Celebrity Is A Burden: “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” For Nintendo DS
Developer: Natsume Co., Ltd.
Publisher: THQ Inc.
Genre: Action, Platformer
Release Date: Late 2006
It is only just today that I learned that the GameCube version of “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” was released only in North America—otherwise, one was limited to the PlayStation 2 version in terms of the consoles. This doesn’t really have anything to do with the Nintendo DS version of the game; I just thought it was interesting.
Anyhow, “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” on the Nintendo DS—how does it fare?
Story
The main plot is about the same as the console version—the Wise Old Crab summons the chosen ones who are meant to stop the Mawgu’s reign of terror. However, in the Nintendo DS version, a lot of the chosen heroes have been cut out. We are instead limited to SpongeBob SquarePants, Timmy Turner and Danny Phantom as playable options (and Cosmo and Wanda, Timmy’s fairies, if you want to count them). We also have Patrick, Tucker Foley and Jimmy Neutron as non-playable characters, with Patrick and Tucker having only one scene before the very last cutscene. So really, we only have four characters that are focused on in this game.
Gameplay
We have returned to the two-dimensional platformer with this game. The game uses both screens of the Nintendo Dual Screen in order to depict a level, so you can see what is above you or below you (depending on what screen you are on) at any time. The game has five levels, each of which is separated into three areas/sections: the Field Area, the Action Area and the Boss Area. After each level, there is also a fruit-collecting minigame.
The Field Area has you explore an environment in search of three crystals in order to open a gate. Naturally, the three crystals are being held by animal–plant hybrids which consist of a large animal head turned nose up toward the sky that is supported by plant leaves or tendrils.
In order to get the crystal, you have to touch the creature using the touch screen in order to have Cosmo perform a spell where he either feeds the creature or makes it sneeze using some kind of powder. However, there are way more than three of these creatures in a level, so you will have to find which of them are the ones with the crystals. It is nonrandom which hold the crystals. A quirk with needing the touch screen and using both screens to depict a level is that if a creature is on the top screen, you will have to move to a place such that it is instead on the bottom screen in order to interact with it.
In the Action Area, you are instead going through a level fairly linearly, with the occasional stop which forces you to fight an ambush of enemies. Nothing much else to say here.
Of course, the Boss Area has you face off against a boss. Each boss has a gimmick that you must figure out in order to defeat the boss, but most of them aren’t very difficult... and also aren’t that memorable, since I’m struggling to recall them all. However, I do recall the final boss, the Mawgu, as he has two different phases, and if you die during the second phase, you have to redo the first phase again. You also don’t get a health refill after the first phase.
The Mawgu’s first phase isn’t too difficult—you have to hit his hands enough until he loses control of them and they become platforms for you to get up to his head in order to wail on him. However, the second phase has him regularly send down stalactites that fall from above in a random pattern very fast and take out a whole heart of your health. Each character has three hearts of health independent from each other, but it is very easy to get knocked down to one heart and try to switch to a new character only for the next volley of stalactites to hit you. I had to redo this boss a few times because of this. While it was a difficulty spike, it wasn’t that bad of one—it was more annoying than anything.
After completing a level, you receive a rank based on how long it took you to complete each area and if you collected all forty purple coins that are scattered throughout the Field and Action Areas (twenty per area). It seems that not collecting all the coins makes the highest rank that you can get a B, since I got an A rank on the level that I did collect all the coins in and Bs for those that I didn’t. I am not sure what other ranks exist since I never got below a B.
Also after a level, there is a fruit-collecting minigame that you can choose one of the three heroes to play as going in, as you can’t switch characters within it (I don’t think there is a difference between the characters in this minigame). In the minigame, you control the hero on the bottom screen as fruits are thrown down at you. You have to dodge various obstacles depending on which level you are on, whether it is durians, snakes, crabs or birds. There doesn’t appear to be any sort of requirement for getting past the minigame and continuing on to the next level, so I would just put the character in a corner and scroll on my phone as I waited for the minigame to end as it didn’t really interest me.
Something that I noticed during gameplay is that there is a cooldown period after landing from a jump where you cannot jump again. It is long enough to be noticeable, and while it never became too frustrating, it was still an irksome thing to work with at times. (I specifically noticed it during a vertical platforming section that had disappearing platforms, for context.)
Characters
At any given time, you can switch between SpongeBob, Timmy and Danny with the press of a button. Most of the time, it isn’t necessary to switch characters, but they have their own strengths and weaknesses that make it easier on you if you do switch to them.
SpongeBob is able to use his pants as a parachute in order to float after a jump, but his attack is by far the worst out of all of the characters (he blows out a single bubble that has a bit of a cooldown before you can blow out another). Danny Phantom is very strong in combat (he kicks and punches in a combo attack) but isn’t very notable platforming-wise. Timmy Turner has a short double jump, and an attack that isn’t great for standard enemies but works fairly okay for bosses (a continuous stream of air from some machine, I guess?).
There are pick-ups in the game that give the characters a temporary boost, wherein they are able to attack much more rapidly without a cooldown. In addition to that, Timmy also gets a hefty speed boost and is able to run very fast (so fast, in fact, that the camera can hardly keep up with him).
I feel that this is probably the closest that we have gotten to a balanced team of characters in the Nicktoons Unite series that I have played so far. I switched between Timmy and Danny fairly regularly without the game having to force me, with SpongeBob also having his moment to shine at times. Still, SpongeBob was the one hero that I had the least incentive to switch to, so it isn’t entirely balanced. Progress is progress, though.
Collectibles
Usually, I want to one-hundred-percent the games that I play, but the one-hundred-percent requirements of this game turned me away from the idea pretty quickly. Each level has a total of five golden hearts that you can collect that are all required for one-hundred-percent. These golden hearts serve as a temporary buffer to your actual health. Therefore, if you take a hit with a golden heart, then that golden heart is gone. You cannot backtrack through the level and re-grab it; your only recourse is to exit the level and try again.
You might then think that you can collect certain golden hearts, complete the level to save that progress and then go back through the level to collect the hearts you haven’t yet grabbed. However, the game doesn’t keep track of where the hearts came from—it only tracks how many hearts you have. Therefore, in order to get all the golden hearts from a level, you need to collect them all and complete the level damageless.
A lot of golden hearts are in very precarious positions next to spikes and/or enemies, so it is incredibly easy to try and collect a golden heart only to get hit and lose a golden heart that you already got. When that happens and you are shooting for one-hundred-percent, you just have to restart the level and try the whole level all over again. Most of the levels are short, but that doesn’t stop the tedium of retrying a level over and over again because you keep messing up one specific golden heart. That kind of gameplay experience just doesn’t seem fun, so I quickly abandoned the idea of one-hundred-percenting this game.
Conclusion
This is a fairly short post in comparison to the other ones that I have made over the Nicktoons Unite games, but there honestly isn’t too much to this game—it is very straightforward aside from some minor exploration that you have to do in the Field Areas. If I had to choose between this game and “Nicktoons Unite!” on the DS, I would have to choose “Nicktoons Unite!”, even though it was way more of a frustrating experience, because it has much more to offer.
(A tangential note: all the other Nicktoons Unite DS games have SpongeBob as their icon on the DS menu, aside from this game, which uses Danny Phantom. I just thought this was interesting and worth sharing.)