Rescue His Pants: “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” For Game Boy Advance
Developers: Halfbrick Studios Pty Ltd, THQ Australia Studios Pty Ltd.
Publisher: THQ Inc.
Genre: Action, Platformer
Release Date: 2006–2007
I just want to start by saying that I didn’t expect these last two handheld Nicktoons Unite to be this short. Perhaps I should have done them all in order rather than doing the Nintendo DS titles first... oh, well. It doesn’t matter that much since all these games are pretty short for the most part, anyhow—it is the way of the licensed game.
Story
Timmy, SpongeBob, Danny and Patrick are all suddenly teleported from their worlds to Volcano Island. Timmy tries to wish that he were back home, only for Cosmo and Wanda to discover that something is interfering with their magic. Temporarily leaving Timmy where he is, Cosmo and Wanda find SpongeBob and ask him to rescue Timmy. With that, SpongeBob goes to find the other heroes.
After rescuing Danny, SpongeBob and Danny meet the Wise Old Crab, who explains that he summoned the four heroes in order to help defeat the Mawgu. SpongeBob and Danny then contact Jimmy Neutron, who explains that they need to, using parts that they find around the island, assemble a machine called the Rip-Zipper in order to seal away the Mawgu. The duo then set off to find Timmy, Patrick and all the parts that they need...
Thoughts
Not related to just this Nicktoons Unite game, I just want to bring up how Cosmo and Wanda don’t really try to hide themselves or their magic from the other heroes. In fact, the most that I can recall this being brought up at all is actually this game, where Cosmo says to SpongeBob, “Timmy needs help and our magic... I mean our effort, isn’t working!” I bring this up because revealing themselves breaks “Da Rules”, which is a rulebook that fairies must follow. Specifically, it breaks the rule that, “When a godkid reveals whose fairies theirs secretly are, they and any other witnesses shall have their memories wiped by Jorgen and his agents, and their fairies and magical items they have come in contact will be taken away by Jorgen.”
(However, this does have the loophole that if Jorgen doesn’t know about it, then obviously he won’t take the fairies away, so maybe that is what is happening here? Either that or the circumstances of these games is considered exceptional enough to warrant a hand wave, since that happens a lot in the cartoon anyhow.)Gameplay
We have the tried and (usually) true platformer here, though what sets this apart from the others in the series is the addition of a hub area that you traverse through in order to access the actual levels. You aren’t able to access all the levels from the get-go, though; some are impossible to get to without the help of certain characters and abilities. There are also these statues which block you unless you have collected a certain amount of Rip-Zipper parts. With each level you complete, you gain one Rip-Zipper part.
There are two types of levels, which I will call primary and secondary. Primary levels have you find a new hero or gain a new ability. After finding a new hero or ability, you then traverse back to the beginning of the level using the new hero or ability. While you go through some of what you have already seen, you tackle the level in such a different way that it doesn’t feel repetitive (it also helps that levels aren’t that long in the first place). You then have three secondary levels for each primary level, with the secondary levels being designed with that new hero or ability as a focus.
Speaking of the heroes, you play as one hero at a time with the ability to swap through the heroes with the press of a button. Each hero starts with one ability and eventually gains an additional ability through primary levels. You need all the heroes in order to make progress, so no hero ended up feeling useless.
Unique to this game, there is no combat and there are no boss battles. Although you do technically face off against the Mawgu, you don’t fight him at all; instead, you just traverse a level as he fires attacks at you. Once you get to the end of the level, you get the ending cutscene where Danny activates the Rip-Zipper and seals away the Mawgu.
Characters
SpongeBob starts off with the ability to blow bubbles, which helps him clear away dripping purple goo and also activate conveniently bubble-shaped switches. His secondary ability has him drill into soft dirt and crawl through it like a worm. While digging, he won’t make exact, sharp turns—he has to curve into his turns, so you need to be even more careful around spikes.
Danny can go into ghost mode, which makes certain purple blocks become intangible and able to be walked through freely. After gaining a Fenton radar, Danny becomes aware of ghostly green blocks that only turn tangible when he is in ghost mode. Because of this, you often have to platform from purple blocks to green blocks while switching in and out of ghost mode. As only Danny is holding the Fenton radar, if your current hero isn’t Danny, you cannot see the outlines of the green blocks at all.
Throughout the levels, you often encounter golden rings that you can hold onto—however, you cannot jump off from them unless you are Timmy. Timmy’s fairy godparents wish him up some stretchy arms with their currently limited magic, allowing him to slingshot himself off from the rings. In the very final level against the Mawgu, Timmy wishes to become a comet upon slingshotting himself, giving him the ability to break through rocky walls.
As a starfish, Patrick is able to stick himself onto green walls. Often, you will have moving green walls that you have to stick onto and fall off from in order to platform to your necessary destination—sometimes patience is key. Patrick lost his pants before you meet with him, but luckily he does find them again, giving him the ability to use them as a parachute after getting launched out of a cannon. His parachute pants float him down in varying speed and direction depending on your input and can also be affected by blowing winds.
Aside from Danny’s ghost mode, these abilities are pretty unique compared to the other Nicktoons Unite games, so I have to give kudos for that.
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 honestly a solid platformer, but man, is it incredibly short—we are talking less than three hours, close to two hours. It was short enough that I wish it had more levels to go through, but I guess that this is the better alternative out of needless padding like GBA “Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots”. If you like platformers and have a couple hours to kill, I suggest giving the game a whirl.