After Super Mario 64 laid the blueprint for how a platforming game could work in 3D, it seemed like every developer rushed out to make their own 3D platformer. Those early years that followed were filled with games that showed the growing pains of defining the genre. Typically the biggest wart was a terrible camera, but eventually things smoothed out and 3D platformers came into their own. During the early 2000s and the next generation of consoles, 3D platformers became a mainstay on the Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Gamecube, with colorful characters and mainstream IPs featuring in their very own 3D platforming adventures.
One of the products of that time was SpongeBob Squarepants. A bonafide household name due to the animated show, SpongeBob was also the star of countless shovelware video games on every gaming platform imaginable. However, 2003 saw the release of SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, a 3D platformer for the home consoles of the time that actually wasn’t terrible. It’s a “collect-a-thon" style platformer meaning you’d need to explore every nook and cranny finding various items that would allow you to move further and further into the game. While noteworthy for not being total garbage like most licensed games, Battle for Bikini Bottom didn’t really do anything groundbreaking in the 3D platforming genre. It was just? pretty good.
In recent years there has been a resurgence in collect-a-thon platformers (You can pro...