I remember the glorious time of the 5th generation consoles – I was but a child, 6 to be exact, and on the very day that I turned this old, I received… The Playstation! The very first!
It was an innocent time of blissful ignorance! With that I don’t mean neglecting the world around me and ignoring housework, I’d do that again in a heartbeat, but rather the fact that I was only a small child with his first console (apart from a SNES, I think?) and so I was happy no matter what I played and had no standards what so ever – I even enjoyed kalah!
In that time, I discovered what next became one of my favorite games of all times: Tomba! (Or Tombi! in some countries)
Tomba! is a wonderful Japanese game from 1998 (JP: 1997) and it quickly became a great tension relief for me, when I spent two months in a hospital (yes, they had a PS!) due to the joyful jumping around and kicking ass wherever I wanted as Tomba! The jungle-raised, biting kid!
Tomba starts as an unknown kid who lives on his own in the wild (wild child,) but that all changes when the evil and rather intelligent pigs steal his grandfathers old, gold bracelet – Tomba is now pissed off and ready to go on the craziest adventure of several lifetimes. But of course there are more to it than just some thieving, tri-fork wielding pigs! The leaders of these distasteful antagonists are the 7 
evil pig lords – All of them magicians who have, by accumulating large amounts of mana with the gold they’ve collected (hence then bracelet,) transformed the once peaceful lands, making plants mutate, buildings rot, caves burn, mountains windy – If you don’t find this horrible, it’s just because you’ve seen Justin Bieber and it doesn’t even compare.
As Tomba travels, he must find the 4 old men of time, defeat the 7 pig lords and save the realm from destruction and domination (and Justin!) Wielding only a chain with a mace head at the end, the ability to jump, and an indescribable lust to bite everything, Tomba may seem a bit… Lets call it poorly standing. Yet, I assure you that jumping around in this sidescrolling RPG, throwing pigs at each other, is about as fun a time as one can have.
The reason it seemed so fascinating back then, apart from me not understanding a thing, I think was that it was this non-linear side-scroller setting. The various quests you take, of which some are even optional, will take you both back and forth in a huge world, only to discover new things constantly, as well as gaining new weapons, abilities and… Well, pants.
Even more so, back then, heroes were always the “perfect guys.” Tomba is very different – he is a good guy and helps where he can, but until the pigs stole his bracelet, he had no intention of saving the world. He was the first protagonist I saw, who weren’t like Superman. Even though they’re both prone to wear little clothing when doing their good deeds.
If you ever were to pick up this game, you have my full endorsement! Not only is the combat entertaining and easy to master, the map creative and vast, the boss battles fun and challenging, but the story and Tomba’s interaction with other people is humorous in a way that is just uncanny! To learn dwarven, he decides to jump on and bite dwarves, as to pick out bits of the language when they run screaming away. Even better, they didn’t use any stupid clichés like the “Princess Peach” – they saved that one for the sequel, which sucks! (I hear.)
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