GameCenter - Issue 70 - 31

F IS FOR
FRIENDS
WHO DO
STUFF
TOGETHER

and conquer platforming challenges.
And in the vein of classic 3D platformers, you'll also be collecting-a
lot. SpongeBob can collect 100
Golden Spatulas (think Super Mario
64's Stars or Odyssey's Moons),
dozens of lost socks, and thousands
upon thousands of shiny objects
that are imaginatively named "Shiny
Objects." If romping around colorful
levels and hoovering up everything
in sight is your thing, Rehydrated will
certainly scratch that itch.
Of course, humor is also integral
to SpongeBob's enduring popularity. Since Battle for Bikini Bottom
released not long after the cartoon
premiered, it only had a limited pool
of jokes and stories from the show
to reference. Almost 17 years later,
the team is able to refer to a much
deeper canon. "When updating the
game, we tried to bring out all the
wonderful little details that were already part of the original game, while
at the same time adding little nods to
the seasons that were aired after its
release," Kreuch said.
Working on Rehydrated also allowed Purple Lamp to add in content

may/june 2020

that had been planned for 2003's
Battle for Bikini Bottom but ultimately
left on the cutting room floor. In the
original, you could unlock a piece of
concept art showing a fight against
a Robo-Squidward boss, and unused
files that sleuthing fans discovered
on the disc pointed to an entire level
based in Patrick's dream, which,

A Robo-Squidward
boss cut from the
original game makes
a comeback in
Rehydrated's co-op
mode.

In addition to the remade single-player
campaign, SpongeBob SquarePants:
Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated
also introduces a totally new mode:
two-player cooperative multiplayer. Since
the original game's levels were designed
around solo play, the team chose to make
multiplayer a standalone feature. The
basic concept is a riff on Gears of War's
Horde mode (though a much more familyfriendly version).
"You battle all the robots from the main
game, wave after wave, across more than
20 islands," explained Martin Kreuch, a
producer on the game with THQ Nordic.
With support for both couch co-op and
online play, you'll be able to strategize and
brawl your way to survival with friends
near or far.
Better still, multiplayer brings the roster
of playable characters up to seven, adding
Mr. Krabs, Gary, Squidward, and RoboPlankton to the mix. "They all have their
own movesets and attacks, straight out of
the TV series," Kreuch said. "For example,
Mr. Krabs fights with the swordfish skull
from the episode 'One Krabs Trash.'"

31
GameCenter - Issue 70

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of GameCenter - Issue 70
