Tombi! Special Edition Review

thesixthaxis.com:

If you’re as old as I am, you might remember the heyday of demo discs that came with Official UK Playstation Magazine and, if you do, you might remember Demo Disc 37. On this disc was a demo for an odd little platformer called Tombi! (Tomba! In other territories), a demo that I quickly fell in love with. Whether you only played this demo or successfully begged your parents for it, I have great news, Limited Run Games have brought it back with Tombi! Special Edition.

Opening with pigs beating up a child like a horror parody of Peppa Pig, I can tell you right now that Tombi! gets no less strange during its runtime. The premise is that you are said child and have been robbed by said pigs of your grandpa’s bracelet. So, the only thing to do is to follow them and get your precious keepsake back, drawing you into a wider plot surrounding Seven Evil Pigs and the curses they have placed upon the world.

In Tombi!, you’ll be doing a lot of platforming… very floaty platforming. It’s forgiving at most points to balance that out, and you do get some abilities and items later to help you with tighter and trickier platforming challenges, but you will notice immediately how long it takes for you to land, especially when it comes to combat in the game. Combat is basically jumping on the enemies to bite them and then throwing them at walls, the ground or other enemies.

You do acquire various weapons in the game, some of which provide a dual purpose of dispatching enemies and collecting distant items, but most of the enemies (and some of the allies) can be managed simply by the pounce and munch technique. The bonus with the weapons though is that you can aim and power them up by holding the attack button, so if a tricky enemy is causing you problems, you can dispatch them in a single hit.

This game is divided up into quests, of which there are 130 in total. Some of them are compulsory, such as the ones to hunt down and catch the Evil Pigs, and others are just for fun, really. The