The recent THQ Nordic 10th anniversary stream gave gamers a lot of pleasant surprises for the future of the publisher. From the announcement of a Destroy All Humans! 2 remake, to another entry in the MX vs. ATV series, the show had a little something for everyone. For fans of a particularly porous sea sponge, THQ Nordic also unveiled SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake. Serving as a follow-up to SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated, the remaster of an early 2000s cult classic, SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake already has fans of the Nickelodeon cartoon buzzing for more information.
While there was no gameplay at the THQ Nordic stream, the cinematic trailer for SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake still gave fans a very good idea of what to expect. Between all of the interdimensional travel and mayhem, The Cosmic Shake's reveal placed a great emphasis on some of the most memorable moments from the SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon. It was a great bit of fan service for longtime fans, and it showed just how willing The Cosmic Shake is to lean into SpongeBob's presence as a pop culture icon.
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake Knows Its Audience
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake did not pull any punches with its references to popular moments from the cartoon. The entire reveal trailer was set to David Glen Eisley's "Sweet Victory," famously featured in the 2001 episode "Band Geeks," and the references continued from there. Everything from Mystery the seahorse to caveman SpongeBob made an appearance, making for a trailer that paid tribute to the cartoon while also making a very smart marketing decision.
SpongeBob SquarePants has been around for a long time, and many of the show's best moments are believed by some fans to be from its first decade on the air. With the rise of Internet memes, many of those moments transcended the cartoon and became immortalized via Twitter and Reddit threads. The Cosmic Shake recognizes this, and uses these recognizable moments to bring in older fans of the series while relying on the SpongeBob name for younger fans. The upcoming Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl does something similar with its referential movesets, grabbing as many eyes as possible with the power of memes.
SpongeBob Has Come A Long Way Since Battle for Bikini Bottom
The amount of references that The Cosmic Shake makes in its reveal is also indicative of how much SpongeBob SquarePants has changed over the years, especially since his last major game. When SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom released almost twenty years ago, SpongeBob as a brand was very different. Many of the memorable moments that fans know and love hadn't happened yet, and the game had to rely on largely original storytelling that could vary in quality. Now that over twenty years of cartoons have taken place, along with a massive surge in pop culture popularity, The Cosmic Shake has a strong foundation to stand on.
SpongeBob SquarePants has been all over the place lately, something many fans of the show are currently relishing in. The remaster of Battle for Bikini Bottom was a great return to form for the fry cook, and the many SpongeBob characters present in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl show how wildly popular the cartoon still is after all of this time. The Cosmic Shake certainly looks like it intends to shake things up as the name implies, but the slew of referential SpongeBob moments shown so far should give fans something to identify with.
SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake is currently in development for PC, PS4, Switch, and the Xbox One.