As some readers may have guessed, especially if they came here from my main Twitter account, I’m a huge fan of a certain little yellow square sponge. I’ve been a fan since nearly the beginning of the show’s run; I’d started watching roughly two or so weeks after the show started airing in July 1999. I was sixteen at the time. At first, I was admittedly turned off by the art style; the designs all looked so stupid. However, I knew I absolutely loved shows like Rocko’s Modern Life and The Angry Beavers, and none of those characters looked a thing like their real-life animal counterparts. Heck, an ongoing joke within Rocko was the fact no one could tell he was a wallaby, partly because there generally aren’t wallabies in the United States (besides zoos), but also because he doesn’t look like a wallaby. Even in Angry Beavers, occasional jokes are thrown at the beaver brothers – sometimes at each other, even – that they look like some kind of “pointy weasel”. As such, I couldn’t let the character designs prevent me from possibly enjoying a great show. My sister, aged thirteen, agreed with me, and we sat down to watch an episode together.
It was the
episode “Bubble Stand”. It wasn’t a “new” episode, per se, but rather a rerun.
At the time, Nickelodeon replayed the earliest episodes multiple times between
new episodes to get more people to watch the show. That’s what my sister and I
did. At first, the episode was okay, nothing spectacular. But roughly one-third
of the way through the episode, SpongeBob was showing different kinds of
bubbles he could blow – one looked like a caterpillar, one looked like a family
of ducks, etc – and he used “two hands” to blow a gigantic bubble of an
elephant. Circus music played in the background. Patrick laughed and said,
“It’s a giraffe!”
My sister and I
lost it. We were laughing so hard, as we didn’t expect Patrick to say something
so incorrect. Ever since then, we both became fans of the show and essentially
have been fans ever since. My interest in the show has come and gone, though
each time it “comes”, it’s more intense than the previous time. The most recent
one started in late 2017 and has yet to end; I’m more obsessed with the show
than ever. That’s why my username on some social media sites is “spongebob2600”
(or spongebob.2600 on Instagram); it’s a combination of SpongeBob and the Atari
2600, showing my love for both the cartoon and retro gaming.
One thing I like to do when I get obsessed with something is to collect merchandise wherever possible. The problem is most of the things I obsess over has little to no easily obtainable merchandise. For example, I’m a big fan of Seto Kaiba from Yugioh, but how much merchandise is there of him? Very little. Merch in the United States? Maybe a Funko Pop. I’ve lucked out with obsessing over SpongeBob, as there’s a plethora of merchandise easily available right here in this very country. I work for a big-box retailer and I see SpongeBob merch there all the time. And yes, I buy it. I sort of regret dropping $30 on a three-foot outdoor inflatable but hey, what’re the odds of finding it again? I spent way more than that on the entire SpongeBob x wet ‘n wild makeup collection, but it was limited edition and sold out very quickly. I don’t regret that purchase at all.
To get to the
point, the reason I’m mentioning the merch is because yes, this does pertain to
the video games SpongeBob has starred in. Around mid-2018, I decided to collect
every single SpongeBob video game. I’d start with the ones for consoles and
handhelds, then work my way through the PC and crossover games. In this
instance, “crossover” games are the Nicktoons games that feature SpongeBob as a
playable character, such as Nicktoons MLB, Nicktoons Freeze Frame
Frenzy and Nickelodeon Kart Racers. I was certain this would be
easy, since basically all the games were poorly received and are generally
cheap and easy to find.
I was wrong.
A good number
of the games were cheap, but if one wanted discs in their original cases
or CIB (complete in box) games, they’d have to pay a little more. Five dollars
here, eight dollars there, and the cost adds up quickly. I knew it wouldn’t be as
simple as buying all the games at once; there were quite a few out there, and I
wouldn’t get just SpongeBob HeroPants on PlayStation Vita and leave the Xbox 360 and Nintendo 3DS
versions, I’d have to buy all three. The only SpongeBob game I had at the time
was Lights, Camera, Pants! on Game Boy Advance. I’d bought it brand new
several years ago and had a blast playing through it. It’s different from its
console counterparts that have a Mario Party feel to them, as the GBA
version is a 2-D side scrolling platformer where one can switch between SpongeBob,
Patrick, Squidward and Sandy during the levels. It has a high replay value,
too, at least to me.
I worked as a
full-time sales rep, though the hours were rather light. I also had bills to
pay, which always comes first. I have no credit cards to my name – I can’t get
one even if I wanted – so the money used to buy the games would have to come
straight out of my weekly pay cheque. I’d have to budget the amount of money I
spent each week for the games, ensuring there was still enough left over to buy
gas for the car (I did a lot of driving as a sales rep), food for
myself, etc, after the bills were paid.
At first, the
games were easy to buy. The prices weren’t much different to get CIB versions
of many Wii and PlayStation 2 games, and several others were moderately priced
as well. I would buy at least four each week from eBay and not even break $30.
They’d arrive on different days throughout the week, then when I was paid
again, I’d scour eBay for more games. This went on for several months –
sometimes I was unable to buy any games due to a lack of money, but usually
tried to get at least one per week – before I realised there were far more
games than I’d thought. In fact, there were likely games I wasn’t aware of, or
at least titles I knew were on systems I wasn’t aware of.
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| a random batch of games received in a week |
After my
collection grew a fair bit and I continued running into the same games anytime
I searched eBay for “SpongeBob” in the video games category, I decided the best
thing to do was write out a list of the games I was missing. I found a list and
checked over it: as I’d feared, there were indeed many more than I’d originally
thought. Games like Lights, Camera, Pants! were on five different
systems; as it was a low-budget SpongeBob game for kids, the developers ensured
the games were on as many platforms as possible for the time. A few games were
exclusives, such as a handful on the DS, but nearly all the rest were
multi-platform. This raised the difficulty of buying all the games
considerably.
But I wasn’t
about to give up so easily.
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| one of my lists of monitoring eBay prices and budgeting for each game |
Week after
week, I’d go to eBay and check the prices for each individual game I needed and
wrote down the lowest price of each one. I’d choose the cheapest ones, add them
up and see if they’d fit into my budget. I tried to keep the budget at about
$30 per week. Somewhere amongst this collecting, an announcement was made for a
new SpongeBob game: Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated. It was to be a
modern enhancement of the original, which appeared to be most beloved by the
fans. As a huge fan of the GBA iteration of Lights, Camera, Pants!, I
was quite bewildered by this claim. I’d also played Battle for Bikini Bottom
on Game Boy Advance and failed to see the appeal. I later learnt the console
version of Battle for Bikini Bottom was a completely different game;
apparently, this was the case for all GBA ports of console games. Regardless, I
knew the newest game would have to be added to the collection as well.
I went to the
local GameStop – the only one in town, even – and requested to pre-order the
newest game. I was asked if I wanted it on PS4, Xbox One or Switch, and,
grinning, I said, “Yes.” The employee was confused, so I told him I wanted all
three. He put the information into the computer but still seemed bewildered, so
I explained about collecting SpongeBob games. He wondered what I would do when
I got all the games, what would be the point, and I replied, “Bragging rights?”
I was doing all this for myself, not trying to get anything out of it other
than a feeling of satisfaction, and perhaps bragging rights. I mean, who else
would go this far out of their way to collect all video games about SpongeBob?
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| one of my many SpongeBob plushies advertising my latest games in the post |
Before I knew
it, I was down to the final dozen games. I was excited, knowing my quest for
getting the games was nearing its end. Unfortunately, the remaining games cost
at least $15-$25 each. I’d have to buy no more than one game per week, greatly
slowing down the process. I was certain the last game I’d end up buying would
be on GameCube, as those games tended to be more sought-after. My prediction
was for the final game to be Battle for Bikini Bottom on GameCube and
waited (and price-shopped) in the meantime to see which one ended up being the
final game purchase.
One of the
games had to be purchased on Amazon through a third-party seller, as the game –
Truth or Square for Xbox 360 – was several dollars more expensive on
eBay, strangely enough. I also bought empty boxes and cases for my loose games,
attempting to keep as many of them boxed as I could. In the end, the final game
ended up not being Battle for Bikini Bottom, nor was it a GameCube game.
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| my noble quest has finally come to an end |
It was Plankton’s
Robotic Revenge on PlayStation 3. I received it in the mail on 2 May 2020,
ending my collecting of SpongeBob games. It was both exciting and a relief to
finally be done after all this time. I tried to think how long it took to
obtain all the games (excluding the newest ones, as they’d been delayed to June
at this point) and guessed it was roughly eighteen to twenty months; just under
two years. Someone later asked me how much money it cost to buy all the games
and I hadn’t the faintest idea. The best I could figure was at least $250
total. However, thanks to careful planning and budgeting, I’d saved a lot of
money on the games, and that $250 wasn’t spent all at once; it was spread over
the course of a year and a half, minimum.
I alphabetised
the games and placed them on my shelf in very neat order, and even decorated it
with SpongeBob merchandise. I later bought a SpongeBob light switch cover (yes,
it’s official) and replaced the plain white one that’s near the shelf. I’ve also
bought roughly half the PC games and a good number of the crossover games. When
June came round, I picked up my newest SpongeBob games on day one from
GameStop.
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| "trifecta perfecta", as I'd worded it on Instagram |
It was an
incredible journey to get each game, and it’s amazing nearly all of them came
from eBay. I’m currently taking a small break from collecting, as prices of
video games are quite inflated thanks to the pandemic and rising demand for
video games and consoles; however, I intend to return to PC game collecting soon,
then resume the crossover game collecting. If any more SpongeBob games come
out, rest assured I’ll be at GameStop (or their website) placing a pre-order as
soon as possible.
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| current state of the collection |
