Tomba! Special Edition Review: PlayStation Classic Gets Proper Respect

Gaming history isn’t preserved nearly as well as films and books, but thankfully that has begun to change. Over the past decade, we’ve seen many great titles from the past get faithfully rereleased, along with bonus content, such as interviews or concept art. The latest classic to receive this treatment is Tomba!, as the accurately named Tomba! Special Edition is a fitting tribute to the great PlayStation platformer.

Originally released in 1997, the platform-adventure game became quite the critical darling for Sony, who published the Whoopee Camp-developed title. While it didn’t become a sales juggernaut, it (along with its sequel) gained a cult following over time, and that’s why this release is so exciting. It was one of the console’s premiere Metroidvania games (alongside the all-time great Castlevania: Symphony of the Night) and differentiated itself with colorful graphics and a slew of RPG elements.

Whether you’ve played the original or not, the experience of playing Tomba! Special Edition is immediately charming. The game’s strong art direction has helped the game age relatively well despite it being an early 3D game. The evil anthropomorphic pigs you fight show plenty of personality, and even though combat isn’t its strongest attribute, it’s hilarious to see Tomba using his weapons and jumping on pigs’ backs and biting them. It’s still very much a charming game that will leave you smiling.

There are some really nice features in the Tomba! Special Edition that help the game look and play better for a modern audience, too. Visually, the CRT filter is well done and gives the pixels a more accurate look despite running at a far higher resolution than originally intended. There are also several screen options and border options (you can even do 4:3). Most importantly, though, you can save the game at any point and take advantage of a rewind functionality, which makes the mobility much more bearable as you start getting used to it.

There’s also a ton of extras here. Beyond a music player and plenty of artwork, there are also game manuals for all regions, plus developer documents. It’s a really thorough collection, one that is like what Digital Eclipse would put in their collections. The coolest thing, though, are the video interviews with the developers, which wind up being very fun to watch and quite educational. This is exactly what such a collection should have.

Disclosure: The publisher provided a digital copy for our Tomba! Special Edition review. Reviewed on version 1.000.000.