The Game Awards 2021: Best Fighting Game Winner

Unlike other popular Nickelodeon cartoons such as The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius , SpongeBob SquarePants has also continually released new video games past what would have been considered its prime. Mobile games like SpongeBob: Patty Pursuit came out as recently as May 2020 . However, things really took off again for the character with SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Rehydrated , a remake of the fan-favorite 3D platformer from 2


Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl is one of the many Super Smash Bros . clones to have come out since the latter became one of the most popular fighting game franchises in the world. With a long history of games predating Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl , the game has picked and chosen mechanics and gameplay styles from other clones like Rivals of Aether to make it a unique title in the subgenre. What defines Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl ’s identity is its aggressive, fast-paced style and largely differing characters. Both of these traits make the experience of fighting with Nickelodeon’s most iconic characters a blast, but it also makes finding which ones to play difficult for players who are unfamiliar with fighting ga


As previously mentioned, SpongeBob was not the only Nickelodeon character to receive video games in the past. He could be considered just one part of the network's golden era going by a game like 2005's Nicktoons Unite! that paired SpongeBob with Danny Fenton, Timmy Turner, and Jimmy Neutron. While this trend has continued to some degree with things like the Nickelodeon Kart Racers series , it arguably turned a corner with Nickelodeon All-Star Bra


To reach the younger demographic, the developers could have filled this game entirely with current Nickelodeon characters. Essentially, SpongeBob SquarePants and The Loud House could have dominated the character ros


What a pleasant surprise that the game includes faces from throughout Nick's history . Players can expect to see fighters from The Wild Thornberrys , CatDog , Danny Phantom , the Avatar shows, and even Ren & Stimpy . Not only does this avoid recency bias, but it also means nostalgic parents might want to play the game with their k


Virtua Fighter 5: Ultimate Showdown reinvigorates the original release with updated graphics, utilizing Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio's Dragon Engine (from Yakuza , Judgment ) to enhance the visuals significantly. Outside of that, significant improvements to the online experience were appreciated by the competitive community, even if that meant the game utilized delay-based netcode instead of rollback netcode. However, these multiplayer improvements came at the cost of Ultimate Showdown 's singleplayer offering. Outside of the basic Arcade mode, there's not much on offer in Ultimate Showdown , which was never a huge deal for modern competitive fighting games any


Danny’s long limbs give his fast moves tons of range, enabling him to make long strings of combos. These combos are very simple, too, as most of them begin with a string of light upward aerial attacks. At higher percentages, Danny can end these combos with any of his strongs or his light downward aerial attack that spikes, which can let new players find easy ways to take sto


And damn, do these devs love Melee. The respect it has for the second Smash game is bashing you in the face in every fight. Everything is lightning fast and every move counts. There are no items, no final smashes, no gimmicks alongside the fighting - All-Star Brawl trusts its players enough to find fun in zipping across the map and beating the hell out of each other as cartoon characters. It doesn’t need to be a party game, it’s confident that fighting games can be just as fun on their


Fighting games sometimes have all of their characters function the same. While this helps with accessibility and balance, it doesn't do much to differentiate combatants who should feel unique. Otherwise, what's the point of including different charact


Whether SpongeBob SquarePants: The Cosmic Shake or Nickelodeon All-Star brawl Stars Missions will be "good games" when they release is still unknown, but it's easy to have hope for their successes. Nickelodeon is jumping hard into the licensed games market with pushes to its fans' nostalgia that feels like more than just a marketing gimmick. It seems like the developers care about the properties they're adapting, and want to present consumers with something they can also appreciate. Regardless of their success, it's hopefully a good sign for how licensed game development evolves from here, be it for Nickelodeon properties or otherw


Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 's SpongeBob shares Super Smash Bros. 's __ Mario's function: he is the baseline, middle-of-the-road character who exists to teach players the fundamentals of the game. SpongeBob’s aerials, specials, and projectile introduce newer players to the important concepts of spacing, recovery, and combos. The moves themselves also come with very little weaknesses, which in turn allows players to try them out with little r