‘Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl’ Brings Back Childhood Memories With SpongeBob, Rugrats, Ninja Turtles & More
by Austen Chen
SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom (Image courtesy of THQ)
Want a more bizarre, more chaotic brawl game than Super Smash Bros.? Allow me to introduce to you Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, serving you nasty fights among characters from your childhood memories. Developed by Ludosity and Fair Play Labs, and published by GameMill Entertainment, the brawler will launch on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in Fall 2021.
The characters revealed in the trailer include:
- Michelangelo (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
- Leonardo (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)
- Nigel Thornberry (The Wild Thornberrys)
- Powdered Toast Man (Ren & Stimpy)
- SpongeBob SquarePants (SpongeBob SquarePants)
- Sandy Cheeks (SpongeBob SquarePants)
- Patrick Star (SpongeBob SquarePants)
- Oblina (Aaahh!!! Real Monsters)
- Lucy Loud (The Loud House)
- Lincoln Loud (The Loud House)
- Helga (Hey Arnold!)
- Reptar (Rugrats)
- Zim (Invader Zim)
- Danny Phantom (Danny Phantom)
From the character list, it seems like Nickelodeon will give us a wide range of options across eras. In the trailer, we see classic 1987-style Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles rocking in the game, rather than the version actually produced by Nickelodeon. Powdered Toast Man from Ren & Stimpy and Oblina from Aaahh!! Real Monsters will join the game as the representatives of the 1990s. And SpongeBob Squarepants will bridge the gap from the late 1990s to the 2000s, with The Loud House adding more modern colors to the brawl.
Besides familiar characters, the in-game levels are also made of nostalgia. They will be based on well-known scenes from Nickelodeon shows, such as Jellyfish Fields from SpongeBob SquarePants, and the Technodrome from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
While All-Star Brawl seems to echo many elements of Super Smash Bros., the gameplay system in All-Star Brawl is expected to be more mechanical and complicated. Instead of inheriting all the abilities from the characters at the start, you’ll be unlocking new moves and skills through each game, developing different combos along the way. And to ensure that complex mechanism does not induce lagging, the game’s developer has promised to implement rollback netcode, a lag-reduction technique for online multiplayer fighting according to Kotaku.
I do have to admit that I’ve never imagined innocent Spongebob fiercely and bloodily pummeling anyone, but, why not?
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