‘Tweren’t Nothing: “Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” For GameCube
Developer: Blue Tongue Entertainment Pty, Ltd.
Publisher: THQ Inc.
Genre: Action, Platformer
Release Date: Late 2006, Mid 2007
“Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” for the GameCube was one of the three Nicktoons Unite games that I had personal experience with prior to deciding to do this project (the others were “Nicktoons Unite!” for the Game Boy Advance and “Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots” for Wii). In fact, I have played through and completed “Battle for Volcano Island” many times—sometimes, it’s just nice to relax with a game that won’t surprise me.
However, I am now playing this game with “Nicktoons Unite!” under my belt. So how does “Battle for Volcano Island” stand up to it?
Story
An evil being called the Mawgu threatens the peace of Volcano Island, so in order to put a stop to him, the Wise Old Crab and some subordinates perform a ritual in order to summon the Chosen Ones—nine heroes prophesized to bring an end to the Mawgu. Those nine heroes are SpongeBob SquarePants, Patrick Star, Squidward Tentacles, Sandy Cheeks, Danny Phantom, Sam Manson, Tucker Foley, Timmy Turner and Jimmy Neutron. Unfortunately, the Mawgu interferes with the ritual, scattering eight of the nine heroes across Volcano Island. Starting with Danny Phantom and SpongeBob SquarePants, you then travel across the island to rescue the other Chosen Ones and help the Volcano Island citizens, some of whom have fallen under the Mawgu’s control thanks to his hypnotizing ooze.
After rescuing Timmy and securing a battery for a communicator, the heroes are able to talk to Jimmy, who wasn’t transported to the island. He explains that the Mawgu is using a rip in time and space in order to steal energy from the heroes’ worlds, which will eventually lead to the destruction of them if left to continue. Thankfully, Jimmy creates the plans for an invention, the Neutron Rip-Zipper, which will recover the stolen energy and seal the rip in time and space. The heroes then set off to find the parts for the machine while rescuing the remaining Chosen One, Sandy Cheeks.
After acquiring all the parts, the Chosen Ones then scale the volcano of the island in order to get as close to the rip as possible, and the Mawgu finally makes his appearance in order to stop them. After the final fight against him, the Rip-Zipper is used in order to seal the Mawgu within the rip, thus restoring peace to Volcano Island and every world.
Thoughts
Although it certainly isn’t extensive, we get some amount of worldbuilding for Volcano Island. It appears to have a clan of crabs that the Wise Old Crab seems to originate from. We also have a monarchical tribe of bug-like creatures called the Myrmec (whose queen the Wise Old Crab—or Shelly—seems to be in a relationship with) and some other kingdom of plant-like beings called the Florians who have a king called King Gorge. The game doesn’t dive too deeply into it, though, so we don’t have much else on the world.
Also, whoever wrote the text for this game was obsessed with the semicolon. I can’t exactly blame them—I’m a bit overfriendly with the em dash and semicolon myself—but too much of a good thing and all that, you know?
Gameplay
The game has ten story levels in total, including three bosses, with an additional six bonus levels that you can unlock. Usually, on completion of a story level, you are sent back to a hub area where you can access the bonus levels or previously done story levels; these are, however, also able to be selected through a menu, so you don’t have to look around the hub to figure out which level is accessible where. In addition to the levels, the hub area also contains an unlockable movie theater (where you can view previous cutscenes), an unlockable art gallery (where you can view concept art for the game) and a zoo (where you can see all the enemies that you have encountered).
In comparison to “Nicktoons Unite!”, there is more of a focus on platforming in this game, especially in the bonus levels and the very final level. Most of the time, however, the platforming isn’t difficult—you have a double jump and the platforming challenges presented to you usually aren’t that bad. The most difficult that it does get in terms of the story level is in the final level, which presents a lot of platforming challenges that the rest of the story levels just don’t have. For instance, there is a fair amount of climbing where you have to be wary of fast moving objects that can knock you off of what you’re climbing. The closest that any other story level gets is a section where slow wood cutouts move where you are expected to climb. Patrick’s bonus level does present this platforming challenge in a manner more akin to the final story level, but this is an optional level.
Combat is much more simple in this game compared to “Unite!” All the characters that you play as function effectively the same in combat (with some minor differences with a select amount of characters). You have a melee attack and a ranged attack which requires power. That power is segmented into five parts, so you basically only have five charges to your ranged attack before you have to gather more power. Because of that, the ranged attack is very underpowered. Therefore, you are mostly using your melee attack on enemies. Using your melee attack, you perform a combo on enemies that has light hits leading up to a heavy hit, which will knock the enemy prone.
While there are enemies that only require one hit, a majority of the enemies require more hits. Going toward the end of the game, you typically will have to perform multiple combos on an enemy in order to take them down. Combat is then just a button-masher with little variation. There is a bit of strategy to be had with slam jumps, where you jump and then slam back down onto the ground, in order to break up crowds of enemies to single them out better, but mostly you are just going to be spamming that attack button. It is honestly better to just run past the enemies when you can.
Another issue with combat is the unclear user interface, specifically with how health is shown. In the upper left of the screen, you have a portrait which shows artwork of your character superimposed over a circle of a certain color. Green means full or mostly full health, yellow means an okay amount of health, red means low health and flashing red means very low health. The problem is that it doesn’t communicate how many hits you exactly have left until you are dead.
Bonus Levels
The bonus levels are time attack levels that each have a specific platforming theme. SpongeBob’s bonus level has straight horizontal upper and lower paths; Danny’s level has a lot of crushers; Patrick’s level involves a lot of climbing; Sam’s level has a lot of rolling enemies to dodge; Timmy’s level involves a lot of trampolines; and Sandy’s level has many moving platforms. Each bonus level consists of three laps where you go through a different stage, although still with the same platforming theme and aesthetics. You have a limited amount of time to go through each lap, though this time can be extended through these blue pickups scattered throughout the stage. You also have hourglass pickups which make you go faster.
As stated before, these bonus levels offer more challenging platforming than most of the game, though some are definitely more difficult than others. I would consider SpongeBob’s the easiest and... perhaps Sandy’s as the hardest.
Characters
For playable characters, you have SpongeBob, Danny, Patrick, Sam, Timmy and Sandy. While that is a bigger roster than “Unite!”, you really only have representation from two franchises: SpongeBob SquarePants and Danny Phantom. This extends even to the non-playable Chosen Ones, who are Tucker, Squidward and Jimmy. Another knock to the roster is the inability to choose which characters that you want to bring into a level; there are specific characters assigned to each level, and while you can freely switch through them, your choice is still really limited because of this structure. Hell, there is only one story level where Timmy is available to play as—the only other level that you can play as him is his bonus level. If you like SpongeBob or Danny, though, you are in luck as they are available in every story level.
As stated before, the characters mostly function identically, excluding some minor differences. Sam is the most notable, as she has the Portable Fenton Ghost Peeler in her possesion. Occasionally, a level can have a battery which she can pick up and temporarily power the Peeler with, briefly giving her unlimited power. It is basically the only time where using your ranged attack for combat actually makes sense, since you can just spam it very quickly. Again, though, the battery doesn’t show up that often.
SpongeBob has the peculiar ability while standing in shallow water to take in that water and then spit it back out as a sort of projectile. This is such an incredibly niche ability that I can only think of one story level where you can even potentially use this at all, and it is in the tutorial level where you are told to use it. After playing “Nicktoons Unite!”, I think this ability is just a carryover from that game. It wouldn’t be the only one from “Unite!”, since I remember there being precisely one shield powerup in this game that I think is also a carryover.
Patrick doesn’t perform a standard ranged attack. Instead, he will cartwheel about for a time, crashing through enemies in order to damage them. The cartwheel has very little controllability—you start cartwheeling in a direction and hold the analog stick in a different direction, and you will only be able to slightly curl away from your original direction. This leaves Patrick with a little bit of a disadvantage in comparison to the other heroes as this prevents him from using a ranged attack to hit an enemy on a different platform than him. That is a pretty niche scenario, though, so it ultimately doesn’t matter.
Instead of having a combo composed of light hits leading up to a heavy hit, Timmy only performs a heavy hit, using Cosmo as a hammer. Weirdly, it seems that he does have a light hit, although I only ever saw it happen specifically after getting rid of an enemy generator—maybe his attack is glitched? Whatever the reason, this does make Timmy a bit stronger in combat, but again, he only has the one story level in the first place.
Strangely, concept artwork for the game makes it seem that Jimmy was originally intended to be a playable character, as well as Jenny Wakeman from “My Life as a Teenage Robot”. (She would eventually be playable in “Nicktoons: Attack of the Toybots”, though only as an unlockable.) Judging by the concept art and the strange secondary abilities of just two characters, it would seem that a lot more was intended for the characters, but there just wasn’t enough time.
Boss Fights
The boss fights in this game are kind of underwhelming. In fact, I think the boss that has the most complexity is the second boss and not the final boss.
The first and final bosses parallel each other in that you can’t fight them directly—you have to shoot at them using a device. The first boss just needs you to destroy a piece of armor before forcing them backward into a waterfall (the boss is a sand monster)—it can be an incredibly quick fight. The final boss fight just has you shooting at the Mawgu until he is defeated. Sure, in both fights you have to step away from the shooting device in order to avoid attacks levied at you by the boss, but that’s it.
The second plant boss, however, has two phases. A phase requires you to dodge its roots before attacking one of its big roots three times before you are allowed access to the actual boss, where you can finally damage them. This still isn’t a very complex boss, but it at least has more to it than the other two.
100%
There are multiple collectibles in this game, both finite and infinite. Finite collectibles take the form of Salvage Items, which are the possessions of the heroes that were also dragged into the world of Volcano Island. Once a Salvage Item is grabbed in a level, you cannot grab it again. Getting all four Salvage Items for a character unlocks their bonus level (or the art gallery or movie theater for Squidward or Tucker, respectively). Spread throughout levels are also these common collectibles that can be thought of like coins from other platformers. If you grab these common collectibles in a level and return, new ones will spawn back. There are different common collectibles for each character; for instance, SpongeBob’s collectibles are Exotic Shells while Timmy’s are... Alien Fruit. Collecting enough of the common collectibles will unlock a second costume for the character. Common collectibles also have a gold variant which just counts for more (so like a $5 bill in comparison to a $1 bill).
The number of common collectibles needed to get the costumes for the characters are mostly reasonable—by the time I ended my playthrough, I had all the costumes excluding two: Sandy’s Feathers and Patrick’s Tusks. However, those remaining two require a fair amount of grinding due to the nature of them. Instead of being spread throughout the level like the others, the Feathers and Tusks have to be gotten from animals that must be knocked out from their hiding places (a tropical bird from a tree and a wild hog from a bush, respectively). The bird only drops two to four feathers at a time and the hog only drops five at a time. If you hit the hog or follow the bird well enough, you can get a gold variant of the Tusk or Feather, but this can be tricky to do and only helps the grind so much.
The collectibles in this game are also weird. Some of the Salvage Items make sense, such as the Magic 9-Ball for Timmy, but then you have... Danny’s Greenstone Tiki? Maybe there is an episode of Danny Phantom where Danny mentions liking tikis or something but 1) I can’t remember that and 2) I feel like other things would have made more sense as a Salvage Item. The common collectibles are also just peculiar: why bird feathers for Sandy and fruit for Timmy? You also have this common collectible in the form of green crystals which aren’t connected to any of the Chosen Ones.
In addition to the collectibles, you also have twenty achievements. A lot of the achievements are gotten just for going for all the Salvage Items or getting the common collectibles needed for the costumes. The remaining achievements are awarded for defeating a certain number of specific enemy generators—not specific enemies, but specific enemy generators, for some weird reason. Most of these awards are easily gotten, since all these achievements only require defeating six enemy generators; however, there is one enemy generator achievement that seems to require you to replay a level as there are only five in the single story level that they appear in. That’s just slightly annoying.
Level Environments
I think the strongest aspect of this game is the original environments that you go through, especially later ones where the levels become more unique and varied. As a video would do more justice, watch this YouTube video of gameplay from the Fetid Forest level. The environment, in addition to plain just looking cool, demonstrates how much the spread of the Mawgu has affected Volcano Island, especially in comparison to earlier levels which depict more regular island environments. I also especially like the strange quadrupedal creatures/machines that you can see in the background later in the level that are pointed out but are left unexplained—it gives intrigue.
Conclusion
“Nicktoons: Battle for Volcano Island” definitely has “Nicktoons Unite!” beat in some areas—it’s better in terms of the graphics and sound design, and I would say the music of “Battle for Volcano Island” is better than “Unite!”. Gameplay-wise, however, I think “Unite!” still wins out. The combat was much more fleshed out in “Unite!”, and each character felt like they had their place. While “Battle for Volcano Island” does make up for the downgraded combat with collectibles and more platforming, I feel that it isn’t enough to bump it over “Unite!”. Lost potential is also a running theme for this game, where there were clearly some cool ideas on the table, but they weren’t able to get implemented fully or at all for one reason or another. “Battle for Volcano Island” isn’t a terrible game, though—far from it.