Tomba!

Tomba! PS1 is a single-player action-adventure platformer developed by Whoopee Camp, the studio founded by Tokuro Fujiwara, and published in North America by Sony Computer Entertainment in 1998. It is the first game in the series, not Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return; the same original PlayStation adventure was called Tombi! in European territories. Its wild-haired hero Tomba sets out after the mischievous Koma Pigs steal the golden bracelet left to him by his grandfather, a personal chase that leads into a much larger struggle against the magical Seven Evil Pigs.

Rather than following one straight course from stage to stage, Tomba! connects its colorful areas into an exploratory journey. Tomba runs, jumps, climbs, and moves through mostly side-on locations, but certain walls let him pass between foreground and background routes. A few places shift the viewpoint again, helping the island feel like a set of connected regions rather than a sequence of isolated obstacle courses. New destinations, blocked paths, villagers, and found objects continually give the player reasons to revisit earlier territory with a new purpose.

Tomba's close-range attack is as unusual as the setting: he can leap onto an enemy, bite it, and throw it. Weapons and useful items broaden his options as the adventure unfolds, while fruit can restore the vitality lost to enemies, hazards, or dangerous falls. The controls support quick platforming as well as searching and interacting, so a trip through a forest or village can turn from a jump-filled route into a conversation, a puzzle, or a scavenger hunt. Signposts in the world also introduce actions and abilities instead of leaving every discovery to a separate tutorial screen.

The central structure is the Event system. Interacting with people, objects, and environments can open tasks that range from recovering a missing item to helping a character or removing an obstacle. Completed Events award Adventure Points, and several can remain active at once, allowing progress to branch in different directions. The inventory keeps both possessions and current objectives visible, while Adventure Points can open designated chests and further opportunities. This quest-driven design gives the PlayStation platformer a strong sense of discovery: a solution found in one area may matter much later somewhere else.

Tomba travels through a cheerful but strange world altered by the pigs' magic. The Koma Pigs cause trouble across the land, while the Seven Evil Pigs are tied to the transformations Tomba must undo. Finding the Pig Bags is part of locating their lairs, and confronting the major pigs gradually clears the way toward the bracelet and the source of their power. The game mixes hand-drawn character art and 2D action with polygonal scenery, creating a deliberately storybook-like 2.5D look that distinguishes its PlayStation presentation.

Tomba! began in Japan in 1997 before Sony Computer Entertainment brought it overseas in 1998. Whoopee Camp made refinements for the international release, including reduced loading and more responsive control, while the European edition used the Tombi! name. The original release later returned through PlayStation Network, and Tomba! Special Edition arrived on modern platforms in 2024 with conveniences such as save-anywhere and rewind alongside remastered music. Those rereleases preserve the original quest-and-platforming adventure, whose mix of freeform Events, expressive animation, and offbeat pig-filled fantasy remains its defining feature.