Every two or three years, a memory from my childhood resurfaces and leads me to search for a strange PlayStation game that my brother and I were obsessed with but never actually got around to playing. The internet search goes like this: Red and black PS1 demo disc game featuring a wild child with pink hair taking on pigs and trees that look like butts. The results tell me that the game I'm looking for is the 1997 platformer. Grave!And I giddily revel in nostalgia. Then I forget completely and the cycle finally repeats itself.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when a appeared earlier this summer announcing the relaunch of Limited Run Games from Grave! in all its crazy glory for modern consoles. Tomba! Special edition is now available digitally for PS5, Nintendo Switch, and PC. Also on the way are physical editions, a plush line, and a themed NEO S controller (pre-orders for which have sadly sold out). And upon finally playing it through to completion nearly 20 years after its original release, I discovered that Grave! He's even more unhinged than I remembered.
Tomba, the player character, is a wild boy who lives apart from society, hunting wild boars and sleeping under the stars. His peace is disturbed one day when a group of rogue pigs appear and wreak havoc, eventually stealing a gold bracelet that belonged to his grandfather. To retrieve it, Tomba ventures into nearby towns to find the evil pigs' ringleaders and take them down. Along the way, he meets a number of strange characters who will aid him in his quest, but only after he completes a series of tasks for them.
It's a 2.5D platformer, meaning much of the game plays like a two-dimensional side-scroller, but you can occasionally move into the background or foreground to explore the map in more depth. Tomba! Special edition Not much has changed from the original game. The graphics are still distinctly PS1-style polygonal and the controls can be clunky. However, there are a few quality-of-life additions, such as a rewind feature which is extremely useful because, as it turns out, this game is quite tricky in places. I had to try certain maneuvers over and over again to get them right.
Almost every part of the story and its setting has a hint of absurdity. Tomba can climb walls, swing on branches, jump with inhuman skill, and apparently store objects (including living creatures) in his stomach, which he can regurgitate when he needs them later. There are the back trees, as mentioned above, which are supposedly meant to represent But when Tomba jumps on them and squeezes them, a cloud of magic gas gushes out. You'll find a village of dwarves, but you can only communicate with them after jumping on several dwarves' heads to learn their language. In another village, everyone has been turned into mice, and for some reason everyone is nervous about the disappearance of a real baby mouse that was never human.
One of the most memorable areas is undoubtedly the Mushroom Forest, a place filled with creepy anthropomorphic flowers and mushrooms and clowns that give Tomba certain ailments if he jumps on them. One will make him laugh uncontrollably, while the other will make him moan, and that scream is deeply unsettling. I was a little scared the first time it happened, if I'm honest. With both mushroom diseases, Tomba becomes unable to handle his weapons, instead flailing his arms and screaming if you try to attack him.
All in all, it's a surprisingly complex and visually striking game thanks to its bold color palette. But the quest can get tricky as you try to navigate the map's often confusing layout and accomplish the many, many tasks presented to you. Boss fights are also exceptionally frustrating. Instead of simply punching or killing the evil pigs, you have to control each one and throw them into a bag… but the bag is floating and, in most cases, spinning.
Although it is often maddening, Grave! It was a pleasure to listen to it again. It's always a silly thing and the soundtrack gave me a welcome burst of nostalgia from the moment the steel drums started playing.Tomba! Special edition includes both the original soundtrack and a remastered version, and both are great). In any case, the Special edition The statement made it clear why Grave! It has remained in my memory for so long that I can't say I've ever played another game like it.
