25 years later, one of the PS1's best and weirdest platformers finally hits PC
I played hours of Tomba as a kid, despite only having access to a short demo.
Friends, it is my privilege and delight to inform you that, yes, there is still justice in the world. How do I know? Because Tomba, one of my favourite platformers of the PS1 era, is finally coming to PC a mere quarter-century after it hit (European and American) consoles in 1998. It's being brought to modern systems by Limited Run Games—in collaboration with series creator Tokuro Fujiwara—and will run on LRG's Carbon Engine.
Tomba (or Tomba! as it's properly rendered) is a bit of a cult classic around certain parts of the internet, owing to its unique, hyper-colourful style and Metroidvania-ish gameplay. You play a purple-haired rapscallion as he wages a one-man war against a load of sapient pigs who have stolen his grandad's bracelet. Pretty standard stuff.
I'd say I have incredibly warm memories of this game, but that wouldn't be quite accurate. I actually have incredibly warm memories of its demo, which accompanied an issue of Official PlayStation Magazine here in the UK back in the late '90s and seems to be how most people my age actually got any hands-on experience with it. For reasons beyond my ken, it was called Tombi in Europe, and I probably poured tens of hours into its demo that couldn't have lasted much longer than 30 minutes.
Although Limited Run Games specialises in, ah, limited run games, it looks like this new version of the old classic will be getting a digital release too. There's no Steam page yet, but the store's logo sits alongside stuff like PS5 and Switch in the trailer above. In a tweet announcing the port, LRG said it'll be working with composer Fujita Harumi to re-do the original game's soundtrack. That's probably for the best, given that the audio quality on the PS1 version was roundly panned back when the game was released.
There's no release date on this one yet, but LRG promises more updates to come in the hopefully near future. I'm pretty psyched, to be honest. Now if we could only get proper ports for Vagrant Story and Ape Escape, I wouldn't have any reason to keep Duckstation on my PC anymore.