Tomba!

Of course, games designed for the PS1 are never going to be the most sophisticated, but this doesn’t mean they’re not great. If, like many phone users, you have re-discovered the joy of more simplistic games on your phone when purchasing less advanced handsets with cheaper [SIMS](http://freesim.o2.co.uk/), then you may already be aware of how addictive such simple games can be. Tomba! is a great PS1 equivalent, and surely one of the best original games to be released by Playstation.

My first experience with _Tomba!_ was when I got bored with _Spyro the Dragon_ (or stuck, probably; I was – what – nine?) and decided to give the demo disc that had come with the console a go. The purple dragon that had caused me so much pain was quickly forgotten, and in his place was an angry little man with pink hair. Here was a character I could relate to: a poor youth, going about his business chasing wild boar for his dinner only to be ambushed by pigs and knocked out, only to recover consciousness hours later to find the pigs gone, along with his most treasured possession – his grandfather’s bracelet.

I was so taken with Tomba’s plight, in fact, that I played the demo through as far as it would let me. The short taster was well-designed; a few missions could be completed but most were unfulfillable, leaving their mysteries only open to those select few who could convince their parents to go out and buy yet another game. Luckily, there comes an age when one no longer needs parental permission for such things, and thus we find me – more than ten years later – discovering at last the hidden meanings of such missions as “Something’s Cookin’?”

On the one hand, the gaming experience itself is not great. Times have moved on, and PS1 games are no longer top of the range, something which is very noticeable when those games are played on a console that boasts the likes of _Metal Gear Solid 4, Assassins Creed 2_ and other such impressive-looking games. _Tomba!_ just can’t compete, and it’s probably only those who owned a PS1 themselves (and possibly even this particular game) who are going to find the graphics cute and reminiscent as opposed to just annoying.

On the other hand, the game has a lot more to offer than just retro charm. It’s only a side-scroller, sure, but compensates for its lack of three-dimensional space by having level switches in which a complete change in perspective takes place, allowing Tomba to roam in a totally different direction (take that, Mario), if still in a two-dimensional way. Level exploration is varied, too; Tomba spends his time jumping on things, hanging from things, even – later in the game – swimming and diving underwater, getting involved in far more than just running at things and hitting them with heavy objects (although he does a lot of that too).

The most impressive feature of the game, however, is the story. The characters are varied (from dwarves to mice), the dialogue is funny, and the story is unlike anything you’ll have ever experienced before. There’s the general adventure game outline of having to complete missions and defeat bosses, but the missions involve things like finding a monkey’s (Charles) lost pants and the bosses are – as mentioned above – seven evil pigs. Basically, _Tomba!_ is a game set to surprise you; its unpredictably is what makes it so playable. Sure, it gets annoying when Tomba perishes for the tenth time from the same dwarf sliding down a leafy slope and crashing into him, but once that part is over you find yourself doing something completely different.

There’s a copy of _Tomba!_ on eBay right now with 8 bidders competing for purchase and its current bid at £23. While that’s about half the price one generally expects to pay for a video game these days, it’s astounding to see a game selling for so much more than a decade after its release, and the bids will only increase until the listing closes in a week. While this means a good money-making opportunity for some, for those who are now desperate to try one of the best games on the PS1 it’s going to require a lot of searching through attics and calling in favours with the kinds of people who still have their game collection from ten years ago (little though you might want to mix with these people otherwise). My apologies for being the bearer of bad news aside, if you do manage to get a copy of this game let me assure you – it’s totally worth it.