The game offers no tutorial, although none is really needed. Normally, mandatory events are fairly easy to figure out, with plenty of hints from NPCs and in the environment itself. Altogether, there are 130 events in the game. In other words, it’s basically a Metroidvania. The game is fairly open, allowing the player to explore the areas freely, although some are closed until a certain evil pig has been defeated or a certain event cleared. Although the game keeps track of completed quests, it doesn’t log any currently active quests, nor is there any in-game map of the levels, so it leads to lots of aimless running around. Unfortunately, the quest system is rather confusing. Most of the time, clearing an event gives some kind of item or new quest, but some of them, such as the aforementioned barrel quest, are seemingly there to compel players into seeking everything the game has to offer. Sometimes, the players only have the name of the event itself as a clue. The events range from specific tasks like “Save seven dwarfs” to the more esoteric “Where did that barrel I put in the river go?”. These are missions of various difficulties that appear by either finding them in the levels or getting them directly from NPCs. The big difference between this game and other RPG/platform hybrids lies in the event system. There are also a handful of towns, which changes the view to an overhead perspective, allowing him to explore more freely.

It takes a little while to adjust to the controls, especially since Tomba arches his back during his jumping animation, and it feels a little floaty compared to other 2D platformers. Tomba carries a weapon, which at the beginning can merely stun enemies, so his main method of attack is to jump onto something, bite their necks, bounce around a bit and then throw them around. At certain points, you can climb up or leap off walls, switching to another horizontal plane, though these locations are not always clearly marked. Tomba! is a 2.5D platformer – the characters are sprites, but the backgrounds are polygonal. This frees the area from its curse and opens up new parts of the game. So basically, Tomba enters a cursed area, finds the evil pig bag, hunts for the portal to the evil pig’s lair, and then captures him. The only way to break the curse is to find a pig bag, which is hidden in each of the cursed lands, and use it to capture the evil pig. Since the bracelet is the only remaining memory of his grandfather, who had raised him from birth, Tomba sets out to hunt down the tribe of pigs and get back what is rightfully his.įairly early into the adventure, Tomba learns that the reason the pigs collect gold is that it fuels their magic, and that their seven leaders have cast a curse over the continent. In the beginning of the game, Tomba’s golden bracelet is stolen by a tribe of humanoid pigs called “The Evil Swine”. Tomba lives “on a certain continent which for some reason has never been marked on any map”. The name was changed to Tombi! in European countries, probably because “tomba” is Italian for “grave”, which would change the feel of the game somewhat. They live in trees and are excellent fishermen, facts which are referenced in the opening cutscene. The player takes control of the titular Tomba, a pink haired feral child arguably based on “kijimuna”, small wood sprites in Japanese mythology with crazy hair and a playful streak.

This is a unfortunate turn of events, since the Tomba games are remarkably creative titles, blending a platformer with RPG elements. After working at Capcom for thirteen years, he left the company to form his own studio, Whoopee Camp, to which the only contributions to the gaming world were the two Tomba games. A graduate of Osaka Designers’ College, Fujiwara was recruited by Capcom as a designer and is credited as the creator of the Ghosts ‘n Goblins franchise, as well as producing several Mega Man titles. Tokuro Fujiwara was one of Capcom’s most respected (and feared) employees.

Tomba ps1 script