The Strangest Looking Jellyfish: “Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots” For Game Boy Advance
Developer: Firemint Pty Ltd.
Publisher: THQ Inc.
Genre: Action, Platformer
Release Date: 2007
We are nearly toward the end of the handheld Nicktoons Unite games here. “SpongeBob SquarePants featuring Nicktoons: Globs of Doom” did not receive a Game Boy Advance (GBA) version, and I have already played the GBA version of “Nicktoons Unite!”, so we only have “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” and “Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots” for GBA left. I admit to doing a skip in the order of the games here, and that is because I anticipated having a less favorable opinion of this game compared to GBA “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island”.
Story
Like the console game, we are told at the beginning that Professor Calamitous wants to be declared the world’s biggest genius on a TV show, and to do this, he has kidnapped SpongeBob, Timmy, Jimmy, Danny and Tak. Cosmo and Wanda learn of this and arrive at the factory in order to save them; however, as they forgot to charge their wands, they only have enough power to set one of the heroes free. You are given the choice as to whom to set free first. (I feel that, realistically, Cosmo and Wanda would just choose Timmy first, no contest, but I admit that being able to choose is nice.)
Now with the first hero set free, he sets off to collect keys from robotic toys that look an awful lot like the heroes in order to rescue the remaining team members and kick Professor Calamitous’ butt.
Gameplay
We have ourselves another platformer. There are five stages with a varying amount of levels, with each stage ending in a boss fight, and then a final boss fight against Professor Calamitous. The levels are pretty big and have multiple paths that different heroes can take with their own—you guessed it—special ability. While you enter and exit the levels in the same area, you won’t always see the same sights as other heroes as you traverse the levels because of this. In my playthrough, I chose SpongeBob first.
As you progress through the stages, the first hero that you chose gains other abilities. As SpongeBob, I started with the ability to breathe underwater and blow bubbles, and by progressing, I gained an aerial attack, a speed boost, a longer bubble duration and a bubble ball which would explode into multiple bubbles. I don’t know what abilities the other characters gain.
After completing a stage fully, you then face off against a boss with your first chosen hero. During the boss fight, you are given a round mech vehicle that you can use (which also occasionally pops up during the levels). It has a separate health bar from you, and even when its health has been depleted and it is destroyed, it very quickly respawns, so boss fights aren’t challenging. After defeating a boss, you are given a key that you can use to rescue another character.
Unlocking a new character reveals the main mechanic of this game, which is that you go through each stage with all the heroes that you currently have unlocked. I chose SpongeBob first and then unlocked Timmy, so that means that for the second stage, I went through all the levels first as SpongeBob and then went through those same levels again as Timmy before facing off against the boss as SpongeBob. Therefore, by the final stage, I had to go through the final stage's (thankfully single) level as SpongeBob, then Timmy, then Jimmy, then Danny and then Tak.
Again, though, all the levels have varying paths, so you will be taking different paths as each hero. It isn’t as repetitive as it could have been, then, but it does still end up feeling tedious, especially toward the end when you have a lot of the heroes unlocked.
Characters
As said before, SpongeBob is able to breath underwater, and so he can navigate underwater areas that the others cannot. While underwater, he can also blow a bubble, which temporarily makes an enemy rise into the air and prevents them from hurting you. I didn’t really use this much, though, as you can just hit them with an attack and be done with them permanently. He attacks with a close-quarters kah-rah-tay chop that takes out enemies in one hit.
Timmy Turner cannot attack enemies directly; instead, he has Cosmo and Wanda turn enemies into furniture that he can then climb on and use as a platform. He can also have Cosmo and Wanda turn him into a frog, allowing him to enter tiny pathways that others cannot. Timmy was one of the more annoying heroes to play as since he can’t attack enemies normally—you just have to press the attack button and hope Cosmo and Wanda do their job. I would sometimes literally be spamming the attack button with an enemy clearly on screen only for nothing to happen. Also, for whatever reason, Timmy has four hit points while every other hero has five. Why.
Jimmy can hack electric moving platforms using a welding mask and torch somehow, changing their direction and bringing him to otherwise inaccessible areas. He attacks with a shrink ray, making an enemy small and unable to hurt Jimmy as he passes by them. Jimmy didn’t really have any irksome mechanics to him in comparison to Timmy and the next hero...
Danny can activate his ghost mode, allowing him to pass through certain walls and floors (let’s call them ghostly platforms). When you are out of ghost mode, you can stand on the ghostly platforms just fine. For his attack, he throws out a projectile, which for some reason two-shots enemies instead of one-shotting them like SpongeBob. Danny’s ghost mode was really annoying to deal with, as the game sometimes expects you to jump from a ghostly platform that you are standing on through another ghostly platform in very tight and close quarters. These kind of jumps are very easy to mess up, and every time I encountered this kind of set up, it would take me multiple times to get the timing right.
Tak can climb on chains, ropes and vines. You would think the others would be capable of this but apparently not. Tak also attacks by shooting darts from a pipe when far from his enemy, but up close, he performs a melee attack. I only played through the one level with Tak as he was the last hero that I saved, but he seemed fine.
Obstacles
The game is very generous with its checkpoints, and, as stated before, the bosses are easy. However, in addition to the frustrations that I already brought up with the characters, the levels themselves have some irksome qualities. First, the enemies can be a bit much, to the point that I just started running through them and relying on damage-boosting because I didn’t want to keep stopping and fighting them—especially since some heroes actually can’t destroy certain enemies.
Second, in addition to the enemies, you also have these spiky orbs scattered through the levels. That seems like a fairly standard platformer addition, but the catch is that hitting one of these spiky orbs is instant death. If the checkpoints weren’t so generous, this definitely would have been much more aggravating. However, it was still annoying to deal with, especially since there were points where I dropped down onto a spiky orb that I couldn’t see before.
Conclusion
I feel that out of the Nicktoons Unite games that I have played, this has been the worst. That isn’t to say that I absolutely hate it. Aside from some frustration that I experienced, I felt mostly indifferent toward the game—it didn’t do anything to make me particularly like or dislike it thanks to its shortness. Granted, you could make the argument that that is a worse impression than hatred.
Addendum (100%)
Well, I have made a liar out of myself, and I guess I faced karmic retribution for it. I told myself that I wasn’t going to one-hundred-percent “Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots” for the Game Boy Advance (GBA), as the game expects you to go through the entire game five times to do so (starting with each character and thus gaining all their abilities as you progress through the stages) when you are already going through levels multiple times thanks to how the game works. With how I felt that it was the worst of all the Nicktoons Unite handheld games (the whole series, honestly), it just didn’t seem like it would be a fun time.
For some reason, though, I have felt drawn back toward the game. For some reason, I want to push through the tedium and one-hundred-percent the game just to say that I did. So I recently embarked on that goal, and yes, my pants did catch on fire because of how much of a liar, liar I am.
Part of the appeal of going for one-hundred-percent was to see what abilities the other characters gain as you progress through the game with them... and also to unlock the mysterious “Super Elite Mode” that the game promises you if you one-hundred-percent the entire game. Just what does that entail? It sounds cool and alluring, so surely it must be good.
More Frustrations
Well, on the journey to get to Super Elite Mode... Remember how I managed to softlock myself in the Wii “Attack of the Toybots”? Yeah, well, I somehow managed to find a softlock in the GBA version.
Now, the Wii softlock only put me back a tiny amount, and it was toward the beginning of the game anyhow—not much lost either way. This GBA softlock, however, was on the final boss and, due to how the password save system works, put me back at the final stage. With that final stage, I had to go back through it yet another five times and defeat the penultimate boss just to get back to the final boss. Great. I guess that I ought to discover a softlock in the DS “Attack of the Toybots” to complete the trifecta.
At the very least, I only experienced that softlock once, which left me with milder frustrations of the game. Something that I didn’t mention in my review is that if you fall from a great enough height, your character does a lengthy dazed animation before you can move again. You don’t actually take fall damage, but you still get invincibility frames afterward. This just makes movement less fluid and more tedious than it should be and only became more and more notable the more that I played through the same levels and went through them quicker.
Characters
In my review, I said that Timmy’s attack felt unreliable as I would be spamming the attack button only for nothing to happen. I now have an explanation for that: you can only turn one enemy into furniture at a time. In fact, an ability that Timmy gains is that he can wish for two enemies to be furniture at a time. Why Timmy has this restriction, I’m not sure.
Speaking of Timmy, I thought that one of the abilities that he would gain through his route was an extra heart, as he for some reason only has four hearts when every other character has five. It turns out that Timmy never does gain another heart; instead, he gets a speed and jump boost in both human and frog form, the double wish and the enemies become bouncy furniture instead (which honestly felt more like a hindrance than an upgrade). Why.
Also with regards to the upgrades, I was thinking that the speed and jump boost upgrade was going to be given to all the characters, since the first two characters that I played the routes of—SpongeBob and Timmy—did get the upgrade. But no, Jimmy and Danny don’t get that upgrade. Going through the levels with them felt slower in comparison and just left me wishing that they did get the upgrade so that I could just zoom.
Admittedly, each character does get an upgrade which makes them feel better to play—however, they also all get abilities which are useless or even slightly hindering.
SpongeBob, Timmy and Tak get that speed and jump boost that I mentioned, which makes going through the levels feel more fun. Jimmy gets an additional two hearts, which meant that I could do even longer strings of damage boosting with him. Danny’s ghost form also gained the ability to be impervious to projectiles, which meant that I could go through bullet hell areas quickly without having to resort to damage boosting.
I mentioned before with Timmy how he gains the ability to wish enemies into bouncy furniture as opposed to the regular non-bouncy furniture. Because of that bounciness, it felt harder to get a good initial jump off of the furniture rather than just a small bounce.
As I mentioned in the review, SpongeBob has the ability to throw a bubble ball which explodes into multiple bubbles that can then capture and temporarily incapacitate enemies. This ability can only be used underwater, however, which limits its usage. I did discover that if you hit an enemy straight on with the ball, it does explode them, however. You can also use it freely in the first level of the Bikini Bottom stage, which makes sense since it is, you know, underwater.
In addition to his two hearts, Jimmy’s shrink ray becomes longer-lasting, and when he crouches, he gains a shield from projectiles. Neither of those are really that useful, but what really takes the cake in terms of uselessness is Jimmy’s ability to hack enemy spawners. There aren’t that many in the game, and the main strategy to handle them in the first place is to just run past it like everything else in this game.
Tak’s upgrades are all about making his attacks stronger: by the end of his upgrades, both his melee and ranged can kill in one shot when before they required two shots. In addition to those strength buffs, he gains a held attack where he spins. It’s supposed to be a powerful attack, but by the time he gets it, he already kills enemies in one hit. My attempts to use it against the bosses only seemed to do the standard one hit point too, so it doesn’t seem to have a use there.
Danny, alongside the projectile invulnerability in ghost form, also becomes able to possess—I mean, Overshadow rolling mech bots that are a common enemy of the game. It’s at first neat but then just becomes an annoyance since it happens automatically if you are in ghost form. I remember this one specific section where you had to phase through some walls that led to some (again, one-shotting) spikes which had a rolling mech bot nearby. Having Danny gain that upgrade just made sections like that more annoying. Danny also gains the ability to shoot his ranged attack faster, which was a nice upgrade, and then also a charged attack, which is just outpaced by the faster projectiles.
Outside of the upgrades, you technically also get a different experience with the cutscenes, though very barely. Cosmo and Wanda have the same lines regardless of the character that you choose, and toward the end of a character’s route, the heroes end up saying essentially the same lines. Really, the biggest difference in character cutscenes is the first one after Cosmo and Wanda select a hero to free.
Each character has a different explanation for what Cosmo and Wanda are. Timmy, of course, already knows Cosmo and Wanda and how they are fairies, and Jimmy goes with the standard assumption that they are holographic entities as he believes in the Jimmy Timmy Power Hour trilogy. Danny believes that they are ghosts, and Tak thinks that they are Juju spirits. SpongeBob... thinks they are “the strangest looking jellyfish”? Sure. Whatever.
Super Elite Mode
So what is Super Elite Mode? What is so super elite about this mode that you have to go through the game five times over in order to access it?
Well, if you went through the game that many times, then surely you want to go through it again?
Yeah, from what I have been able to determine, Super Elite Mode just allows you to go through the game again with all characters already fully upgraded with the added “challenge” of not having passcodes, so you would have to start over again if you stopped in the middle (or got softlocked at the final boss...). That’s it. That’s Super Elite Mode. That’s what I played this game for far longer than it probably deserves for. I am the April’s Fool.
So did going for one-hundred-percent change my mind about this game? Uh, yeah, no, it’s still the worst of the Nicktoons Unite series. However, again, it’s more so just very mediocre than actually egregiously bad.