GAME CLEAR No. 212 -- Tomba! Special Edition

Tomba! Special Edition (2024, Multiplatform)

Special Edition of: Tomba! (1997, PS1)
Original Developer: Whoopee Camp
Original Publisher: Whoopee Camp, Sony Computer Entertainment
Special Edition Developer: Limited Run Games
Special Edition Publisher: Limited Run Games
Clear Version: PS5
Clear Platform: PS5
Clear Date: 2/13/25

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Why should I care?
Tomba! is a bold, original ’90s platformer whose brilliant art direction and creative world design more than make up for its minor faults.

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Unga bunga RockStop

As as platformer created by the director of Ghosts ’n Goblins, Tokuro Fujiwara, Tomba! is a game I was destined to play eventually. Fujiwara left Capcom in the mid-nineties to found his own studio, Whoopee Camp, to pursue projects he felt would not be approved for development by Capcom. I’m glad he did, as Tomba! is a lovely, inventive game that’s unlike anything else I’ve played.

The eponymous protagonist of the game is a pink-haired caveboy who lives on a tiny, uncharted archipelago. Prior to the events of the game, a band of evil pigs took over the archipelago and cast a series of curses on its various locales to torment its residents. Tomba, a feral child who generally kept to himself except to hunt for food, was unperturbed by this until the pigs made the costly error of stealing his most prized possession: a gold bracelet his grandfather had left him. In response to this grave offense, Tomba sets off to retrieve his bracelet, putting him on course to end the pigs’ tyranny once and for all.

You assume control of Tomba after a brief animated FMV establishing those events. To start, Tomba can run, jump, and use his Blackjack weapon. When he jumps on an enemy, he also grapples them and then can sling them to their death alongside any other enemies they should come in contact with. This is a unique combat mechanic that I’ve certainly never seen anywhere else. Not content to rely on just that gimmick, though, Tomba! — like any good Castletroid — introduces new weapons an abilities at a reasonable pace that grant access to new areas.

Using Tomba’s moves, you’ll traverse a large, interconnected world of platforming challenges that connect the game’s various towns, spurred on by the game’s “Event” system (basically another name for a quest). By talking to people or encountering something in the world or finding an item (etc.), Events are initiated with usually at least some indication of how to complete them. Some of them are required to complete the game, while others are side quests that can be finished for experience, award items, or just the satisfaction of having done them. They total 130 in number and will keep you quite busy.

These events are often cute, humorous, clever, or all three, but if I had one criticism of them, it’s that it would be quite difficult to find and complete them all without a guide. I certainly referenced one frequently. This obtuseness wouldn’t matter so much if it only impacted side quests, but I definitely felt that it was occasionally difficult to figure out how to progress the plot. It didn’t affect my enjoyment much because I don’t turn my nose up much at consulting a guide from time to time for a game like this, but for those that really like to figure everything out themselves, you may spend a lot of time scratching your head on this one.

Another frustrating element of Tomba! is its early game, which I think plays pretty tough. Once you get more health upgrades and better platforming capabilities, things get a little easier, but I found myself dying a lot in the early going. This is particularly annoying since this was in the days before we realized lives were pretty stupid and bad for a game like this, so you can die too much and get a Game Over. This Special Edition has save-anywhere and rewind features, but unlike my attitudes on guides, I’m a purist when it comes to savestates and rewind, so I didn’t use them. This meant I tried a couple tough platforming sections again and again, but so it goes!

Once I got over that early hurdle, though, the game grew on me in a big way. Running around a beautiful, colorful world talking to its silly little denizens and helping them with their problems is the kind of shit I love to be doing. That’s very Dragon Questesque, except in this case it’s a platformer, which is even more up my alley. The aforementioned denizens are in wild and varied supply as well, ranging from dwarves to cowboy mice people to regular old humans to the world’s most annoying flowers. You’ll not be bored for NPC variety.

And your encounters with all of the above happen in pursuit of the game’s main objective, which is to capture the Evil Pigs in their respective Evil Pig Bags. You gotta find those first, and they then allow you to enter the portals where their corresponding pigs live. Inside the portal is the boss fight room, wherein the bag floats around while you try to tackle the Evil Pig and sling him or her into it. What an insane contrivance! I love it. Oh, and by the way, all of this is explained to you by guys simply known as the 100, 1,000, 10,000, and 1,000,000-year-old Men, respectively.

It’s a great, bonkers little story with a plucky, likable protagonist. Its gameplay mechanics occasionally frustrated me, but it at least felt like something new, and I think I’ve played my share of platformers. Its all accompanied by a fully re-arranged, higher-quality soundtrack as well by original composer Harumi Fujita, and the tunes are just lovely. I’m so happy to have finally gotten around to Tomba!, and I can’t wait ’til Limited Run gets around to giving Tomba 2 the same treatment.