TOMBA! Special Edition Review
The premise of Tomba! is pretty straightforward, we play as Tomba, a wild caveman-esque character who sets out to retrieve a stolen heirloom bracelet stolen by the gold-obsessed Seven Evil Pigs.
Gameplay
At first glance Tomba! seems like your typical 2D platformer but you’ll quickly learn it’s much more than that. Tomba! has many 2.5D elements and even allows you to switch between the foreground and background, often Tomba will need to scale a wall or ladder to find the optional route or item.
Tomba can jump on enemies to mount them and then throw them or use traditional weapons such as a boomerang or a mace that can be equipped from the main menu, in fact, Tomba can even be equipped with different shorts which bestow him with abilities such as being able to move faster, jumper higher etc. The controls take a little bit of getting used to, which is especially true for Tomba’s quite stiff jump, however, after a few hours of gameplay you’ll soon get used to it.
What sets Tomba! apart from your traditional platformers such as a Mario or even a Crash Bandicoot game is its Event system. The event system is essential for progression and various NPCs will hinder Tomba’s progression until you bring them a certain item or perform a task for them. With the levels in Tomba! being non-linear you can expect a lot of backtracking to previously explored areas to collect items and complete event tasks.
Completing Events rewards Tomba with AP and throughout various maps in the game you’ll stumble across AP boxes which need a certain amount to be able to open them up. These usually contain cool items so it’s worth trying to complete as many events as possible to open them.
After completing the main task in an area, you’ll be awarded an Evil Pig bag, which can be used to track down one of the 7 Evil Pigs by revealing the entrance to the Evil Pigs’s hideout. Mischievely, this tends to not be in the same area as the bag is acquired so Tomba will need to press on and explore more of the game’s world.
Presentation
The presentation in Tomba! is one of its standout features. If someone was to show me a small screenshot of a random area from this game with no context I would immediately know it’s a Tomba! Game. The game sprites almost look like they are done in the style of faux 3D like in Super Mario RPG.
Each game level is unique and you can easily differentiate them even if just taking a passing glance at the screen and the music is really good, I’m particular fond of the remastered tracks and I think they’ve done a stellar job in regards to the audio.
Museum
From the Main Menu, you can access a comprehensive museum feature which includes numerous artwork, design documents, game boxart and in-depth video interviews made specifically for this rerelease. It’s really quite impressive the sheer amount of extra content that is included here and it feels like a release you would see from a Namco Museum or Digital Eclipse release which is high praise. There’s even a music player that allows you to listen to both the original and remastered
Performance
Tomba! Special Edition uses Limited Run’s proprietary Carbon Engine to deliver a great PS1-style experience with plenty of modern bells and whistles such as a rewind feature, a very nice slot mask CRT filter and a few different methods of scaling the game including an integer-scaled option.
The licenses sections reference the PS1 emulator PCSX-ReARMed and a couple of plugins which I’m guessing is the base for the emulation here. There’s also the IntegerScaling library by Marat Tanalin ensuring we get a nice evening scaled image and I have to say, this is a really nice way of experiencing Tomba! On the Nintendo Switch.
Conclusion
Tomba! Special Edition is now the definitive way to play the game. Although the controls do take a little getting used to, the game is a lot of fun and quite humorous at times. The Carbon Engine ensures Tomba! holds up to modern standards while not interfering with the core gameplay. Here’s hoping for a Tomba! 2 in the future!
8
Nintendo Switch review code kindly provided by Limited Run Games