I knew I was in for a good time when I booted up SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide on my Nintendo Switch 2. I loved watching SpongeBob a lot as a kid, and previous games like Battle for Bikini Bottom: Rehydrated and The Cosmic Shake were a great time. Titans of the Tide is a spiritual sequel to those titles, focusing on SpongeBob and Patrick working to resolve a supernatural feud between the Flying Dutchman and King Neptune after the former turns SpongeBob into a ghost during an argument at the Krusty Krab. In turn, Patrick becomes a ghost after the two friends link their friendship rings together, allowing them to swap places at will.
Within the first minute of playing the game, SpongeBob’s voice started to make my ears bleed. It didn’t sound as jovial as it did in The Cosmic Shake — or in previous seasons of SpongeBob SquarePants, for that matter. I also noticed that his laughs didn’t sound as enthusiastic as they used to be, either. What in Davey Jones’ Locker happened to SpongeBob’s voice in Titans of the Tide?
SpongeBob sounding noticeably different in Titans of the Tide compared to The Cosmic Shake can be simply boiled down to the age of his voice actor, Tom Kenny. He’s been voicing SpongeBob ever since the series premiered in 1999, when he was 37. He’s 63 years old now, which means his vocal cords are showing signs of fatigue, if not damage, from voicing the yellow, childlike sea sponge with a high-pitched voice for over 25 years. Not to mention hitting his Adam’s apple to do SpongeBob’s laugh, which has dramatically changed to sound a little lower-pitched than usual.
My lamenting over the change in SpongeBob’s is not so much an indictment on Kenny himself as it is on Nickelodeon and Paramount for milking the series for as long as they have. He’s getting closer to retirement age, assuming he plans on retiring from voice-acting at all, and as much as we love his voice-over work for SpongeBob, the line has to be drawn somewhere eventually. Maybe it’s time for Kenny — and SpongeBob as a whole — to retire and join Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy at the Shady Shoals Rest Home.
