What do you mean there's no SpongeBob Flash game TAS on this site? Time to fix that.

Hi everybody! I hope you're having a Happy New Year. I'm starting this year by submitting a TAS of a SpongeBob Flash game. SpongeBob was the king of official web browser games, so I'm pretty surprised nobody has attempted to submit a TAS of one of them.

This game is based of the Season 5 TV special Friend or Foe which tells the backstory of a young Mr. Krabs and Plankton as best friends, later turned enemies. The game consists of recovering pieces of the Krabby Patty secret recipe around a trash dump.

You play as young Mr. Krabs, jumping around and breaking blocks a-la Ice Climber. The lighter green blocks break apart when you're standing on them. In this TAS we use an in-game code to beat the game faster. By inputting the code "TENTACLES", you unlock a power up that, when obtained, instantly performs a fast super jump that breaks through blocks rather quickly. Sometimes there are open gaps where you can skip breaking at least 1 block, and land onto the next platform faster. On the second frame of Krabs's landing animation, you can jump again.

Krabs can grab Plankton to throw him around long distances. The intended use is to throw him through seaweed to grab powerups and bonuses, but in this TAS we have different plans. First off, in this holding Plankton state, Krabs's headbonking animation when hitting a solid ceiling is cancelled, which lets us move around again faster compared to normal, where we have to wait for the animation to finish. The other primary use for Plankton is to throw him far away to the recipe piece at the end. Doing this is faster than having Krabs grabbing it himself, even at a short distance.

When a level starts, I can buffer a jump and grabbing Plankton input to break the first block earlier, this is done in most levels, except for the last because I then would headbonk a ceiling. Krabs moves pretty slow horizontally, so I try to avoid that by jumping to blocks as early as I can... I did the best I could in that area. Though there are some instances when I walk and then jump through gaps, which is faster than breaking through blocks when I have the option.

I first made an earlier TAS where I didn't use the in-game code (mostly because I didn't realize what it did) and after testing it out later, I found out it could be faster to use that unlockable powerup. It ended up saving a little over 10 seconds over my previous attempt. Thanfully it wasn't to hard to redo the whole thing and it syncs just fine.

Thanks for reading!