Our review of Tomba! Special Edition, developed by Whoopee Camp (1997) / Limited Run Games (2024). Available now for PS5 (reviewed), Switch, and Steam.
WHAT IS IT?
Porcine.
IS IT GOOD?
It is the forgotten platformer you didn’t know you needed in your life.
WHO SHOULD PLAY IT?
Anyone who appreciates the weird, the funky, and/or Ghosts ‘n Goblins.
GHOSTS
The word auteur gets bandied about too much, but there’s no question that Tokuro Fujiwara fits the bill.
Fujiwara-san may not be a household name like Shigeru “Mario” Miyamoto, but he’s certainly responsible for some of the most, shall we say, distinctive games ever made. Top of that list is perennial Toronto Guardian favourite Ghosts ‘n Goblins, the radically difficult action-adventure title starring an itty-bitty heart-shaped-boxer-wearing Sir Arthur the Knight. Ghosts ‘n Goblins, while superficially cute – just look at those boxers! – is a devilishly tough game, operating in its own odd little space where jump mechanics are deliberately clumsy and heroic knights wear armour that shatters after one hit. Love Ghosts ‘n Goblins or hate it, there’s nothing else quite like it.
Fujiwara’s other creations – Bionic Commando, Resident Evil predecessor Sweet Home – have some name recognition in certain quarters, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a single person to tell you what the heck a Tomba is. That’s a grave oversight, however, since Tomba! is easily one of the great, albeit forgotten, PlayStation titles, exclamation mark and all.
PIGGIES
Tomba! is both straightforward and maddeningly difficult to explain.
The premise is simple, and completely in keeping with the era in which it was made: get revenge on those darned evil pigs.
Played from a 2.5D perspective, Tomba! is a platformer-RPG set in an impressively rendered open world, inviting players to explore up, down, left, and right to uncover its many environments. The title character is a feral child with green shorts and bright pink hair, a sort-of funkier version of Final Fantasy VI‘s Gau. At the start of the game, Tomba’s grandfather’s bracelet is stolen by a legion of evil pigs, sending Tomba on an adventure to reclaim the missing jewellery and beat up a few anthropomorphic pigs for good measure.
Is Tomba! goofy? Absolutely. But it’s a charming kind of goofy, one which the game continually leans into; Tomba really wants that jewellery back, and you can’t help but root for the little dude. The fact that the game is constructed as a series of interconnected quests – track this bauble down here, hand it to that gatekeeper over there and access the next area – also makes it hard to put down. Akin to a Metroidvania, Tomba is always a couple steps away from the next unlockable path, the next item that will make his adventure more interesting. Combat is undeniably hilarious: the ever-hungry Tomba leaps on the backs of his enemies, grabs a bite, and then tosses them off screen. It never gets old.
A 100-YEAR-OLD WISE MAN
The blessing of a title as out there as Tomba! is that it has managed to age incredibly well. This game released in 1997 (1998 in North America), but even after 27 years it doesn’t particularly resemble anything else on the market, then or now. (Even Ghosts ‘n Goblins has its imitators.) This off-kilter timelessness helps to explain the game’s unusual touches, like the ludicrous combat scheme, the dual-plane graphics which let you swap back and forth between foreground and background, and the amusingly low stakes of the plot.
Various semi-optional sidequests, referred to as “Events” – there are 130 in total – mix things up in unexpected ways, challenging players to complete tasks from the simple to the absurd in exchange for compelling rewards. These Events are often doled out by kooky characters like a “100-Year-Old Wise Man”, and may require players to scour multiple areas in order to track down every required element.
This brings me to one of Tomba!‘s undeniable weaknesses: its archaic lack of a proper map or waypoints to guide players. It’s relatively easy to get lost in Tomba!, unsure of where to go or what to do next. Frankly, there’s no shame in hitting up Gamefaqs (now there’s another blast from the past!) the next time you’re stuck trying to find, say, “A Safe Mushroom” or help out a “Troubled Thief”.
Tomba! is a re-release, not a proper remake, meaning it’s all here in its lovely 32-bit glory (with optional scan lines to recreate the look of a CRT). That said, it does have two significant quality-of-life improvements: a quick-save button so you don’t have to track down save points, and a rewind feature that lets you instantly retry tricky jumps, battles, or other challenges. Limited Run Games has also done incredible work packing in bonus features, including concept art, promotional videos and unused cutscenes, and even interviews with Fujiwara-san and the game’s composer, Harumi Fujita, who recently contributed a handful of tracks on the absolutely stellar Streets of Rage 4 soundtrack.
Is Tomba! for everyone? Not at all. Will gamers of a certain vintage fondly recall Tomba!? Honestly, that seems unlikely too. But if you are of a certain vintage and have a certain fondness for oddities like Ghosts ‘n Goblins – or maybe you even encountered it as a demo on a PS1 Underground Jampack disc, like this writer did – do yourself a favour and check this one out.
***
Final score: 8/10 jewel cases.
Visit the official website for Tomba! Special Edition here.
For more of our thoughts on Tomba! and why it’s one of the great Japanese Role-Playing Games, click here.
