Tomba! Special Edition review — A masterpiece ahead of its time

Everyone has that one game from their childhood that they were absolutely fixated on. For some this might be a Mario or Zelda game, or maybe something like Chrono Trigger. For me, that was Tomba!. Tomba! had me enamored from moment one with its colorful world, catchy music, and wacky characters. While I could never beat it, Tomba’s world was one I would go back to again and again, throughout my entire life, simply to enjoy being there and indulging in nostalgia. Without Tomba!, I don’t think I would be writing about and making games today. Now, however, my PS1 disc (from Video Update, apparently) is on its last legs, struggling to loop the music or even load into the first area. Miraculously, Limited Run Games has stepped in to rerelease Tomba! on modern platforms, with a newly arranged soundtrack, a museum containing documents from Whoopee Camp’s original development process, and even interviews with some of the original staff. It’s like they specifically made this game for me, but let’s put nostalgia and preference aside (as much as one can anyway) and see how Tomba! Special Edition holds up.

Tomba! puts you in the green caveman pants of Tomba, a boy living his best life out in the wilderness. One day, some evil pigs begin harassing the wildlife and, in defending them, Tomba is knocked unconscious. Having made the mistake of stealing Tomba’s bracelet, a memento from his grandfather, he makes it his mission to stop the evil pigs rampage.

Tomba!’s plot is short, simple, and to the point. It’s not deep, but unique and relatable enough to get you invested. This is all communicated through a wordless opening animation too, with specifics coming later once you get into the game. As someone who spent a lot more time with the far wordy-er sequel, this is a neat contrast. Over the course of the game, you’ll learn about the capital Evil Pigs and their curses on each of the lands you’ll explore, but it puts everything you really need to know right up front.

Tomba! is a 2.5D platformer/adventure game hybrid. You move Tomba around left and right, jumping, animal dashing, and biting anything that gets in your way. At certain points, you can move up or down onto another plane. For example, in the first area, the Village of All Beginnings, you may notice some items and enemies behind the fence. You can get behind the fence yourself by climbing a building, which is tutorialized wonderfully by placing a door right where you climb up, so you press the up button and suddenly you’re on another plane. It’s usually pretty clear where and how you can change planes, but there were one or two times I had to comb a level before I noticed them. Overall though, it feels natural and intuitive.

Tomba also has a variety of items, weapons, and pants at his disposal. You start with the Blackjack, which can stun enemies by tossing it at them, but you can find a boomerang and even a grappling hook as you explore. Don’t forget, Tomba! is part adventure game and, before you know it, you’ll have an inventory full of stuff. The game features over 100 quests called Events, some of which are optional whilst others are on the critical path. One Event might need you to find and capture an Evil Pig in an Evil Pig Bag, while another asks you to get a guy some cheese. Something you might initially think is purely a side quest may just help you along in the main quest, which lets everything feel important.

The stuff you do in these side Events is always engaging too. Well, there are three events that have you defeat enemies over and over to max out your experience points in each of the three meters to get special elemental powers, but aside from those it’s always interesting. There’s missing people to find, special laughing and crying doors to unlock, candy to make, a clocktower to fix, and even getting cheese for that one guy is interesting. Going back to the game feels like playing an open world game but without all the fluff. Granted, Tomba! isn’t 100 hours long, but it doesn’t need to be.

Yes, while you may initially think the game is a linear platformer, but you’ll eventually loop back to a previous area or remember something you could do now with an item you just got. The world is pretty big, with me being surprised that one place has a shortcut to another even in the final hours, and thankfully it’s easy to get around. You can find Charity Feathers that let you teleport to any save point around the world, and can even unlock a more permanent form of fast travel through quests. Discovering Tomba’s world and how it’s all connected is part of why the game is so fun, so if you enjoyed that in Dark Souls or any good Metroidvania, this game is for you.

That’s not to say the exploration is perfect, however. The map is really lacking, being essentially useless if you want to go somewhere very specific. The Haunted Mansion is probably the worst example of this, with a massive amount of rooms all scattered around multiple planes and dimensions (the building is fully 3D, with you being able to go around to each side). The game unfortunately asks you to come back here pretty frequently, and each time I ended up looking in every single room systematically until I found what I was looking for. The game really could have used a Metroid Prime style map or even minimap, but this port is more focused on preserving the original game as it was back on the PlayStation.

Special Edition does include some great quality of life features to make the game as accessible as possible. You can save anywhere you like now, including in cutscenes, and there’s a handy rewind feature for those tricky jumps. You also have three screen modes to choose from including Full Screen, which seems to be a pixel perfect mode, 4:3, which is how the game would have looked on a television of the era, and 16:9 if you hate art and like stretching things. There’s also a CRT filter to add scanlines to the screen, but I find it doesn’t help in recreating the pixel bleeding and softness of CRTs. I played mostly in 4:3 on my Steam Deck (since as of writing cloud saves are promised but not implemented) and the game looked great. There may have been some vertical stretching on animated cutscenes, but it’s hard to notice unless you’re looking for it.

The entire soundtrack has also been rearranged for Special Edition by Tomba!’s original composer, Harumi Fujita, along with some collaboration by Tee Lopes for the ending theme. I adore the original Tomba! soundtrack and you can still play with those here if you wish, but I’d still highly recommend playing with the new arrangements as they’re all great. I don’t think I like the new opening track as much as the original, but the new version just has such a great energy to it – you can feel the passion Ms. Fujita has for her work alongside the respect for the opening’s original composer. Fellow Tomba! fan Tee Lopes, as mentioned above, composed the ending theme’s second half and he blends in so well I couldn’t tell it was his work until I watched the interviews with Harumi Fujita. It all sounds fantastic, and I hope we see her and Lopes return for a Tomba! 2 Special Edition (along with a Tomba! 3 with Whoopee Camp reforming if I dare dream).

From the main menu, you can listen to every track in the game in a music player and browse the museum, containing promotional art, the box art for each region, the game’s manual, concept art from initial sketches to final designs including translated notes, officially released artwork, an early development cutscene, a promotional video, and interviews with creator Tokuro Fujiwara and Composer Harumi Fujita, which are absolutely fascinating to watch. They don’t go too deep into things, but it’s still great to hear what the architects of one of my favorite games have to say about it. Tomba! Special Edition is an absolute treat for fans of the original, people interested in game development, and really anyone who missed out on the original.

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