Man, do I love those odd side scrollers. It's strange because nowadays, I look at today's side scroller attempts and have such a difficult time getting into them. Sure, there's the good ones such as Chasm, Bloodstained, but there's just something
missing that I enjoy. Many of them that I've attempted feel more like attempted love-letter clones of popular games...with just a dash of originality to set them apart, but just not enough to get my attention for incredibly long.
I remember back in the day being enamored with games like Castlevania, especially the GBA and DS titles. There was just always something about being confined to that dimension as a difficulty that just made it that much more entertaining to endure. Sure, running around the world freely in Skyrim is always a blast, and even semi confined in games like Dragon Quest XI is equally entertaining.
But those games that challenged the line between linear and open were also entertaining. I remember all of those headaches of getting through those difficult parts of Castlevania...only to get super excited every time I encountered a room with a fast travel point, or letting out a huge sigh of relief encountering a save-room since it also meant an HP/MP fill.
The ones that really got my attention over the years in between those sidescrollers were the 2.5D games...the ones that really played the perspective game without going full 3D or full 2D. Super Paper Mario, despite the flack it got for its change in the formula (before it got
really bad with Sticker Star and beyond), was one of my favorite games simply because its core mechanic was playing with perspective. Now you had the ability to see the flat worlds in a more 3D popping way, even if many elements and characters retained their flat 2D style.
But one game I absolutely enjoyed in its simple perspective changes was Tomba.
I remember playing a demo of this on the same disk that I played the demo of Gex 2, and my thoughts were almost identical for differing reasons. It was an absolutely absurd, yet incredibly intriguing demo. You controlled a little tarzan-like character with pink hair, and your main enemy was pigs.
I mean...it was just so damn kooky that I had to play more. So I ended up renting it at the local video store (when they were still around), and I played the first game and just fell in love with it. The demo had absolutely nothing on this game's kookiness, its sheer absurdity in everything. But as odd as the game is, it's also incredibly endearing. It's a game I hold very closely because it's just so damn charming that I can't help but love it every time I play it.
So the premise of this game is actually rather simple: You're a pink haired jungle boy named Tomba. You're just out hunting and having a good old time one day, when you hear a ruckus nearby. You look to see several pig creatures (and yes, they look like pigs walking on 2 legs) harassing someone. You go to break up the commotion and save the person, and for the most part are successful as you knock a few of the pig people around. But just as you're about to get a shot in with your Blackjack (literally a spikeball on a rope?), one of the pigs that you knocked into a tree falls on you, knocking you out. The pigs seize the opportunity and steal your grandfather's bracelet off your arm and make a quick getaway. Now, you have to find the pigs that stole your bracelet, and save a land cursed by their foul magic in the process.
Now, I know what you're probably thinking. You probably read through that and were like "
come again?" a couple of times. And yes, the story doesn't stop there, oh no. If you thought the idea of stopping evil
pigs was weird, you haven't heard the most of it. During your travels, you'll visit roughly 7 different cursed areas as well as just an overall odd one that isn't cursed
persay, but it does make you wonder why it even exists in a normal non-cursed setting:
*The Village of Beginnings: Starting area, not cursed, the most normal of the areas you encounter.
*Dwarf Forest: The first cursed area you visit. The Evil Pig overseeing this area cursed it by making the trees...odd to say the least:
Dwarf Forest (uncursed):
Dwarf Forest (cursed):
*The Mushroom Forest: The area after Dwarf Forest. In this forest, there are mushrooms that make you laugh uncontrollably, and ones that make you cry uncontrollably (and the flowers in it laugh/cry with you). Not cursed...but it's damn odd nonetheless:
*Phoenix Mountain: The next cursed area you visit. This mountain is cursed with constant storms/wind.
*Lava Caves: The next cursed area you visit. This area is cursed with...it being unbearably hot with flames, compared to usual.
*Baccus Village: The fourth cursed area you visit. This is a town where all of its inhabitants have been transformed into mice.
*The Haunted Mansion: The fifth cursed area you visit. Despite not having any actual ghosts to justify it being "haunted," this mansion is cursed to be covered by a dark and thunderous sky to make it
look like it'd be haunted.
*Masakari Jungle: The sixth cursed area you visit. I'm not
entirely sure what the curse of this area was supposed to be exactly, but apparently having hostile native creatures is considered a curse. There is also a town within known as the Village of Civilization.
*Trick Village: The seventh cursed area you visit. This village was cursed by being literally flooded with water. In all honesty, probably the only actual curse out of all of them, though being turned to mice wouldn't be great either.
So of course, you learn that 7 evil pigs are cursing the areas, and the only way to stop them is by gathering what are known as Evil Pig Bags. Evil Pig bags can be found in their respective cursed areas (IE the Deep Jungle pig bag can be found in the Deep Jungle), but the evil pigs themselves hide elsewhere...and can only be revealed once you've gotten that pig's bag.
Staying with me so far? Good. Let's move onto the gameplay.
Alright, so being a sidescroller, it's fairly basic. You have a weapon that you can whack enemies with (you start off with the Blackjack, but will eventually pick up different weapons). Now the weapons are fun and all, but they're mainly meant to stun. The real meat of the game is all about jumping on your enemies. But we're not talking Mario style where you'll stomp on a Goomba good...no, in Tomba when you jump on an enemy, you're basically tackling them to the ground. You then can jump and throw them left or right, gathering both points toward your AP (I'll get to that later) as well as a meter on the bottom of your screen (I'll also get to that later). You'll be jumping around A LOT. Tomba is all about jumping onto anything, and everything. Enemies, chests, platforms, branches to swing on, ropes, you'll just be jumping quite a bit.
Bosses? Your main goal is to tackle them and throw them in a fucking
bag!
That's not to say there's not more to do. In Tomba, while you're going off on the main quest...you'll also be doing a lot of side stuff. Saving puppies, saving crying children, chasing and consistently biting a dwarf to learn his language (Yes, it's actually a thing, you actually learn how to speak fluent Dwarf by chasing and biting a dwarf 4 times), the sidequests are all over the place. There's a fair number of them ranging from easy (take a crying child back to town) to hair pullingly difficult (getting a super low time in a racing type of game)...but almost none of them are important to further the plot (although saving the dog is
exceptionally important to make traveling far easier).
Tomba is also not a huge investment in the slightest. Doing most of the sidequests, I clocked in about 6-7 hours for beginning to end play. If you're just flying through, it'll take much less time unless you're not used to the style.
Speaking of that, a fun little tweak in gameplay is the perspective. As I mentioned, Tomba is basically a side-scrolling game with some notable exceptions. When you go into certain towns like Dwarf Village, it becomes more of a top-downish type of view so you have a bit free-er movement. The most notable exception, however, is just certain parts of the world that let you hop up and down a screen (not loading screen).
For example, that specific area, if Tomba were to walk to that rock on the left edge of the screen, he can latch onto it, climb to the top, and boom! He's on the other part of the area.
Now, this is absolutely nothing groundbreaking especially nowadays as 2.5D games have played with this possibly leaps further (going back to Super Paper Mario, for example). But this was still a really neat way to make a side scrolling game more interesting.
So as you've already seen, the graphics aren't anything to really scream home about. But that's really not the draw of the game.
The game takes pride in being bright and colorful, and is almost the definition of whimsical. It's a silly game, and it takes absolute pride in being silly. I mean, this is a game where the antagonist is 7 evil pigs...the creators knew that nobody would take it seriously.
But that's also to say that it's not a complete parody in the same vein as games such as King's Quest where there's a lot of "HA HA REAL SOCIAL COMMENTARY JOKES!" thrown in to make the game a sort of edgy title. No, even if the story and world is absolutely silly to look at, in a way it still keeps the story serious. The people still talk as if they're living in that world and not as if they somehow have meta knowledge of anything that exists out of that world. The world itself and its inhabitants are still fleshed out enough to where you feel for them.
At the same time though, it's not in the same level say, Final Fantasy 7 or other games with unique worlds where you can see the characters develop throughout. It's a world in peril, but you'll find yourself chuckling at character dialogue instead of feeling bad for a lot of them. There's a village completely flooded by water, and the only inhabitant is a cranky old sage that cares more about his fish and having you find math beads than actually wanting to really help you. As I mentioned, there's all of these absurd cursed areas, but a forest of mushrooms that make you laugh/cry and flowers that laugh/cry with you
is completely normal. Your way of learning an actual language is chasing down a dwarf and just biting him 4 times...and suddenly you're an expert. Your main source of fast travel is bells, feathers, and a flying dog.
It just balances itself with its absurd nature and its serious one. You're trying to save this cursed land, but at many points you're wondering what exactly you're saving it from, since even uncursed it's still odd.
That being said, the game does also have moments where the graphic style takes more of a cartoon CG look, and I do appreciate it:
-1456901482.jpg)
(See? I was serious when I said actual pigs on two legs)
And no game is complete without its soundtrack. Tomba/Tombi's soundtrack is again nothing special, but like the rest of the game...it's still charming in its own way. Following the main style, the soundtrack goes in different flavors of whimsical, going fully in bits such as the Mushroom Forest...but overall it wasn't a game that hit the "big epic musical scores" like certain games...but the soundtrack was still fun to listen to.
Overall, it's a great game. It's probably considered a bit dated nowadays, but it's still a highly recommended title. If you're worried about having to put time aside for another game...fear not! As mentioned, without doing any sidequesting this game only requires a few hours of your time. With all sidequests, that's when you
might hit the 9-10 hour mark, or less if you're lucky with some of the quests (such as the buggy/racer one). But I'd definitely suggest picking this one up and giving it a shot.
