Ahh, the good old gaming of the late 90s, when Sony’s first gaming console started to dominate the gaming industry, the PlayStation or the PSOne as we call it nowadays. Some may say that this gaming generation including the Sega Saturn and Nintendo 64 was the 3D revolution where game studios were going for 3D polygonal graphics. Yet despite the push for more 3D games over 2D games, some studios haven’t jumped over the 3D visual craze. And one of them was Tomba! from Whoopee Camp, a dev studio handled by Tokuro Fujiwara who had previous works for Ghosts ‘N Goblins and Mega Man X.

The last time I played the original Tomba! game was way back when I was still a grade-schooler around 1999. I even remember seeing several ads in gaming magazines advertising Tomba! before playing it. Sadly, I never got the time to finish the game as I only played it for 3 or so hours until I moved on to playing Final Fantasy VII and never returned, except when I played Tomba! 2 several months later and invested around a dozen hours before letting it go once again and continued playing a different game.

Yet Tomba! left me with a great impression of how good the game was as a platformer, with tight controls and straightforward mechanics as every platformer should be, what draws me more is the blend of RPG elements that stands out with the game. You can earn experience by leaping on enemies to defeat them which unlocks more skills, you can also acquire upgrades and equipment instead of temporary power-ups throughout your playthrough and take on quests from NPCs that make you backtrack on previously explored levels, which is a new experience for me at that time and made me think that maybe this was a great idea for platformer games. Of course, I grew up when Super Mario Bros. on the NES (or Famicom for us in our country) was popular and video games were a taboo for the grown-ups, having to experience a unique approach was a thrilling experience for me at that time. As you can see, it was the same time when I discovered roleplaying games and such game mechanics were completely new to me and it was also both a great (and bad) timing for me to play Tomba!, like I got completely distracted and focused on playing the newly released RPGs.

Now fast forward to 2024, with the release of Tomba! Special Edition, I got a second chance to play the game once again, and it brought back the same experience I had 25 years ago. It didn’t get the major HD remaster treatment that some game studios had with other classic games, but it’s one of those 2D games that aged well even if you had high-definition screens to play on it. It did have a handful of quality-of-life improvements such as a rewind function that lets you rewind your gameplay if made a mistake on a platform or got killed to return to a previous state, a save anywhere feature that you can save your progress anytime and anywhere and bonus content like a museum mode to view the original game documents and concept art. It’s pretty rad to see how the concept for the game design underwent several changes.

Now going back to my game experience, I did manage to progress further than in my first run, I realized there were tons of quests that I missed out on or haven’t finished that are just straightforward to finish, and when I say tons, like every time you talk to an NPC or interact with an object, a new quest gets triggered. Going back and forth to different levels seems to be its game loop whenever you try to finish any side quests, which will remind you of how RPGs designed their side content. But despite the RPG elements that were put into this game, it is still a platformer first, making you traverse to different areas, leap to higher platforms, avoid traps and spikes, take out enemies and collect items. It’s not trying to be an all-original concept, but it tries to experiment with blending with other mechanics of other genres if it blends well, and so far it has worked. And it ain’t a platformer if you don’t mess up your jumps and fall to a pit, or accidentally get yourself hit by getting close to an enemy, it’s frustrating, but it teaches you to be more careful in timing your jumps, then again the Special Edition has a rewind function that lets you correct your mistakes by rewinding a few seconds earlier if you don’t want to commit to your errors.

When looking back on the old PSOne era, there were quite a handful of side-scrolling games that were created, and as more developers are embracing a new era in gaming where you can move and explore 3D environments, some still try to reinvent sidescrollers that offer unique twists. For instance, Castlevania Symphony of the Night reinvented the franchise with RPG elements and exploration inspired by Metroid games that in the end created the Metroidvania subgenre, Megaman X4 to X6 continues the same Megaman X formula but with better visuals, Klonoa mixing the traditional 2D sidescrolling gameplay with 3D visuals. Replaying Tomba! once more allows me to appreciate these kinds of games that stood the test of time, and now the game is available to modern gaming platforms courtesy of Limited Run Games, everyone can try the game for the first time or relive the nostalgic experience as I do.