn't seemed utterly perplexed why the death of some cartoonist was news. (But then would act aghast and demand reaction when one of their celebrities died. Sorry, I'm not trying to go 'us versus them' on this.) The ultimate culmination of this, to me, being the request from fans to honour Hillenburg through a skit during the Superbowl halftime show, for there was actually a Spongbob song entitled 'Sweet Victory' which depicted the show's own version of the Superbowl halftime. A simply insane suggestion to any of the stodgy jackets who actually ran the Superbowl, but supremely sensible and a well hearted gesture to fans. So do you know what they did? They kicked of the Halftime show with a half second from the beginning of 'Sweet Victory', and then switched to Travis Scott, a more profitable choice, a move which was both supremely disrespectful and largely insulting.  

The reason that I mentioned and went into great detail spelling out that history for you, is because I want you to know (or if you already knew, then to remember and keep readily to mind) the significance of that song. Because it takes some real confidence, for a couple of reasons, for a brand new Spongebob game to crawl out of the wilderness and hit us squarely with that particular song throughout the length of the footage. It adopts the lofty assumption that this is the respectful game to honour Hillenburg's series in the very way that mainstream NBA laughed and scoffed at, alongside just being a song declaring 'victory' before the game has even received a release date. (Premature, sure, but confidant.) All of which has called out of me a more critical eye then I perhaps might have held for a new Spongebob game, as this is something which now has to stand and deliver; for it's own good.

'Spongebob Squarepants: The Cosmic Shake' is looking to position itself as the long awaited (at least by me) spiritual successor to 'Battle for Bikini Bottom', a game just recently remastered by THQ Nordic. In a move proving that THQ aren't jealously hoarding all of these old IPs just for remastering purposes, they've dedicated themselves a new 3d platformer, in a age so desperately spare on those games, which will take us all over the series' world and confused history. You've seen the trailer, (of if you haven't then you should, it's worth a look) and therefore you've seen how just about every single significant costume-change episode the show has ever pulled has been teased with references or Easter eggs. Already you can tell that this is going to be a game which tries to cover everything a Spongebob fan could want to see, and despite my instinctual trepidation for companies around THQ's size, I'm a little bit buzzed reading about all of it. Not going to lie.

Some of my personal fondest moments in youth were from playing Battle for Bikini Bottom, and it was actually in the wake of falling in love with that game where I first tried to design my own game. Albeit, that was a Boardgame that I was planning out on Microsoft excel and the thing was terrible because I was an idiot kid, but I guess the idea must have stuck because I'm still trying to make games nearing on twenty years later. (Oof, that hurt to write. Almost twenty years. Jeez) And though the Spongebob movie game (referenced at the head of this blog) inexplicably remains the first thing my mind goes to whenever I think 'Spongebob game', my brain is more and ready for that subconscious spot to be supplanted by a sleek modern follow-up which completely shakes up the scene. (So no pressure there, THQ Nordic, you're just working to save my subconscious from itself.)

We've already got something of an event synopsis to base our expectations on: some fortune teller gives Spongebob a wish granting device and sends him off to explore 7 distinct wishworlds in search of, adventure I guess, who cares. It's a nice traditional set-up for a 3d action platformer like this and it lays plenty of opportunity for stark design choices that can make each level stick out with flavour and flair, should potential be reached. In my most charitable estimation, I could see something like this achieving the fun-factor of the Kingdom Hearts 1 world set-ups, where you're jumping into wholly new environments, and even modes of play, between locations. (At the very least I think it would be amazing if THQ could copy Kingdom's Hearts' shifting HUD which changes to match the setting of the area) What has been unmentioned so far in this feature list, which I hope is only absent because it's so obvious that it hardly bares mentioning, are collectibles. We have those right? If this is a Battle for Bikini Bottom successor, there has to be collectibles. (I won't belabour the point, I'm sure THQ know that)

So I'm an optimist, clearly, when it comes to this title despite being given the whole 'no gameplay in the trailer' trick, because I'm just caught up in the whirlwind that promises to be another solid Sponge outing to slowly wash the bad taste of that movie game from my mouth. (Oh and for defenders of the movie game, try and remember that I'm talking about the awful PC version. It can't even be called a port, it's so starkly different.) Between this, the slow revival of the Destroy All Humans series and the upcoming brand new DLC for the Kingdoms of Amalur Remaster, THQ Nordic are really starting to pay off all of these licences that they went around acquiring and it's beautiful to see. All I want now, and this is a desperate plea, do something with that Timesplitters IP you've got in there, come on guys...