Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom: Rehydrated - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: February 5, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is back! This episode is a true nostalgia check as legendary supporter Jwaf picked Josh to play SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom: Rehydrated and it’s time to find out what this video game is all about! We break down the gameplay, the fun factor, who this game is for and more… Plus we find out if SpongeBob will somehow garner Josh’s love or if this one sinking to the bottom? Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate, Kiitaclyzm, YayaArizona, Morgau, Disratory and Jwaf Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Paramount! Behold! My name is Maximus Intertanius, and I come to you with big stars in big dramas, like Gladiator 2, Dexter, Original Sin, and 1923. Stream Paramount Plus for $6.99 a month. Hello fellow gamers! We are the Video Gamers Podcast and we are so excited to be here with you today to deep dive Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated. You can find us on socials everywhere at Video Gamers Pod and make sure to leave us a five star rating. I am your host Paul and joining me today, he lives in a pineapple under the sea. It's Josh. Ooh, I love pineapple. Pineapple's delicious. Yeah.

I like pineapple. I was going to say, who doesn't like pineapple? Aren't you the one that doesn't like watermelon, though, Josh? Yeah, I don't like watermelon. I don't like any melon. That's a hot take. Is it? That is a hot take. Watermelon's delicious.

Watermelon is so good a good watermelon yeah it might be the best for you i don't mind the flavor because i can eat like watermelon sherbert and watermelon like icies and stuff like that it's that weird it's sandy it's like it's like somebody took like a fruit and then loaded it with sand that's you got bad melon man no that's bad now my wife is southern man she knows a good watermelon and she gets no lie she eats probably two to three watermelons a week during the summer oh my god a lot of watermelon yeah i mean dude she's full southern if you don't have watermelon at all times like it's a problem so i i know what a good watermelon is it's just they all they're all sandy

all i know is you just better keep that pineapple off my pizza. Oh, are you one of those people? Oh, yeah. You can't go wrong with sweet and salty, guys. No. Okay. I don't order pineapple on my pizza, but if I'm at a party and there's a pizza with pineapple on it, I am not avoiding the slice. Right in the trash, right? No.

Just throw it away. Yep. Sweet and salty is a great combination cooked fruit on my pizza is is a no-go all right well well that's josh and then joining josh and me he's way smarter than josh and has exquisite taste in pizza toppings it's ryan ryan what's your number one pizza topping since we're on the topic? Oh, just classic pepperoni. Pepperoni.

Can't go wrong. Pepperoni or salami are my top two. What about bacon? You guys don't put bacon on your pizza? Bacon's up there. It's good. Yeah, it's good. It's fine.

Yeah. All right. I've never heard somebody refer to bacon as it's fine. Well, it's like on a pizza yeah a slice of bacon is one of the best things you can eat but if it's on a pizza yeah it's it's in the fine category i feel like i'm surrounded by crazy people i feel like you're taking crazy pills that's what i was gonna say all right we ryan and i we we pull out the zoolander references as much as we can. We actually really do bring up Mugatu at least once a week in our Discord.

It's more like daily. All right. Josh could testify to that. All right. And then before we actually jump into our deep dive, I believe we've got a couple of listener reviews to read. We do have a couple of reviews. If you like the podcast and you want to help us out,

if you don't like the podcast and you still want to help us out, if you want to help three dads just doing their best, you know, we're trying really hard here, guys. You can leave us a review. If you listen on Spotify, you can rate us five stars.

If you are on Apple or have access to an Apple device, you can leave us a written review like these fine, fine people have done. And we're going to read a couple on the show. This first one comes in from lie123345788ium. So I think that's Liam with a bunch of letters or numbers in there. And it's titled the best podcast ever. And it says, have you been looking for a video game podcast? Well, you're in the right place because I've been listening to you guys for a few months

and I love it. Just three gaming dads talking about video games. A few things I love is how you guys are very funny and make me laugh. Paul, Ryan, and last but not least, Josh are wonderful people. So overall, a five-star podcast and would recommend to anyone who is looking not only for a video game podcast

but a great podcast. Thank you, Liam. Nice. Oh, thank you, Liam. Very, very nice. I love when they're like hype men for it. Have you heard about this? And they just keep going. It almost starts like a radio ad.

Are you looking for a podcast? Okay. And then this next one, I can only read them as they come in, guys. You know I read them word for word. Sure. This next one comes in from Sean Berger, and it's titled to josh and only josh there we go and it says i freaking love you man sean burger all right so here here's the thing sean there there's probably a a less rude way to express your love of josh i don't know that Ryan and I have to be explicitly excluded,

but I'm not going to complain. Beggars can't be choosers. We ask for reviews. They're coming in. I'll take it. Thank you so much, Sean Berger. I mean, it kind of fits with this episode since I was the one picked to play the game

and neither of you guys played the game. You know what? To Liam and to Liam only, you're a great listener. And I freaking love you, Liam and i freaking love you liam i freaking love you man oh i freaking love you man oh man oh just kidding thank you so much sean we definitely appreciate the review all right so today we're doing this deep dive on spongebob battle for Bikini Bottom. That might sound a little random.

This is not the kind of game that we normally cover on the show. Ryan, why don't you fill the people in if they're not already aware? Why are we covering it? Well, if they're not aware, they should be aware, but we're going to fill them in here. So basically, we got legendary tier service here, and you can come in. You can sign up on Patreon, MultiplayerSquad.com, and sign up for legendary. You can pick a game for us to play. So there's a bunch of different tiers on there.

You can start as low as $5 a month. But the top tier, you can come in. We have normally a force of friend we we try to you know maybe a game that you want your buddy to play or you want your buddy to have to suffer through and we can pick that and they have to play it but in lieu of that you guys can come in and hijack the host and through the patreon service you can pick us and pick a host and pick a game and then we have to play that game after two weeks we will come back and give you guys a full episode in-depth detail on how we uh played the game what we thought about the game how we liked it our opinions and where we're going to put it on their

leaderboard so it's a really cool option and it's something that anybody out there can do like i said multiplayer squad.com and in this case we want to give a very special thank you to joff he is the one who went legendary and picked this one uh he did post in discord earlier today to please go easy on spongebob because we know how much he loves it he had shared when we covered the pre-dive two weeks ago that the original Battle for Bikini Bottom was one of his favorite games on GameCube. And he was a huge SpongeBob fan. And now all these years later, the game came out. They call it Rehydrated because it's a remake. And he wanted to hear our thoughts.

And I feel like probably the primary thing Joab said to us was, do I love this game because it's more nostalgia and I played it when I was a younger kid, or is this something that really holds up? And I think we're all very curious to hear Josh's thoughts because Joff initially said he was going to pick me and then switched it over to Josh because he noticed that on Josh's leaderboard at VideoGamersPod.com, Josh has Mario 64 in his top 10 games of all time. And he felt like SpongeBob was closest to that out of all the games on our top 10s. So Josh, we're going to be able to hear all your thoughts. But I know at the same time, if you didn't like this game, you're still going to be open and honest about your feelings. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of the agreement that we make is when you hijack one of us,

we agree to play the game. But at the same time, we're going to give our honest opinion. You know, just because somebody supports the podcast, you know, or picks one of us, we're not going to sugarcoat things. We're going to say, hey, this is legitimately how I felt about this game. Because there's a lot of people listening. And I don't going to say, hey, this is legitimately how I felt about this game. Because there's a lot of people listening and I don't want to say, hey, I like a game. And then people pick it up and they're like, this game's terrible. Or you steered me wrong, Josh. What would you do? So there is that aspect. And not every game lands with every person. But that's kind of part of the fun of it. I mean, guys, if you would ask me three weeks ago, Josh, do you ever imagine picking up a SpongeBob game and playing it? I'd have been like,

no. Why would I do that, guys? SpongeBob. I mean, I like the cartoon, but why would I pick up a SpongeBob game? But here we are about to cover SpongeBob. Now, this shocked me to my core. I did a Google search for SpongeBob video games. And of course, I mean, SpongeBob started back somewhere around 2000, 2001. It's when I was in high school. And there have been so many SpongeBob games that the list is so long i didn't even count it i want to say it's about 30 to 35 games oh wow have come out in the last 20 years have either of you two guys ever played a spongebob game before not recently i if i if i had played one it it was a while ago um nothing

you know in the last gosh 15 years probably if i if i would have played one it would have been it would have been a long time ago i mean i'm telling me you don't remember playing spongebob and friends attack of the toy bots or uh spongebob's surf and skate road trip on the xbox 360 oh surf and skate road trip that's the one I forgot. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I have never in my life played a SpongeBob game. I know they exist, but I've never... I don't know that I've ever even seen footage of a SpongeBob game. That's my exposure to SpongeBob video games. And so it was really funny when you guys announced that I was going to play SpongeBob. Oh, so funny. It's so random. But to be fair, the reason that Joff picked this is he kind of wanted to know,

and I got to respect this. Is it nostalgia? Is it my nostalgia that makes me look at this game and go, I think this is a good game, guys. And we've all done that, right? Like, I mean, how many times have we mentioned GoldenEye on this podcast as being like, that was one of the heights of gaming. That was one of the heights of playing, you know, multiplayer games with your friends for hours and hours at a time.

If you tried to sit down and play GoldenEye today, we would probably think it's terrible. It's pretty bad, especially compared compared to and i know that half life came out later but my son jackson loves half-life one oh yeah i don't know how to explain this because i love half-life i played half-life when it first came out i don't know how my son even found it he and i will play death matches online just 1v1 of half-life 1 and it plays fantastically but gold and i it's just so long now that it plays quite poorly honestly by today's standards um in this case here with battle for bikini bottom you know this is a game that is

more of a 3d platformer right so this So this is more akin, or at least this is my understanding. This kind of goes under the umbrella of Mario 64. I got a lot of Spyro vibes in the little bit of footage that I watched, maybe even Banjo-Kazooie. Is it fair to just say this is like an old school platformer? It is 100% fair. And it's funny because when we were doing our pre-dive episode, I kept thinking like 2D platformer. And then the 3D kicked in in my old man brain and I went, wait a minute, this is going to be like Super Mario 64, which got me excited. Spyro the Dragon, I played like once at a friend's house, but I never got into that. Banjo-Kazooie was a favorite of my wife and I's when we had first met and we're playing video games together. I didn't play all of these, but it's like, I want to say like Conker's Bad Fur

Day, Ratchet and Clank to a certain degree. Yeah, a lot of those. Yeah. I mean, these 3D games where you are exploring a level, jumping on platforms, trying to find something, trying to progress to the next area. I mean, it's like a genre of its own, but I feel like that genre is just not super common anymore. We see a lot of the 2D stuff. I feel like 3D platformers have almost been replaced by 2D Metroidvanias almost. Or even just straight up 2D platformers, like Celeste or Super Meat Boy. Those are all games I absolutely love. I'm sure that there are still 3D platformers, but I do think you're right, Josh. If they are around, it's not like how it was in 1998 or 1999, where seemingly every game was a 3D platformer. The golden era. Yeah. Obviously, you'll still get stuff like Super

Mario Odyssey. I mean, those games are obviously still 3D platformers, but yeah, not quite as common as they once were. Now, Josh, i just kind of want to ask right off the bat what were you expecting going into spongebob and is it fair to say it lined up with that or did it end up surprising you in some regard and then we'll get to specifics later i'll honestly because this was a remake i was expecting this to feel like a game that was 20 years old you know i mean i and again remakes can vary wildly in the gaming industry i mean we've seen phenomenal remakes like resident evil 4 and dead space oh and then we have seen some just really really terrible remakes where it's just like like the gta what was it the trilogy or whatever where like the textures were literally worse you know and it's

just like this obvious money grab where it's like, we put no effort into this, but if people buy it, great kind of thing. In my mind, I 100% thought this was going to look and feel like a GameCube game. And I don't even know how old that is at this point. I mean, 20 years? Came out somewhere around 2000, you know? And so like, so I'll be honest, there was a part of me that was like,

this is not going to age. Well, like that, that was my initial thinking is like, am I going to have that first 30 minutes of like nostalgia of like, man, I haven't played a game like this in forever. And then it's going to start settling in where it's like,

Oh, this is why I haven't played a game like this in forever and then it's going to start settling in where it's like oh this is why i haven't played a game like this in forever so generally with 3d platformers at least as i think back on them since i haven't played one in ages i feel like normally you're you're kind of like just trying to move from one end of the map to the other it obviously involves jumping on ledges and looking your way around timing your jumps maybe jumping on top of enemies or finding collectibles in a level is that the kind of game loop that you guys generally enjoy do you feel nostalgic for that because even though i don't feel nostalgic for this particular

spongebob game i do still love playing all the old mario games i'll hop into them all the time i love that kind of game loop i still love the genre i was kind of curious to hear your guys thoughts so i i did pick up this game i very much anticipated playing a lot more than i did, but it was just, you know, life happened, work and everything. And every time I'm like, well,

I'm not picked, you know, we're going to do this. And then power world happened and you know, everything else. So it's been a little while, but I did get to play a little bit today and it definitely, it,

the second you got back into it, I felt like I was 11 again or 12 again that that type of game brings you back so so that platformer style you you instantly know okay i gotta jump on these things i gotta smash these guys by landing on them you know it it takes you back for sure so that style and that game it's obviously super specific to that era and time but i you know it absolutely like just kind of brings you back there when the second you log in see for me it's weird because it really depends on the game itself like yeah i mentioned spyro i played a little bit of that if it's just like i can't remember what recently my wife picked up some

game, but it was literally just run around this level and collect coins until you have enough coins and then you can make it to the next level. And that was it. And I was like, this game sucks, man. What's the point? Just collecting things? And then it was like, okay, well, this is boring. There's no real progression. I'm just running around a level. And oh, I had to double jump to get that coin. Like we, you know, but then like, I'll mention Banjo-Kazooie because I found that game to be phenomenal. There was the combo of like using the two characters, you'd learn new abilities where it's like, oh, now they can dash. And so now you can get past that area that you couldn't make it through before. There was secret areas everywhere. So it's like, what is this? You

go into some little house and then under his table is a secret world where you can now go into that world and it's a whole new thing. And you could have played the whole game and never found that before. This is all of Mario 64, right? So to me, Mario 64 is the pinnacle of the 3D platformer because there was so many secrets. There were so many things to find. It rewarded your time. I mean, there was so many neat little trials and different things that you could do. You could race penguins. You could try to beat some boss at the top of a mountain that you had to climb and dodging traps and that kind of thing. And so when you throw a lot of variety, for me, it resonates really well. But if it's just run around a level, collect 50 coins,

and then progress, I fall asleep really quickly. I think some people also love the speedrunning aspect of it. Like, collecting those coins may not be terribly difficult, but if now I am trying to beat a world record of 28 seconds on this level, some people really love that kind of incentive. I mean, that never quite does it for me, but I know that, especially this SpongeBob game, I know a lot of people love the speedrunning. All right, well, let's go ahead and take a short break, and then we'll come back and we'll hear about Josh's initial thoughts. that especially this spongebob game i know a lot of people love the speed running all right well let's go ahead and take a short break and then we'll come back and we'll hear about josh's initial

thoughts all right so josh you fire up battle for bikini bottom for the first time i bring us back to that moment like what was that like for you? How does the game open? What are you thinking? Are you just laughing to yourself? I can't believe I'm playing this game. Walk us through it. Oh! Who lives in a pineapple under the sea? SpongeBob SquarePants! Absorbent and yellow and porous.

That's basically what it was. I think as I told my kids, you know, I was like, I got picked to play SpongeBob, and they were like, what? Like, SpongeBob? Who did that to you, Dad? told my kids you know i was like i got picked to play spongebob and they were like what like spongebob who did that to you dad like they legitimately wanted to know like who who's making me play spongebob and uh so i do remember booting it up and and it was like that that moment of like opening up a like a card pack or like a treasure chest right right? And it's like, all right, let's see what I got. And am I going to get like 20 years ago graphics and like, you know, three polygons per character kind of thing. And I will say I was pleasantly surprised that the graphics looked modern.

It is a color explosion. So I got like that kid vibe and honestly, that kind of old school vibe where everything is just super oversaturated. I mean, Willy Wonka would love like looking at this kind of thing. So I start, you know, obviously the characters are talking and there's the intro music to SpongeBob. So of course, like an idiot, I'm singing along and all that stuff. And I start running around and I'm like, okay, this looks modern. This is a big plus for me. Like, I don't want to play a game that looks like it's 20 years old. I, you know, I, it's giving me a little tutorial, walk around your house. I'm jumping around. I'm like, okay, the controls are pretty responsive because Paul, I remember you. And this

was some dread telling me that you asked your son about this game. And he was like, yeah, isn't that that game where the controls suck real bad? And then I was like, oh no. So I'm jumping around the house. And that's like a real concern when you're doing a remaster, especially of an older game. And I don't know how much they actually redid

in this Battle for Bikini Bottom, but sometimes you'll get those old games where they just put a new coat of paint and the controls are still horrendous and it makes it really difficult to play. I'm actually playing a game right now that has a fixed camera that moves around as you're navigating a 3D world, and it definitely gives you some wonky angles where things don't quite work right. Did you encounter stuff like that in Battle for Bikini Bottom or does it actually function quite well? I will say it functions really well. I was

hesitant going into it, but seeing the graphics, feeling the controls, I went, they actually remade this game. I don't know what I'm getting into yet, but at least from that perspective, like this does not feel like it was straight ported from the GameCube. It did not feel like they just slapped a, you know, a rehydrated label on it and then tried to sell it. Like this game to me felt like it was developed properly for like the remake. You know, I played it on PC, you know, played it on pc you know it and like i said the jumping and all that stuff i was very pleasantly surprised to to say hey this at least is going to play well i don't know what the game's going to be like but at least i'm not going to pull my hair out or throw my controller through my monitor because it's all janky well yeah you look at it and you see like even thinking you know we mentioned uh goldeneye what's the biggest thing, you know, the two biggest things, like movement and aiming?

How the heck are you supposed to do that on an N64 controller back in the day, you know? Like, with that one little stick, you know? So, trying to port that over to today's controls, you know, obviously, we know how we like to and everything is standard as far as like first person shooter controllers but you know like these 3d platformers trying to get it up to date and to make people who are playing these games now feel comfortable but also have that nostalgia i mean that's probably a tough balancing act i would think too yeah well i'm glad to hear that they did a good job with it yeah so kind of walk us through, like you were mentioning before the other game that your wife was playing, where you just like run around and collect coins. Like what are you doing in your average SpongeBob level and

how does it actually play? Is it actually fun or is it more frustrating? So the main premise of this game is your classical 3D platformer, right? Like at the very first level, you talk to Mr. Krabs, there know, there's Plankton's Dunsun scheme, and now there's robots everywhere, right? And you need to kind of save Bikini Bottom. And so they start sending you out. And the main focus of this game is you have to collect these golden spatulas. And every level has, I don't know, like eight to 10 golden spatulas in the world, I should say, right? Because there's multiple worlds. And so that is the crux of the game is climb this mountain and go get that golden spatula.

Solve this jump puzzle and get that golden spatula. Talk to Merman when you meet him later on and he'll give you an assignment and he'll reward you with a golden spatula. Ultimately, you have to have, it's 75 golden spatulas to get into the chum bucket so that you can fix Plankton's problem and kind of like, you know, be the hero of Bikini Bottom at that point. So that is the plot and the crux of the game in a nutshell. I start playing this game, you know, it very much points you, hey, you got to go up to the top of that mountain and fight the jellyfish king because he's got a golden spatula that you need. And I'm like, okay. And then I'll be honest, my initial impression was this is a kid's game. This is a game that's geared for eight-year-olds. Okay, I'm settling in. I'll go climb the stupid mountain. I'll go get the

golden spatula. You collect these little shinies that kind of act like currency almost, or just a challenge. There's these weird little totem guys everywhere. And they're just everywhere. And they kind of look at you. Oh, you got to break them up? Yeah, you can break them and stuff. And I'm like, this is kind of dumb, man. Is this just to make... I got a very kid impression from the first level of this game. And I'll be honest, my initial probably hour with it was not very good because it was like, this is just a, this is kind of a dumb kids game, man. Like I'm not eight anymore, you know? And I did, I climbed the mountain and I will say this in the, in regards to the remake, nothing about

the remake distracted me from the game. Right. So that's a nice point because now it's like, I just am going to play this game and judge this game based on the merits of the game itself, not a port, not a remake, not janky controls or any of that stuff. Um, so yeah, my, my very initial impression really wasn't that good because I really felt like this was just kind of a dumbed down kids game. Like even the boss fight, you fight some big jellyfish that's taking a shower,

you know, it's SpongeBob. So the humor is either like hit or miss. And I think I had to hit him like three times before he died. And it was the easiest, most telegraphed boss fight you've ever seen in your life, you know? And then it's like you just you just bounce against it and then it's like okay and he goes oh and then you just do it two more times and then he's like oh i'm out of here and he flies away and then there's a golden spatula on the ground you're like do you know who i am

i put elden ring yeah yeah i'm like get out of here lord man like i'm not fighting jellyfish man it's great though you say like i'm. I'm not fighting Jellyfish Man. It's great, though. You say I'm not eight years old. My son, he's seven and a half. And I popped this on earlier before we started recording. And I was messing around. And I was on that first level.

And I kind of got those same vibes. And next thing I know, it's kind of like in the movies where that just weird kid just pops up out of nowhere. All of a sudden, my son is standing next to me. I'm like, what are you doing there?'s like oh you playing spongebob yeah he's like oh that looks fun i i'd like that game you know he's all about it instantly instantly he's like just staring at he's like i was like oh sorry buddy we got to record soon so we'll play later we'll play later he's like okay promise i'm like yeah yeah well i promise oh i love that you just have to show him two seconds of footage yeah he was just like you ryan you and your son are cut from the same cloth yeah it does not take much to get you guys excited to play something so josh one question i have for you since i'll be totally honest i did not watch

much footage at all i'm going into this pretty blind. Are there different types of level designs? Because when I think about playing old Mario games, you always get the occasional water level thrown in, or there's like different biomes where all of a sudden you're running in the desert or whatever. Does SpongeBob do anything like that? Or does everything, is everything just like set in Bikini Bottom where you're just at the bottom of the ocean running around? So the first level, maybe it's like a tutorial level. Maybe it's a training level. Again, I was very kind of meh about the opening level. But then I got, I don't know, five golden spatulas, right? And I managed to acquire five of those. And Bikini Bottom, so where Spongebob

and Patrick and Mr. Krabs and all those people live? There are these areas that have like, hey, you need 10 golden spatulas to go into this area. You need 50 golden spatulas to go into this area. And you can see probably five or six of them from the very starting area. So that started to tell me, okay, there are a lot of levels in this game. And I remember opening up the next level after I had my five spatulas and you take a little taxi and it warps you to the next level. And I will, I got to give the game credit. The level design and the variety of levels is impressive. Like I did not expect that in this game. I mean, there are mechanical levels where you go into the merman

and what's the other guy? Barnacle boy. Yeah. Barnacle boy. So you meet, you go into the the merman and um what's the other barnacle barnacle boy yeah barnacle boy so you meet you go into their house and then they're like hey like we need your help down in our secret layer and you go down and it's like it's like batman's layer almost so now it's all mechanical ramps and and uh conveyor belts and stuff like that i'm like okay well this is kind of cool so you're hyping me up man yeah i'm wanting to play now well and then so this is where the game started to open up a little bit for me right and and then it's like i can't remember everywhere i went like there's there's one place where it's like i don't know wherever the jellyfish live in the weed the the underwater weed level and then there's like a a mountain level it's like a ski resort where all the people vacation from Bikini Bottom.

And then there's downtown Bikini Bottom. So now it's all these big, tall skyscrapers. And now you're way up in the air. And if you fall, you fall to your death, basically. Oh. And then so this is where in the next probably four hours, I kind of went, dude, there's a lot more to this game than I originally thought. Some of this level design is actually pretty good. hours, I kind of went, dude, there's a lot more to this game than I originally thought. Like some

of this level design is actually pretty good, you know? And I started to kind of be like, what's going on here? Like, I'm not hating this, guys. Does the difficulty start to ramp up with that as well? Because you're talking about how it started so easy. Funny you ask, Paul, because yes, it does. And you guys know I like a hard game, right? So as I'm playing this and I'm getting into these levels and I'm collecting more spatulas and I'm kind of opening up more areas, all of a sudden it's like, dude, I whiffed that jump like three times in a row. Like these platforms are starting to move. Like you start getting new characters, right? Because all of a sudden now I'm Patrick

and I realized Patrick has abilities that SpongeBob doesn't have. And now I'm picking up watermelons and I'm throwing them at these little buttons and these guys. And again, there's always robots and stuff everywhere trying to kill you. So I'm fighting robots.

And I'm like, what is happening like what is what is going on in this game like i'm kind of having fun guys did i just find my new favorite game what is this feeling it legitimately like was this weird like creeping feeling where i went from like this is a kid's game to like, dude, this is actually like a pretty darn fun platformer. And I'm exploring these levels. I like, again, I got to jump over eight moving platforms that are now rotating around, you know, and sliding back and forth. And I'm like, well, this is appealing to my desire for a challenge. And then I made it over. And then I have to make this really hard jump. But if I make it, I get a golden spatula, guys. And then I'm like, you know, I might have failed it like two times.

And then I did it. I'm like, yeah, got that golden spatula. Oh, goodness. That's awesome. So you mentioned like all of a sudden now you're playing as patrick is it where you can swap in between any character at any time or are there like specific levels that are made for certain characters so how does that work what's really cool in this is it does introduce you to patrick and then it says hey patrick is has a couple abilities that spongebob doesn't have he can

pick up heavy things and he can like ground pound a little bit harder kind of thing. He does like a belly flop instead. His main thing is being able to pick things up and it's like, okay, well that opens up a few puzzle levels. So now I'm like, oh,

okay. So now I've got platforming levels. Like now I'm on a level where I have to solve puzzles. And there was one level where it was almost like the old game mousetrap. It was in Barnacle Boys and Merman's Lair where you had to, it was almost like a pinball machine. It was really weird, dude. It was like you had to summon this ball by hitting a button. The ball starts rolling down this track and you have to run to these different areas to keep the ball moving down the track. So you have to run over to one area. Actually, you're not Patrick, you're SpongeBob in this part, but you have to like blow a bubble and hit this

thing. And then that spins an arm so that the ball can then get scooped up by a spoon and deposited over on the other side of the track. But now you got to hurry up. You only got like a few seconds to, to like hit this button with an ability that you have so that it will then like the track will lower down and the ball continues. And then you have to run halfway across the level as fast as you possibly can to jump on this little switch so that this track rotates, dude, it like this level was nuts. It took me probably seven or eight tries to beat this level. But the whole time I'm like, this is a cool puzzle. Like I, you know, because when I failed, it was kind of my fault. Like I got tied up or I didn't time it right.

Or any of these things. And this is where it was literally like this game, this game's got some chops to it, man. Like there's, there's some difficulty here. Guys, the best part of this whole thing was when I got to SpongeBob's dream.

Oh, this is, I can only imagine. This is weird, dude. You're in this dream world, but I'll tell you what, I have not had this much fun in a platformer game since I can remember. Yo, these puzzles were hard, dude. I mean, hard.

I was sweaty palmed. There are rotating blocks that have spikes on every side, except for one. They are elevating and descending and moving side to side while you're trying to time it so that you can jump on the one side that doesn't have the spikes. There's an enemy that's shooting at you. You make it up to there, you kill him. Then you got to like do these crazy jumps. At one point you're on on this weird, trippy music scale with notes that are constantly just floating down this music scale like a lazy river.

But they're scattered out. And you have to jump and then double jump between every one. But it is the most precise landing you could imagine. And then every third note will kind of shiver and then fall. And if you with, you have to start all over. So this was like the pinnacle of like, I was in the zone. My kids came and I'm like, don't talk to me. Don't talk to me right now. I'm halfway through this music thing. I can't miss this job. Like, you know, like, like, and I loved it. I love. And I was like, dude, that is the moment where I went, guys, this is not the SpongeBob I was expecting, dude.

Like I loved every second of that stupid dream level because it killed me 400 different ways. But I was so determined to make it that it just like it drew me like no game has in a long time and this is what i remember about the old days when games were hard you know what i mean yeah don't don't get me wrong there's very kiddy parts of spongebob but there are parts where i was like yes like this is like nintendo days you know and yeah i, it caught me way off guard. I think you're making Joff a very happy man.

I think so. He's very... I was going to say, I never, after playing the 40 minutes I played before, you know, we started recording, just kind of get a little familiar with it.

I never would have thought. I was excited. I was like, oh, this is cool. It's taking me back. I never would have thought Josh would have been able to talk me into like being super excited to play this dude i'm kind of i kind of want to really check it out now like get in some depth with it never in a million

years dude did i think this game would take the turn that it took with me and like that's not like there's these like um almost race levels where you are like racing down a slide and you're legitimately it's like it's like a racing game like spongebob surfing on his tongue don't get me wrong it's still spongebob but like you have to whip around these hard turns and you got to jump over these opticals and if you whiff you fall and then you got to restart the race and then i'm getting into these crazy because they're time trials, right? And so it's like, you have to beat Lobster Man's time or to get the golden spatula. So now it's like, I'm looking for shortcuts. So I'm jumping from one track to another to take these shortcuts now.

And I think I'm being all smooth and smart. And it's like, oh, that's actually a longer route. And some of these were super hard. I did some of these stupid races probably 10 times, but every single attempt, I was like, I'm getting faster, boys. I'm getting faster. Like, I'm going to do it this time. I'm going to do it. Oh, I missed that turn.

Dang it. Okay, just one more time. One more time, and then I got it this time. There's a ton of variety to this game that I was absolutely not expecting and loved every second of it. I think there's also something to be said for going into a game with very tempered expectations. Yeah.

Like that's just full stop. That should be the attitude of every game. As hyped as we all are for Helldivers 2, which is coming out right around the corner, I'm really trying hard to just be like, you know what? It's not a guaranteed home run. I'm just going to expect five to six hours of fun gameplay. If it's anything above that, I'll just consider it playing with house money. And sometimes I think that really goes a long way. Just having low expectations and let the game surprise you where it will, sometimes that's just the way to do it. This is the perfect example of that

because I did not know what to expect. I had very, very low expectations. And every time this game introduced some cool new race, some cool new puzzle, some cool new level, some insanely hard jump puzzle. Every time that happened, I felt like a kid again, like just kind of giddy, like determined to beat this challenge. Every time I'd fall, like I'd, I'd yell like, no.

And my wife would kind of snicker in the next room. My kids would come in and they'd, they'd be like, dad, are you playing SpongeBob? And I'm like, yeah. And they'd be like,

how is it? And I'm like, it's actually not bad. You guys, I'm kind of having fun with it. And they just kind of shake their heads and walk away. Get away, get away. Yeah, I think you're right, Paul, that going into this,

not knowing what to expect, not having the nostalgia factor either, right? Like that's the big kicker is Joff wanted to know, is it nostalgia or is this just a good video game? I didn't have the nostalgia for it because I've never played SpongeBob before. Now I do have some nostalgia for the old days of gaming. And again, this is kind of a genre that's kind of a dead genre. So there definitely was a part where I felt a little at home on some of this stuff because I hadn't experienced that in a long time. But that didn't mean that it was carrying the game. The gameplay was carrying the game. Oh, yeah.

That's really good to hear. Not just pure nostalgia. All right. Well, let's go ahead and take our last break, and then we'll come back and talk a little bit about boss fights. All right. So, Josh, you mentioned about fighting fighting one boss which was the king jellyfish how many total boss fights do you think there are in this game are there quite a few i'd say there's

five or six okay you know how different are they all do they like they're pretty different to be honest um you know one very simple the first guy, really easy. There's a boss fight where you're getting just hordes and hordes of monsters thrown at you and you have to go kill these like monster generator things. But to get to those monster generators, you have to kill enough of the monsters down below to make these platforms kind of appear and raise up. It's actually parts of a hamburger. And so you got to like, you know, the lettuce kind of slides out. Now you can jump on the lettuce and you kill some more monsters. And now the tomato slides over kind of thing. That was kind of fun.

It was actually pretty tough because you just got to survive these waves long enough to actually be able to then get to the platforms. You fight like a giant Mecca SpongeBob kind of near the end of the game. There's just different mechanics to each one. Now, the mechanics of the game sometimes are simple. And I will be honest, it was neat that there was just this random boss fight level. You didn't even have to progress through an entire level. You just zoned in and it's like, oh, this is a boss fight.

Like, okay, just kind of out of the blue. Nice. They weren't really hard, to be honest. It was a neat change of pace, like a neat flavor. They weren't difficult, but it was just kind of cool to just have them randomly thrown at you from time to time. I mean, I think I beat everyone, if not the first try by like on the second try. So they weren't really difficult, but it did just add again, added another layer to the game. That's like, this is more than

just collecting these golden spatulas it's cool that there's just this random boss fight kind of thrown in yeah now whenever i think of spongebob i'm just going straight to the tv show and the comedy i have always said it's for me it's it's SpongeBob and Bluey are the two greatest kid shows ever. And SpongeBob, I've always said, is the funniest kid show ever made. How much of that actually pulls through into the game? Would you say this game is like a comedy platformer, or does it only have minor comedy elements? This is a criticism for me because I did not find the humor land at all. And I don't know if it's just because you're playing a video game and there's not a ton of time to develop a plot or a story or a lot of humor in that regard. So it just could be that I'm old and grouchy at this point too. You know what I mean? But it's like, there were a few moments where you're talking to one character or, you

know, there's some kind of banter or you're on a level and something funny is supposed to happen or something like that. And it's just like, I'll be honest, I was kind of expecting a little bit more from the humor department just because I like SpongeBob the cartoon and it makes me laugh sometimes and things like that. But I feel like the few times they tried it in the game, it just kind of whiffed. I mean, it's more just these are characters that you're familiar with, and SpongeBob is talking to Patrick, and Patrick's an idiot. And it's like, okay, we get it. Patrick's dumb, right? Like, okay. But there wasn't enough time for them to develop the jokes or the humor. And so for me, that was actually a big miss for this game.

I don't think I laughed like once, like while playing this. Yeah, honestly. And I kind of expected differently. I like, if you would ask me before I would have gone, oh, this game is probably going to be funny, but it's probably going to suck. And instead, like this game is a lot of fun, but the humor kind of sucks. I'm a little surprised to hear that. Like I was trying to remember other platform games based on TV shows that were on GameCube. Simpsons Hit and Run is one of my all-time favorite games. Yeah, we played so much of that. So much. It's like GTA Simpsons, right? Yep. And that game was packed with humor from beginning to end. It had jokes from the show. I mean, and I wasn't even a huge Simpsons fan. And I remember dying from laughter, just hearing random quotes from like Ralphie,

where he's like, my cat's breath smells like cat food. And like that stuff was constantly peppered in throughout Hit and Run. Talk about a game that I've wanted to see remastered. Everyone's been asking for that for decades. I don't know if we'll ever get it. I'm very sad to hear that there wasn't more comedy because SpongeBob is just so well suited for it. So now do we think, here's the deal though. July 17th, 1999 is when SpongeBob debuted. Josh, you were like, you were late in high school, right? And I'm not trying to mess with your age.

Josh is out of high school in 99. I was out of college in 99. Exactly. Okay, so is SpongeBob the nostalgia or the comedy from when you were a kid going to land in the game? Is it going to hit? Dude, I legitimately got into a Sponge spongebob phase like two years ago where i was watching a good bit of spongebob again and i like it like i i mean i'm a big kid you guys know that so i think it was just the game like honestly i think the game was just

i don't think at number one it tried very hard and when it did try it just felt a little out of place or maybe forced or it just didn't land for me gotcha so i was looking up the metacritic score of this game the original game on gamecube is a 71 from critics and then the rehydrated version is actually lower it's a 68 from critics what do you feel like this game is really underrated given those scores because that's that's actually pretty low i definitely think it's underrated um i i mean there's just there's so much variety to the levels they're you know not only from like a graphical standpoint but just a challenge standpoint. And again, some levels were pretty easy. Like there, like the, I kind of explained it like there's these puzzle levels, there's these massive levels where you're just running around trying to actually find the golden spatulas.

There's hard platformer levels where you have to actually, you know, be super on point to get things. There's, uh, you know, the, the, the racing levels where you have to beat these time trials and things like that. There's just a really good bit of variety. The graphics, plenty fine. I mean, it looks like a rainbow puked all over your screen every time, but I don't mind that. It's super colorful. That's fine. The controls were actually surprisingly good, which I will say is a huge thing because with some of the difficulty, if the controls sucked, oh man, I would have raged so hard,

but they were super crisp and on point for me. I don't, I'll be honest, maybe this is like people that liked it on the GameCube. You know how the people are mad when it's like the snake guy with the upcoming delta and they're mad because he looks too real now yeah he looks different right like is that why people are i don't know i'll be honest i think that score is drastically low did you just did you just say the snake guy i don't because he said the snake it's not snake he's a snake eater

master snake chief snake oh my solid snake liquid? Master snake? Chief snake? Oh, my gosh. Solid snake? Liquid snake? Chief snake. Venomous snake? Why do all these guys think snake? That snake guy. Ryan's never been more upset. I caught that one real quick.

I'm like, hold on a second. You know what? I bet Josh remembers the name of the girl who can't speak. Oh, I sure do. From the Metal Gear Solid universe. Yeah, I sure do. Interesting. So I don't know if you have any other questions

that you want to throw out there, Ryan. The only one I could think of was, do you have any weapons in this game? Or is it just purely avoiding enemies? Or are you jumping on stuff? Yeah, so you do. Because you're fighting, again, I mean, I talk about the level design. But in every level, you're facing robots.

And they're not necessarily a challenge. But sometimes it's a robot that has a rocket launcher. And so you've got to be aware when you're making that jump. You better time it when that rocket's not flying at you. Or there's a robot that has a shield around him. And so you've got to break the shield first, then you can kill the robot. There's just like, how are you doing that? Do you have a weapon?

They do. So SpongeBob has a net that he can kind of swipe and he also gets a cruise missile. It's a cruise bubble. You can bowling bubble as SpongeBob. So you actually have like multiple ways of fighting these robots. Patrick can do his really strong belly slam. He can just kind of whap things with one of his little starfish is that an arm it's not a tentacle right starfish

arms it's an arm arm yeah for patrick it's an arm yeah um so you can kind of whap him with that you get to be sandy in this and she's got a lasso which is like the best weapon in the game because she just one shots everything with this lasso, but then she can like Sandy karate chop and kick things. So karate. Yeah. So it's like, there's like each, each character has like three different ways of like fighting things,

which is really cool. Oh, okay. I like that. Yeah. Well, yeah. Any other moments,

any, anything else from this game that kind of stood out to you, Josh, that we haven't covered yet? No, I mean, I think I've, I'll just go back to that dream world. It's a little bit later in the game.

It's probably in the last quarter of the game. But dude, give me a game like that nonstop. And I am just a pig in mud, man. Like that was a fun, fun level to the point where it's like, if I play the next time I play a platformer, it better be like that because that's honestly what I'm going to compare it to. Well, that's what it shows is that you're playing a game that's 20-something years old, and this one level just blew your mind.

That's all we want. We want to have fun. We don't play these games for any other reason other than to just disconnect with the world and just have fun we want to enjoy ourselves so for them to create something like that like it shows kind of future game game developers what they should do so yeah this this is uh it's one of those things and i i got the same feelings as far as just man bring you back to that that nostalgia of that 3d platformer. And then wasn't it,

um, in, uh, Banjo Kazooie, it was like, instead of the spatulas, you had to get the feathers. Yeah.

Yeah. So yeah, yeah. It was just way right away. Yeah. Right away. It just took me back. So I'm definitely,

I'm interested to play some more. I'm sure my son is going to just hound me to like, hey, so that SpongeBob game, are we going to try that out or what? The funny thing about this game is I checked. I have 10 hours in SpongeBob. That's all playtime. And I mean, I did a couple of little extra things

on the sides because I was legitimately just having fun. I didn't just try to beeline it straight to the end. So it took me, I have 10 hours of playtime. I will say that I don't think the game truly opened up for me until probably two to three hours in, like it starts off very simple, very kiddy. And that's when I kind of went, Oh no. But the longer I played, the more challenge I saw. And again, it's not like it just continuously ramps up. It does kind of give you breathers here and there, but at that point, the variety that they throw at you, the different biomes that they give you, the different kinds of challenges and puzzles and stuff, it really just created a very fun gameplay loop for me. But I could see somebody like only playing for like

90 minutes and then just going like yeah this game's kind of simple like you know it's not it's not hard it's not super interesting or anything like that but it it it really did ramp up so i had to pull up this level just so i could kind of get a sense of what you're talking about the dream level the dream yeah yeah yeah so you you didn't include the fact that you also play in sandy's dream where everything is texas flags oh yeah absolutely this is hysterical everything is you got a rope swing yeah it's it's like i don't know if you guys remember the old bionic commando but you better not miss grabbing one of those little things with your lasso because you'll just fall oh this, this is so funny. Everything's just covered in red, white, and blue

with the Texas state and stars everywhere. And yeah, you also go in Squidward's dream. Squidward's is the music one that was hard, dude. Yeah, Mr. Krabs. It's like a fever dream, but it's like a cool platformer fever dream where you just got to go from one to the other and you got to be on point, man.

Whoa, what about me? no plankton no plankton huh no karen no karen's dream karen oh my karen oh man well you know i gotta say i'm i'm pleasantly surprised that this game clicked with you, Josh. I had a feeling that it wasn't going to be all awful. I think in my head, I was thinking kind of like how you said the first hour was just so simplistic and easy. I felt like that was going to be the first five hours. And I thought that it might've been so long that it might lose you along the way. But it sounds like the difficulty curve is actually like surprisingly good for adult players. And maybe that's why so many people didn't rate it high because if you buy it for a kid,

it's probably too hard. That's the one, like, I'm not sure who this game is for. Like it's for joff. Well, I mean, but it's for me.

Like, I mean, honestly, because like, if like Ryan, I, you know, it's like,

I don't know how, I mean, he's pretty good at games, but it's like i don't know how i mean he's pretty good at games but it's like dude at some point like he might get frustrated right and he's gonna be like dad come help me with this race i can't beat this race keep running out of time or i can't beat this puzzle so then it's like i but then if you're just a grown-up that there's parts that are kind of easy and then you're kind of like oh yeah this isn't the best and it's kind of all over the place with the difficulty level. So I'm not, I don't know who it caters to, to be honest.

The pacing is a little kind of up and down. Okay. Yeah. That'll be fun. Well, to close out our show, we've got one last segment where we like to take a look at our leaderboard. So for listeners out there who don't

know, you can go to videogamerspod.com. There's a tab for leaderboards. And each of us, whenever we play a game, if we've played it enough, we place it on our leaderboard. Where does the game rank against every other game that we've done a deep dive of? So Josh, you are currently sitting around 106 games here. I did go back to our pre-dive episode, and here's what you had to say, Josh, when you had to guess where this was going to end up. You said, if the game is going to click and I really can enjoy it for what it is, the silliness of SpongeBob, I'm probably going to like it more than people think. But if it hasn't aged well it's going

to feel like a chore you kind of basically said there's no real middle ground is kind of what you were trying to get at you said that you thought that your love of spongebob would not overcome poor gameplay and ultimately you thought you would place it at 78 out of 106 on your leaderboard now the irony here is that you thought it would be the silliness of spongebob you would place it at 78 out of 106 on your leaderboard now the irony here is that you thought it would be the silliness of spongebob you would like but you're saying that's kind of almost not there it actually is the gameplay that seems to kind of shine yeah absolutely so taking a look at your 106 where where do you think you're gonna put battle for bikini bottom i i can tell you this it's gonna be a lot higher than 78 this

game wow surprised me dude it surprised me 69 and it yeah higher than 69 um which is humanity is that where i have humanity oh yeah that's all right um i i will i will admit i was pleasantly surprised and i was almost resistant to it because I was like, guys, there's no way. I'm really liking this game as much. Like, come on. My kids were coming in and they'd be like, you playing Spy? And I'm like, and they'd be like, you're having fun with this, aren't you? And I'm like, I actually am. This is not bad at all.

You know what? I am. Yeah. And so it was weird. It was a weird thing for me to be like, I have to admit that I'm having fun with this game. Like there's not, uh, you know, we said it at the very beginning of the show, we're going to rate games honestly. And I know there's people out there that are going to be like, this dude's crazy. I can't believe he's put SpongeBob at this point, but I am going to put it at 45, which is going to bump Fortnite down one. That is huge praise for a game that is called SpongeBob Battle for Bikini Bottom Rehydrated. Guys, I just had a darn good time playing this game. And it surprised me.

You just blew Joff's mind. Dude, I got to say thank you to Joff, number one. And I know that both of you guys thought I was going to murder this game. And I did my best job to hide it from both of you. But the whole time, I was like, dude, I legitimately had a very good time playing this game. I thank you, Joff. It is not just nostalgia. I can say that. I will fully admit that maybe there is a tiny bit of bias from me because I loved the GameCube. I loved Nintendo. I like difficult games. I have not played a 3D platformer in forever. So yes, there is a little bit of that like,

oh, this is like, I remember this, you know? And it's like, yes, I'm going to lean a little bit to the favorable side based on those memories. But I just think this is a fun game, dude. I have a little bit of a theory for why you like it so much. Also. Now you and Joff both love to joke about how you have gamer ADD. Yes. And the clock is running from minute one that Josh puts on a game.

It is incredibly rare that Josh will put in more than 20 hours into a single player game. I think that's very fair. Yeah. So the fact that you can beat this game and be done somewhere around nine to 10 hours is probably about as long as you're normally willing to play a game. So do you feel like the length was also just about perfect? The length was perfect. The variety was also perfect. You know what I mean? Again, if this was just explore every level and jump a few plat, like climb up this little ledge and collect a spatula, but the fact that it was constantly throwing, Oh, here's a race level. Here's an exploration level.

Here's a jumping puzzle level. Here's a boss fight, you know? Um, Oh, now you get to be Sandy. And now you're doing this, like swinging from chandelier, Texas flag level. Like all of these different things really kept my gamer ADD very happy in that regard. So you might be exactly on point, Paul, you know, to, to say like, it just satisfies that it's graphical color overload at the same time. There's a thousand things happening on screen at once. Cause there's all those stupid little totems, even though they don't move, they just kind of look at you as you run by and stuff like that. Like, I think there just is that like formula that maybe did cater to that part of my brain and Joff's brain too. I would be very curious to be honest for somebody else to pick

this up and play it and then be like okay you two are stupid like this game sucks you know what i mean but i don't care because i had a good time playing it all i know is with you yeah you you've you sold me because talking about the dream level and then sandy's dream i'm like okay i gotta i gotta kind of check this out i gotta see what we're talking about here so you gotta earn your way there though ryan yeah well that shouldn't be too hard that shouldn't be too hard i did i will i will say paul hit it right you know the nail on the head i'm pretty sure that's it just hit all those marks for you where it's kind of akin back to those 3d platformers bring you back but then also

it's kind of revamped with some new graphics and stuff but it's still silliness and fun of spongebob but has a little bit of challenge to it so yeah i mean like i said you you sold me on it so hopefully some other people will pick it up too but dwarf made it really i that's why i want to give props to dwarf he was going to originally pick paul he reached out to me he's going to pick paul saw that mario 64 was in josh's top 10 said i want to switch to josh i said no problem at all and then we made that happen i think that was for the best because i think it landed a lot better with josh than it would have with Paul but I'm glad yeah and Paul's Paul's giving me the finger right now he's like he's like yep you're right because

if John if Joff had picked me would you have bought it Josh I don't think you would I don't think I would have bought it no I so how good that you were able to be forced into playing it guys this is and I know we say this but this is the beauty of what we do. Yeah. Like, I had to play SpongeBob. Like, and I get it. Our listeners are probably like, I don't really care about a SpongeBob episode. Paul, even in the beginning, was like, did you guys ever think we'd be doing a SpongeBob episode?

You know? And it's like, no. But look what happened, man. Like. I had a blast playing this game. Joff is probably happy as a clam right now. Like, yay. And it's like, Ryan's excited now. And it's just like, this is the beauty of games. This is the beauty of this hijack a host, this force a friend that we do. I absolutely love it because this would never have happened in my life dude i never would have picked up spongebob and then had this experience if it wasn't for this sometimes it's just best if you get forced yeah right i mean that's just how it works

so i think that wraps up everything here for spongebob i was also joking guys i don't see how we're gonna go a full hour on this just based on my gosh we have yeah we've gone a full hour because i was a little worried i was like is this game gonna be too simplistic are we gonna be done like 24 minutes in and like not know what to talk about so i'm glad that this worked out so well i'm glad that you got picked josh i'm glad we don't have to crush joff's dreams as a reminder to all our listeners you know if you do if you like what we do on the show and you want to help support us you know just go take a look at Patreon options. Even if you just sign up for a month or two, you can think of it as a tip to us.

I know I've said it a million times, but we're only able to continue doing the show because of support on Patreon. We do know that there's ads. It doesn't bring in a ton of money. Patreon is really what keeps us going. So if you want to take a look, you can do so at MultiplayerSquad.com. If you sign up for the legendary tier, you can pick a game just like Joff did. And also, you know, make sure to join our Discord community. I know that we do bring it up only every so often. There's a link in the episode description. If you don't know what Discord is, it's really just like a giant chat room. It's totally free. It does not make any money for

any of us. There's no ads inside Discord. It's just a great way to connect with the three of us and other listeners of the show. And we love fostering the community in there. It's all family-friendly. So whether it's kids or adults, everyone in there is welcome. And then I think that wraps everything up here for today. So we just want to say thank you to Joff once again. Thank you to everyone for listening. And until next time, happy gaming. Don't play this game and the Krusty Krab will be mine!

Joff, you're my boy. Thank you, man. All right. See you, everybody. everybody no this is about me