SpongeBob Speedrunner Offers A Bounty To Glitch Hunters

Spongebob Squarepants Speedrun Glitch
(Image credit: THQ)

Speedrunning can be a taxing pastime. It's not like you just pop in a game, do your due diligence and break a record. It requires examining nearly every single pixel of the game to find ways to exploit it in order to speedrun it to the best of your abilities. Well, in the case of SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman, one speedrunner is willing to pay to find a faster way.

Over on the Speedrun sub-Reddit, user Cosmeme has a post up requesting the services of glitch hunters, bug finders, and exploit examiners. There's a bounty totaling $100 for anyone who is able to find two specific glitches for the game SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman, which is an old 3D adventure game that came out way back in 2002 for the PS2 and GameCube.

The title, which was based on the Nickelodeon cartoon, was like the typical sandbox adventure title that was oh-so-popular back in the day, like the GTA games on the PS2 and OG Xbox, or Star Fox Adventures or Super Mario Sunshine, or a number of other sandbox-oriented adventure titles. In particular, Cosmeme needs help with two glitches, for which they were willing to pay $50 each for the glitch to the person who discovers said glitches.

While it might seem like an easy $100 to just find glitches, Cosmeme explains that they're looking for very, very specific glitches in SpongeBob SquarePants. The first glitch is to find a way to get the Reef Blower without having to collect all 100 jellyfish from Jellyfish Fields. It's explained that collecting all 100 jellyfish is tedious and boring and adds an extreme amount of time to the play session. If there were some way to get the Reef Blower without having to go through the tedium of collecting all the jellyfish, it would reduce the time significantly.

The second glitch centers around the Plankton Tile. The glitch required here is to get the Plankton Tile without having to complete all of the steps necessary for acquiring it, thus allowing players to reach the final level of the game easily. In fact, the belief is that the tile may be stored in the statue or could be stored out of bounds.

In both instances, Cosmeme is not against finding glitches that would allow players to travel out of bounds to acquire the Reef Blower or get a hold of the Plankton Tile without going through all of the necessary steps to unlock either item the normal way.

The main objective here is to find glitches to bypass the steps that drastically slows down the speedrun process for completing levels and reaching the end of the game.

Now Cosmeme is willing to accept just about any and all measures for getting these items in any meaningful way just shy of cheating. Even using GameCube emulators like the Dolphin are encouraged to experiment and find ways to get the tile and the blower.

Presumably, Cosmeme wants to ace SpongeBob SquarePants before the next Games Done Quick event, which would allow for potentially breaking a record while on stream.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.