We’re back in Atlantis one more time, months after the theatrical release of Aquaman and my week-long posts of it, because I have purchased two games related to that mythical, forgotten land: “Spongebob’s Atlantis Squarepantis” for the Nintendo DS, and “Atlantis: The Lost Empire” which was originally for the GameBoy Advance. I stumbled my way through this lost city twice to beat the games.
This is a video game review post.
Both of these games are released by THQ, a video game developer that went bankrupt back in 2012. I do not own the original cases for the game, because I bought them both used, but here’s what the game drives themselves look like:
It’s been a while since I even played from my DS, so it took some time re-familiarizing myself with it while I was playing. And boy, were these games pretty difficult and weird in places.
The first game I played was “Atlantis Squarepantis.” It is loosely based off of the television special with the same name, where all the popular Spongebob characters traveled together in a magical school bus to meet the King of Atlantis: David Bowie.
Yes, David Bowie voices a character in this special, and don’t feel bad if you didn’t remember, because I didn’t either.
He doesn’t voice the character in the DS game, however. There are actually no voices present in the game, and after a while I decided that I got tired listening to the same three songs on a loop so I even stopped listening to the music.
While playing the game, I was able to play as Spongebob, Patrick, Sandy, and Mr. Krabs. Usually for the levels I was able to pick which two I could play as, but there was always a best option to actually get through the level, until the ending levels where I could only play as Spongebob and Patrick.
This stupid level with this stupid green/silver thing I could just never get. It’s stupid.
It weighs me down so I can’t jump as high, and there are many large ledges that I had to jump over. but instead I fell to my death.
I have the ability to throw this across ledges, but they’re not even vertically next to each other, so I miss every time and had to go all the way back to grab another one.
I finally got it, but not before at least a month had past and I attempted to play it again.
“Atlantis: The Lost Empire” is one of my favorite Disney movies, so I was really excited to play this game.
I still haven’t finished it.
The game starts off easy enough: You play as the hero, Milo, and you run and jump around trying to fix the ship, or even leave the ship, in the first two levels.
The third level, however, is something else entirely. The path to Atlantis is discovered, and you have to run around slippery ledges, avoid falling rocks and stalactites, and try to make it to the entrance.
If you fall off the slippery ledges that are sometimes only as big as your character, it’s game over and you have to restart the level.
I cannot count how many time this has happened to me. Eventually I just decided to stop trying, and summer over, so I will not have any real time to work on it anymore.
Maybe some day in the future.
I don’t know if these games are particularly good. I enjoyed the Spongebob one up until the last level, and The Lost Empire one is just too difficult for me to continue right now.
Maybe it’s best that THQ went bankrupt if these are the games that were being released. I certainly wouldn’t recommend these games to anyone.
It’s probably best that Atlantis stays lost.
Kristopher K. Online 