f13.net

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mtv-networks-asia-and-gigamedia-to-co-develop-worlds-first-spongebob-squarepants-massively-multiplayer-online-game-mmog-95919844.html

SINGAPORE, HONG KONG, SEOUL, South Korea, TOKYO and NEW YORK, June 8 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- MTV Networks Asia, a division of Viacom Inc (NYSE: VIA, VIA.B), and leading Asian online games company GigaMedia Limited (Nasdaq: GIGM) today announced plans to co-develop and jointly publish the first Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) based upon Nickelodeon's global smash hit, SpongeBob SquarePants. The game will be the first Nickelodeon television property to be developed as an MMOG, and Viacom's first to be developed outside of the United States. The SpongeBob SquarePants MMOG will launch in 2011 in multiple languages for players in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and India.

The SpongeBob SquarePants creative team at the Burbank-based Nickelodeon Animation Studios will work closely with GigaMedia to develop the online environment and SpongeBob SquarePants avatars, allowing millions of players throughout Asia to create, customize and personalize the world's first MMOG version of Bikini Bottom.

"Partnering with GigaMedia on the development of a SpongeBob SquarePants MMOG allows us to bring the residents of Bikini Bottom into a whole new world -- one that is tremendously popular in Asia and presents unlimited creative and business opportunities for the franchise," said Jihee Nam, Vice President of Digital for MTV Networks Asia. "SpongeBob SquarePants is Nickelodeon's best known property within Asia and we're extremely proud to oversee the development of the MMOG with local business partners. We look forward to working hand in hand with GigaMedia on bringing SpongeBob, Patrick, Squidward, Gary and Sandy Cheeks to life in an entirely new and incredibly popular online world."

"We are thrilled to join forces with Nickelodeon and MTV Networks International to bring the joy and delight of SpongeBob SquarePants to online game players around the world," stated GigaMedia CEO Arthur Wang. "SpongeBob SquarePants is unquestionably one of the world's most popular animated television series, and we look forward to bringing SpongeBob and his friends to life in the virtual world for millions of online game players."

GigaMedia's leadership in Asian online games and Nickelodeon's position as a global leader in family entertainment enables the strategic partnership to tap into enormous creative and business resources around the world. As the first MMOG to be developed for a Nickelodeon television property and the first Viacom property to be developed outside the United States, the SpongeBob SquarePants MMOG will be designed to appeal across various demographics within Asia, where online casual games are the most popular pastime for tweens, children and adults.

The free-to-play model will offer an online store where users can purchase a range of bespoke items to populate and customize their experience, and will also feature a wide range of video and simple Flash(R)-based games allowing users of all skill-levels and ages to interact and share their SpongeBob SquarePants experiences online. Further details will be announced closer to the 2011 launch.

 :ye_gods:

 :ye_gods:

I've had to watch a lot of SpongeBob in my time. I'm surprised it took them this long. (My kiddo LOVED their PS2 games, when he was younger).

First completely underwater MMO?

I hate SpongeBob. It gives me rabies.

SIGN ME UP

As long as there are Murlocs, I'm in... otherwise, NO

(http://29.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_kveo2bI8Sy1qa3ucjo1_500.jpg)

Edit: thats better.

You are wrong, and stupid, and should die of shame.

Spongebob is the sort of awesome I wish I'd had to watch as a kid. ANd thanks to reading that, I'm going to be having the theme song running around in my head all freaking day.

As for the MMO -- sadly, since it's more Puzzle Pirates than WoW, there is no chance of playing a Sponge Tank.

The only surprising thing about this announcement is that Cryptic aren't involved somehow.

I am not questioning the content. Anything that makes religious fanatics angry is good to me. And bonus points for the ambiguity.
It's the visual style that gives me rabies:


(http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd163/ericka18_01/Spongebob-Happy-spongebob-squarepan.jpg)


That's just looks revolting to me.

Don't be silly... Krabs is the tank.

And I think my generation had awesome cartoons growing up... (early to mid 1980s)

gameplay will involve working as a fry cook flipping burgers for hours on end?  Running around screaming and jumping in the air?  Sounds like every other MMO.

Today's cartoons are a vat of disjointed gibberish.

Exhibit A:

(http://www.fybertech.com/4thread/tg_3142594/1228867938997.jpg)

Krabbie can't soak up damage like SB can.

Flapjack makes infinitely more sense than Fanboy and Chumchum or Adventure Time.  I rather enjoy it, along with Spongebob and Phineas and Ferb.

All adults eventually find kids cartoons stupid and banal, pining for the days of the "good" entertainment.  Looking back on YouTube and watching some of the 80's pablum I enjoyed vs Loony Toons, at least my parents had a valid argument.   Calling today's cartoons crap while pining for the horribly drawn and voiced 30 min commercials of He-Man, G.I. Joe, M.A.S.K, and Thundercats is damn near crazy town.

The Best Cartoons came from the 90's and early 2000's (what the shit do we call the 2000-2010 era anyways?).

It's the era when the studios put real money, animation and quality writing into the cartoons and it's before they all got taken over by Anime.

http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/

 :awesome_for_real:

I grew up with Robotech.  Macek aside, it was still a great series.

YOU SHUT UP NOW.  SHUT YOUR DAMN FILTHY MOUTH!

:cry2:

Guess we can add this to the Tom and Jerry MMO and Ben 10 MMO that have been announced (http://news.mmosite.com/content/2009-06-02/20090602185955212.shtml).

The Noughties.

"Batman: the Animated Series" is all you really need to say. 

I rather liked Batman Beyond.

You don't have to be a kid...

(http://i364.photobucket.com/albums/oo88/JECupis/SpongebobStonerPants.jpg)

Meanwhile...

(http://i.huffpost.com/gen/170684/SPONGEBOB-BP.jpg)

Adventure Time is AMAZING, or at least the first 10 minute one-off they did was.

So is this, um, the best day ever?

I think of that more as what it is titled: an animated series. That's the stuff that started with the GI Joe/etc stuff in the 80s, when cartoons weren't really schtick anymore, but srs bznz. I can appreciate the more well-drawn stuff like Batman, though.

But I'm a die-hard Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies guy (Clampett Avery and Jones  :heart:). Hated Hannah-Barbara, it was so schlocky and poorly done compared to the WB stuff (for the most part, there were some exceptions). The 90s was also a resurgance of the classic cartoon style, thanks to John Kricfalusi.

You seem to be missing the classic era of WB cartoons. And I'm sorry. Nothing tops those.

Yea, that is definitely the biggest one. It was one of the (if not The) first Cartoon where they told the voice actors to actually play their roles straight. It had the writing/music/animation to match as well. The show spawned the entire DCAU basically, which is the best portrayal and handling of the DC universe to date still.

I would put the first few seasons of Gargoyles up there as well, though that one went really retarded near the end. Disney had a bunch of well animated shows based of their cartoon movies.

You also had things like the Animaniacs and all their Spin-offs. WB stuff in general is almost always well done, but it had a big come back during this era.

Reboot and BeastWars were just starting up then as well.

Nickelodeon had a bunch of nice shows. Shit, this is when Ren and Stimpy start up too.

Even the "this show is really just a commercial" cartoons were actually very well drawn and had semblances of story and continuity.



The Looney Tunes are awesome and all that, but the 90's into early 2000's were definitely the renaissance of western animation.




What the shit is this thread about again, some MMO?  :why_so_serious:

You don't really expect us to actually talk about Sponge Bob do you?

Gah, this thread made me think of the show "Gummi Bears".  Now I have the theme song for that running through my head.

The last few years have perhaps been a bit of a lull, and the first part of the nineties a high point, but on the whole western animation has been improving fairly consistently since perhaps the late seventies, having previously descended into shit after the golden age of the forties and fifties. Certainly as far as western feature animation goes, the Pixar/Dreamworks rivalry represents an all-time high-water mark.

So, opinions, what was the best DC animated show besides BTAS?

I'd probably say Justice League, followed by JL: Unlimited, then Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

Teen Titans felt like it was trying too hard and I largely stayed away from The Batman.

Edit: Superman: TAS was okay too, I guess, but it just lacked the kind of soul Batman: TAS had.

Let me help you with that: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xd12hR68sWM

Justice League Unlimited. They managed to keep dozens of characters in a consistent and on-going story arc, all the while remaining awesome while doing it. They always managed to keep the spirit of a comic character or specific comic book story, without taking in any of the associated suck of said comic.

To the point where I just pretend the actual DC Comic universe doesn't exist anymore, and just base everything off of their DCAU instead.


Honorable mention to the first Batman+Superman cross over mini series thing, where the Joker goes to Metropolis and teams up with Lex. The way they handled the relatively 'low power' of Batman and The Joker in the super powered venue of Superman and LexLuthor was brilliant.

(http://intensities.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/powerpuff-girls.jpg)

Powerpuff Girls was merely training for Samurai Jack.

I missed that one.  I'll admit I may have been prejudiced because the one episode I caught when the daughter had it on made not a lick of sense to me. Coming in at the middle of an episode halfway through the season may be why it didn't seem anything more than mediocre.  I had to give Flapjack a few episodes to finally get its groove.

A good cartoon, to me, is one you can go back and watch 15 years later and not cringe at it.  I can't do that with Robotech, Thundercats, Voltron or G.I. Joe. Believe me, I tried when wanting to show the kids some of what I used to enjoy.  I bought the Robotech series remembering how awesome it was and, well, no.  It wasn't.   Batman:TAS, Ren & Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life on the other hand?  They still hold up as well as the Loony Toons do for me. 

British kids TV of the '70s was the best. The creators were basically locked in rooms as much clay and LSD as they could eat and not allowed out until they'd put together something that would doom a generation to expensive therapy.

As an example I give you The Magic Roundabout (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3DcChXNyYQ).

The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Now there was a great show - they actually gave the moral to the story right there in case you were too stupid to figure it out.

Yea, I know what you mean. I got the Macross Saga as a Christmas gift awhile back, watched it all again and while I do still love me those giant robots that turn into planes and stuff, Jesus Christ was it stupid.  :uhrr:


Conversely I ended up staying up later then I should have, watching JLU episodes last night.  :grin:

I liked Titans because it seemed less concerned with "DC animated continuity" than with having a good time. It could do serious episodes when it chose to, but it could also fuck off with stories about an evil Englishman trying to turn America back into a colony with a hypno-beam that turns people British, and silly shit like that. All the "guy's head turns huge when he screams" anime quirks eventually grew on me too, because they were careful to only use them in humorous scenes.

Then in the last season it did some of the things that have kept me away from other DC shows. Namely expanding the cast to a ludicrous extent with legions of obscure superheroes, and dedicating entire episodes to characters that only comic fanboys know anything about and (more importantly) the show has never really featured before.

On the other hand it was much more kid-oriented and couldn't get away with some of the things the other shows could. That bit where Flash and Luthor switched bodies and Flash banged Luthor's woman was priceless.

We had a kids entertainment center in Santa Clara based around Bullwinkle.  Kind of like Chuck E. Cheese, only instead of a stupid rat, it was Bullwinkle and friends.  It was the best thing in history.  Literally the best thing.  All the people who worked there were dressed up like Mounties.  The pizza was slightly better than the rat's iirc.  But as a kid who cares.  Five dollars in quarters, and the Tron machine.  Maybe a little Donkey Kong.  They just got the sit down version of Star Wars.  And some Bullwinkle cartoons with pizza.

But I don't know if we can say there were the best cartoons in some modern era, because they really came out in the 60's.  But I think they're better than a lot of shit people are talking about in here.

Of course, that's the same woman who was banging the ape too.  :ye_gods:

I thought The Magic Roundabout was originally French and the BBC just made new scripts for it? Either way, awesome stuff indeed.

When I was a very young kid Looney Tunes was where it was at, animation wise, but even then it was clear there was a huge gulf in quality that existed (although I didn't think of it like that, I just knew that some of it sucked). Unfortunately the poor animation quality that came out of the Hannah Barbera studios seems to have dominated children's cartoons ever since.

Compare Scooby Doo, for instance, with anything by Tex Avery and look at the difference. It's a trend that gave us all the 80's dross like He-Man and Thundercats and has ended up with the style of South Park (which is funny, sure, but not good animation).

The saving grace is that there are fantastic animated films being made now, it's just a shame that the same quality has been absent from kids TV shows for so long.

The Magic Roundabout was SO GOOD that they voice dubbed it and imported it in Italy. Late 70s or early 80s. And my parents are surprised I am weird.

Another thing that haunted my childhood :ye_gods:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbenIzSZGrI

And it's shows like that that makes me wonder why our generation didn't turn out more fucked in the head than they are.

I literally sat with a :ye_gods: face the minute I could endure of that link. Awful.

Correct. We'll go to the wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magic_Roundabout):


There is a modern CGI take on "The Magic Roundabout" that is absolutely awful. AWFUL.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfsMZKwqw3w

No love for Phineas and Ferb?  Or Chowder?

I'm not sure what on earth a Spongebob MMO would entail.  Unless it's some ARG where kids can roam around Bikini Bottom doing vaguely silly things in an online setting.  With a fish avatar.

I never watched it as Robotech, but I watched Macross after I was all grown up and I still thought it was good.  I mean, its obviously a bit dated and corny at points, but I still enjoyed watching it.

I watched some Voltron last year and it was jaw-droppingly awful.

Lions or robots?

I always liked the robots more.

On a bored drunken night alone in my dorm room in Japan, I bit torrent-ed the entire Captain Power series in a bout of drunken nostaliga.  That's some good stuff.   :why_so_serious:

I have fond memories of the early ghost buster cartoons but don't want to go and risk proving my taste at the time was bad. Robotech was also head and shoulders above most of the material even in the bastardised version.

When can we have a Tex Avery MMO then ;D Though come to think of it a lot of his visual gags would probably make decent mini-games.

It was crap even when I was young.  Exactly how much did you drink?  How are you still alive?

I am subjected to a lot of the new cartoons due to my kids.  My wife absolutely hates all of them, past and present.  I'm still a kid at heart and can't stop myself from watching and sometimes actually enjoying.  Out of all the humorous style cartoons, Spongebob is the only one that will get an actual full LOL from me from time to time.  I think it is those moments where they come really close to the style and over-the-top stupidity of Ren and Stimpy.

For the more drama oriented cartoons, all the super hero types are cool.  My sons and I really enjoy watching those together.  They are much better now than they ever were before.  Although, we did have fun watching a DVD with the entire series of the original Justice League once.  We were stuck with nothing better to do on vacation.  There would have been no other reason to do that.  The art, graphics, voice acting, etc. was all terrible compared to today's standards.

My understanding is the overall story arc is the same, but the characters and lots of little things were changed to bring it to American "standards."     Rick Hunter is very much a naive 17 year old kid and Minmei is.. well godawful.  You never even begin to want them to 'work it out' because of how vapid and shallow a character she is.  Perhaps that's the same in Macross, but in Robotech it drove me nuts even at age 11.   Here's something I found listing 10 changes that happen in only the first 10min of Robotech vs how they were in Macross. http://www.animationunlimited.com/item/59

I hated Minmei.  Worst thing about Robotech.

I'm with you. I like the movie too. Between the Hasselhoff-boat and the "Rock!" part of the parody of TS's "I Wanna Rock" (in which they jump cut to just a picture of a rock) that thing cracks me up.

I WONDER WHAT RAPH WOULD HAVE TO SAY ABOUT THIS.

Don't mind me, just testing a theory.

I no longer mind BP as much...