Play Game Boy Advance Video : Nicktoons Collection : Volume 1 Online

Nicktoons Collection Volume 1 came out for the Game Boy Advance in 2004, published by THQ. It was part of a wave of licensed games that tried to bring cartoon favorites to the handheld, letting you take SpongeBob and his friends on the go. This was before every show was instantly available to stream, so having these episodes in your pocket felt like a small novelty.

You don't control a character in the traditional sense; instead, you navigate through menus to select and watch episodes of shows like SpongeBob SquarePants, The Fairly OddParents, and Jimmy Neutron. The main objective is simply to choose an episode and view it from start to finish. The cartridge used a proprietary video compression to fit the content, which sometimes resulted in a lower resolution and a somewhat pixelated picture. Playback controls are basic, limited to play, pause, and stop. The pacing is entirely dictated by the episodes themselves, with no interactive elements or difficulty to speak of. It feels less like playing a game and more like operating a tiny, dedicated television that only gets a few specific channels.