The logo I ripped from the archive
I found a Japanese account on the Internet Archive whose username is “小須磨オトツヤ” (Kosuma Ototsuya), that has previous posted Japanese-translated ports/emulators of older games like Banjo-Kazooie, Rayman and even Gex. The old link for the game is here: https://archive.org/details/suponji-bobu-no-boken For some reason, they posted simple ripped OST tracks that sounded pretty good despite how crunchy and compressed the audio is for a unknown game at the time, which only a small couple of tracks (4-6) of them contained slightly unsettling music, like that game “Piglet’s Big Game”, which had some almost eerie environments and audio tracks for a kids game! The soundtracks came from what people believed to be a weird experimental Japanese bootleg Spongebob game, that was a mixture of 3D gameplay similar to the Nintendo 64, and dialogue/character images similar to the DS. Although the Spongebob Squarepants franchise never had a full 3D platformer Spongebob game during the time (2000s), especially for the N64 but the soundtracks for it still exist. The game was titled “スポンジボブの冒険” which translated to “suponji bobu no bōken” in Romaji, and “The Adventures of Spongebob” in English. The first soundtrack titled “メニューテーマ壱” or “menyūtēma ichi” in Romaji, translating to simply “Menu Theme 1”/“Menu Theme One” had a description of what the game was intended to be, whilst fully in Japanese. The track was fairly simple, just a dainty and fun menu selection song. The description for the games basis English translation, done by me, reads: “The Adventures of Spongebob is a single player platform game from 2003 where Spongebob Squarepants is having an amazing day, but Plankton gets his grimy hands on some sort of magic pencil that allows him to make living doodles come to life, and decides to draw versions of Spongebob, Patrick, Squidward, Mr. Krabs and Sandy Cheeks. Plankton believes if he makes these doodles, they can infiltrate the Krusty Krab so he can sneak in and steal the secret formula for the patties… Until the doodles go against him and feel like they are only made for one purpose, and fear they’ll be erased after the job is done, so the doodles run off and cause havoc. The doodles are lead by a very cunning and smart doodle version of Patrick; Doodle Patrick. Doodle Patrick, or Doodle Pat, is the major and main antagonist, having his friends Doodlebob, Squid Doodle, Doodle Krabs and Doodle Sandy aid along his ways. The game consists of the player to beat down all the doodles alongside mini doodle enemies until the final boss, Doodle Patrick, is the only one left. Once defeating him, Bikini Bottom is saved from the putrid doodles!” The game was never released to the public, and was quickly reeled in as Nickelodeon found it was a direct rip-off made without license, which lead to a fine but it wasn’t documented anywhere as this was a small fine, despite the creator/company did mention it was a fan-made game. The game has since been rediscovered by me, and I ported it to an emulator so people can play it without needing to find a rare Nintendo 64 cartridge, or have to buy the machine itself (not posted yet.) The company that made it, was a small studio called “Yuji Software”, or “悠二ソフトウェア”, who was a small company only known in small parts of Japan like Shirakawa-go, Narai-Juku and others, that made a couple of test game using the semi-same creative style as older low poly games, just less whacky. Yuji Software was known to see popular things in America, and makes fan-made bootlegs of them to gain more popularity in the small area of Japan they reside in, which lead to why the game was so forgotten as it didn’t get released to a lot of people and not only from copyright claim. The company wasn’t crazy on posting the stuff, just occasional rip-offs they sold during festivals as a “prize”. I found this game out of nowhere, and decided to play it for the heck of it as it also was accompanied with the soundtracks on the archive. The game was pretty fun and if it didn’t directly say in the start of the games boot-up, I would’ve thought it was real despite knowing the franchise never had any N64 games. Though it’s weird, the game just had a lot of bugs and weird secrets hidden in some unexpected walls. It was just a genuinely weird and bootleg that played decently well, despite the semi-awful modelling and such, since it was an old game. The graphics could even be compared to the work of Osamu Sato/佐藤理, who is known mostly for “LSD: Dream Emulator” and “Rolypolys no Nanakorobi Yaoki”. It was like a Spongebob bootleg fever dream, some could say. Though it wouldn’t be a “creepy” game, there were some kinda disturbing scenes in secret if you explore the levels, nothing horrific but just weird things like misused textures, T-posing models and such. I wanted to document the weird game I found because of how cool it was, but because of the traction I accidentally gave it, Kosuma took down the game to avoid getting a strike by Nickelodeon and others involved with the creation of Spongebob Squarepants, which is stupid because why would you post it to later realize you could get a strike? The game had some unsettling moments where some doodle enemies wouldn’t die/avoid getting hit by “scuffed hit-boxes”, and even some Bikini Bottomites would just say nothing during dialogue, or just one form of Hiragana than a full sentence of full Japanese, but it was probably because the game wasn’t an official thing and the studio was small, so it looked unpolished and goofy. Even after the takedown of the port, Kosuma has never resurfaced and traces of them can’t be found, besides some screenshots I don’t think I’m allowed to share for simple reasons like copyright, but I don’t know if Nickelodeon still cares about it. Some say, that a couple Japanese folk got a cartridge for their child to play for their birthday, and some people on Ebay sold cartridges for it, but this hasn’t been confirmed and I think it’s a hoax. I just thought it’d be cool to talk about this game! If anyone finds Kosuma, contact me at my burner email: meronjuuoteniireyou@gmail.com