Make no mistake about it – I’m a fan of how the Apple Vision Pro can transport you elsewhere, specifically through the deeply immersive – and sometimes fantastical – virtual environments you can drop into. Apple has its own set baked into VisionOS, with more arriving in VisionOS 2 later in 2024, but third-party applications have their own as well.
I spent the weekend exclusively under the sea previewing a new one from Paramount Plus, and folks, as a SpongeBob SquarePants fan, it’s pretty darn cool. To celebrate 25 years of SpongeBob SquarePants, Paramount Plus and the team at Nickelodeon are debuting a ‘Bikini Bottom’ environment for the Apple Vision Pro.
It’ll transport you to Conch Street to see the famous pineapple under the sea, Patrick’s rock, and Squidward’s humble abode. But the real fun starts when you realize it’s not just a visual treat – it’s interactive, too. You can look around and open doors – or rather the lid for Patrick – to hear sound bites, making the experience truly engaging.
Explore Bikini Bottom and catch jellyfish
On the Apple Vision Pro, to explore Bikini Bottom, you’ll simply need to download Paramount Plus and sign in; from there, you’ll open the mountains icon for environments on the left-hand side and engage Bikini Bottom. Give it a moment, and you’ll find the familiar landscape of Bikini Bottom, which should be recognizable to any fan of the cartoon.
You’ll find SpongeBob’s home, Squidward and Patrick’s to your left, and some Bikini Bottom fauna to your right. But even cooler is the attention to detail. When it opens, a string of bubbles rises to the top, and you can even pop them by looking at them and performing a single tap. Most importantly, though, the show’s iconic narrator greets you with a friendly and welcoming, “Ah the sea.”
If you glance over to SpongeBob and click on his door, you’ll see Gary the snail and hear a meow. Doing the same to Squidward’s front door will debut a famous quote or two. The same goes for Patrick, in which the rock flips open, and you’ll find the character inside.
There is a mini-game here as well – you can catch Jellyfish either in a free mode or in a timed challenge. It’s pretty basic, but you’ll see an array of colorful jellyfish fly around the Bikini Bottom environment, and you’ll look at once and tap your fingers together to catch one, in which a jellyfish net will appear and magically swoosh to get it. It’s a bit of a basic experience, though, and while I get that it’s part of an interactive environment, it would have been neat to have you actually swing the net. One can wish for the future, though?
Even so, it’s a bit more of a full-feature environment from a third-party app, as sitting on a landspeeder in Disney Plus or at the top of Avengers Tower is incredible, and you can’t truly interact with the space. This debut from Paramount Plus might up some competition though.
Take in an episode of SpongeBob with SpongeBob
Central to any of the best streaming services like Paramount Plus on the Vision Pro is, of course, actually watching content. It’s also one of the key benefits of the $3,500 Spatial Computer as you can watch a TV show or movies on a screen that stretches well over 100-inches with epic visuals and Spatial Audio or Dolby Atmos sound; it’s great.
When you’re in the Paramount Plus app with this new environment and you start streaming a piece of content like one of the other best Paramount Plus shows – it doesn’t have to be SpongeBob – the sun sets in Bikini Bottom, and the screen moves to a position to the right of the famous pineapple house. The show will start playing, with controls underneath, but SpongeBob will also appear in front of his house, sitting down and snacking on some popcorn to watch whatever you’re streaming with you. It’s pretty cute.
Daniel Reich, Executive Vice President and Global Head of Product and Design at Paramount Plus, shared that “it’s been an exciting creative process bringing SpongeBob’s Bikini Bottom to life and providing a truly unique, interactive streaming experience for our subscribers and the show’s loyal fan base”.
And for the first environment within Paramount Plus on the Apple Vision Pro, it’s a nice experience that does more to complete the feeling of being transported elsewhere; I can’t just help but wonder how this might expand in the future or be replicated for other Paramount properties or even emulated by other streaming platforms.
For now, if you have an Apple Vision Pro and a Paramount Plus subscription, you too can venture to Bikini Bottom without flopping like a fish. But who’s to say it isn’t encouraged? Just be sure to update the Paramount Plus app to the latest version on Apple Vision Pro to use the new environment.