SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom (GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox)

SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom
Developer: Heavy Iron Studios Publisher: THQ Platforms: GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox Released in US: October 21, 2003 Released in EU: November 28, 2003 This game has unused animations. This game has unused areas. This game has unused code. This game has a hidden developer message. This game has hidden developer credits. This game has hidden development-related text. This game has unused enemies. This game has unused objects. This game has unused graphics. This game has unused models. This game has unused cinematics. This game has unused items. This game has unused sounds. This game has unused text. This game has revisional differences. This game has anti-piracy features. This game has a notes page This game has a prototype article This game has a prerelease article

To do: Cleanup time. Find more unused content and any other version differences.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom is a game based on SpongeBob SquarePants. Plankton's robots have taken over Bikini Bottom, and SpongeBob, Patrick, and Sandy must stop them. Many regard it as one of the best SpongeBob SquarePants games for its gameplay, soundtrack, large worlds, and faithfulness to its source content.

In 2019 THQ Nordic announce that there will the a remake of this game for Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox One, and PC

It's also a gold mine of unused content.

Sub-Pages

Unused Levels Who were you expecting, Tiny Tim?

Unused & Hidden Objects I'm Easy Like Sunday Morning

Unused Textures A lot of early HUDs and a hidden credits screen.

Unused Animations I'm Walking, Krabby Patty, over to Squidward

Unused Audio I don't speak Italian.

Unused Text Welcome to my nightmare! Hie the hench though spongey freak.

Early Menu

Without the final version overlapping, the early pause menu is more visible.

You can get to the unused menu on the GameCube version by replacing the HIP and HOP files of a level with mnu3.hip and mnu3.HOP. Then, go to that level using the taxi. When you pause the game, it will take you to the menu, which has the misfortune of having the final menu overlapping the early menu. There's a lot of interesting stuff, such as Spanish task names and a reference to a scrapped level named "Glove World", which was later adapted into the Goo Lagoon Pier. A lot of the early menu graphics are used by it, too. The following video is a demonstration of the early menu.

Unused Videos

• 

  hilogo.bik

• 

  3logo.bik

There are two unused .bik files in the GameCube version, though disappointingly they're just logos that fade in and out. But hey, they're unused!

There are two unused .xmv files in the Xbox version, One is the logo video Heavy Iron used in their previous game Scooby Doo: Night of 100 Frights, and the other is the intro video also used in Scooby Doo: Night of 100 Frights (though this video only plays properly on an Xbox).

Hidden Developer Messages

Hidden within certain files are messages left for the developers during development.

Filename	Text
sbgcM.elf	(With apologies to Jim Morrison) This the end, my only friend, The End
boot.sdf	DON'T DELETE THIS, DAMMIT! This is the default texture, which gets used if there's no match in shadowlist.txt.
boot.sdf	The texture used by the heavenly thermonuclear aura FX. Do not delete me or Dan K will come and hurt you.
jf01_jellyfish_fields_jellyfisher.sdf	This dispatcher runs the button that rises out of the water when the shiny gate is opened.
jf04_jellyfish_fields_king_jellyfish.sdf	added 'demo' name for E3 demo - changed target to JF01
bb01_downtown_bb_streets.sdf	Once the rope wall is destroyed, this replaces the destructable with the simple object model of it destroyed.
gl01_goo_lagoon_lifeguard_towers.sdf	This timer turns the platform reflector halfway and runs the next two timers.
gl01_goo_lagoon_lifeguard_towers.sdf	This timer turns the platform reflector all the way over to the other side, it starts disabled and is enabled after the player presses either button.
gl03_goo_lagoon_pier.sdf	Drives springboard three down from the bungee to the deck.
hb01_hub_all_ext.sdf	This conditional tests to see if the player has defeated the Sandy Boss
hb01_hub_all_ext.sdf	This conditional tests to see if the player has defeated Patrick Boss
gl01_goo_lagoon_lifeguard_towers.sdf	This is the driver for all the objects in the path behind the castle.
gl03_goo_lagoon_pier.sdf	Drives springboard three down from the bungee to the deck.
gy04_graveyard_crashed_ship.sdf	Bubble Bounce on the Bounce Pad to return to the Entrance Area
sm02_sand_mtn_guppy_mound.sdf	I can make this track with all the tikis on it in 65 seconds without a problem, so I added 15 seconds to that time for the challenge.
gl03_goo_lagoon_pier.sdf	Drives springboard three down from the bungee to the deck.

sb.ini

sb.ini contains a bunch of configuration information for the game, its features, and more.

Value	Default	Action(s)
G.CheatSpongeball	0	Unknown
G.CheatPlayerSwitch	0	Allows the player to switch between characters at any time by pressing a direction on the D-pad.
G.CheatAlwaysPortal	0	"Can I always portal with the pause menu?"
G.CheatFlyToggle	0	Unknown
G.DisableForceConversation	0	NPCs don't force conversations with the player.

Likely used for debugging purposes- these values (when set to 1) would activate different cheats.

Unused Power-Up Configuration Info

Value	Default
G.SundaeTime	10.0
G.SundaeMult	1.5

Configuration information for the Sundae Powerup.

Value	Default
eSPECIAL_Slippers	0
eSPECIAL_LampShade	0
eSPECIAL_Spring	1
eSPECIAL_FootballHelmet	0
eSPECIAL_StickyBoots	0
eSPECIAL_LightningBolt	1
eSPECIAL_LightningBoltStun	0
eSPECIAL_Plungers	0
eSPECIAL_Shovel	0
eSPECIAL_Umbrella	0
eSPECIAL_BubbleGum	0
eSPECIAL_SoapBar	0
eSPECIAL_BlackKnight	0
eSPECIAL_FlowerPot	0
eSPECIAL_DivingHelmet	0

Leftover powerup configuration information from one of Heavy Iron's previous games, Scooby Doo: Night of 100 Frights.

Triggers

Boss Fight Triggers

Probably used for testing purposes- certain boss battles have invisible triggers that instantly end the battle upon the player touching them. Speedrunners exploit these triggers to save several minutes of gameplay during a speedrun.

To access some of these triggers, you will have to use a glitch called the "Cruise Boost" where you have to use the 'Cruise Bubble' and the 'Bubble Bowl' in the same frame against a wall. The result of this glitch is slightly increased movement speed, and the effect can be stacked multiple times. To cancel it you can either use the Cruise Bubble/Bubble Bowl, or get picked up by Hans.

SpongeBot SteelPants Phase 1

When SpongeBot SteelPants uses his "Karate Chop", if the player times it right (and SpongeBot chops it in the particular side), as soon as SpongeBob reaches the edge as SpongeBot chops the platform, the player will be catapulted into the air, hitting the trigger if they go high enough.

Prawn

Use the "Cruise Boost" trick to get out of bounds and reach the trigger above the entrance to the arena.

Flying Dutchman

Use the "Cruise Boost" trick to get out of bounds and reach the trigger above the entrance to the arena.

Alternate Levels

Please elaborate. Having more detail is always a good thing. Specifically: How would one tamper with some of the files and what would they need to modify to get them to spawn?

To do: Place some videos here that are the following: The game's native resolution A constant and good framerate Not the uploader's entire screen

In any boss fight that involves the boss spawning enemies, tampering with their files can cause the enemies to spawn instantly (including enemies that aren't used but are loaded when the battle starts).

The following levels have alternate variants:

• Jellyfish Fields (King Jellyfish Area)
• Poseidome
• Industrial Park
• Mermalair (Prawn Area)
• Chum Bucket Lab (Robot SpongeBob Area)

Anti-Cheating Checks

To do: Get a better understanding of how these work. Are these actually anti-piracy features, since they can be triggered by messing with the ISO?

Some levels in the game have anti-cheating checks, although they don't seem to affect much other than some of the player's interactions with objects. They are known to exist in Goo Lagoon and Bikini Bottom.

To do: There are more effects then this but I need to confirm them

Effects:

• Bikini Bottom: You will be unable to unlock levels you have not already unlocked, you can't buy a ticket for the theater if you have not already bought it, and you can no longer collect the golden spatula from the mission "Ambush at the Tree Dome".
• Goo Lagoon: The buttons that operate the reflectors no longer appear, the balloon children don't float around, and open golden spatulas do not appear.
• SpongeBob's Dream: The player can no longer collect any golden spatulas in Sandy's dream.
• Flying Dutchman's Graveyard: The golden spatula for the mission "A Path Through the Goo" can no longer be collected, and the player will be trapped in the cage upon attempting to collect it.

The cheating checks may be triggered by swapping around the .HIP/.HOP files in the game's ISO. However, this has not been confirmed.

Oddities

• A jump in the file names indicate there may have been a level planned between the Kelp Forest Swamp (kf02) and the Kelp Forest Cave (kf04), however there is no data whatsoever for kf03. It could have been an early version of the Cave that became broken, and replaced with the later version.
• The final area of the Flying Dutchman's Graveyard is internally named "graveyard_crashed_ship". However, in the previous level, SpongeBob saves the ship from Plankton's robots, and never crashes at any point. Perhaps the plot for that level was intended to go in a different direction?
• There is a SHIT.PLYR file in the boot.hip archive that seems to be an early version of the file used to place SpongeBob on the map. It lacks the identifier that tells the game to use his textures, so replacing a normal PLYR file with this one will give the results shown below.

• Using Dolphin (emulator) to run the game, go to View and click on Show Log. Everytime you would lose all of your underwear, collect underwear, or drown then respawn, this inappropriate message will show in the logs.

decrement time = 0 -- ass saved!

Version Differences

There are some graphical differences in the Xbox version of the game that the other versions don't have.

• The save select screen shows a "flythrough" of the area it was saved in, like those beginning the level.

GameCube	Xbox

The graphics are, overall, much better than the other versions, with higher quality textures and the lighting being significantly improved.

• The game runs at a slightly higher resolution than the other versions, and the framerate is more stable.
• This version supports 5.1 Dolby Digital audio, unlike the other versions, which only support stereo.
• The Flying Dutchman's eye lasers look slightly different, suggesting they were reworked.
• When the game loads a level it freezes whatever you are doing and bubbles appear, as opposed to the other versions, which go to a black screen with bubbles
• When using SpongeBob's Cruise Bubble, you get a slight distortion effect similar to what is seen in the IGN Prerelease gameplay video.
• A warning telling the player to not turn off their Xbox while saving was added.
• A message explaining kill plains and walking out of bounds were added.
• Saving no longer freezes the game for a few seconds.