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"Tomba loves you, and by golly, America loves Tomba."
US Commercial for Tomba!

Tomba!, known as Tombi! in Europe and Ore! Tomba in Japan, is a cult-favorite 2½D platform-adventure series composed of two games starring a pink-haired jungle boy. Tomba must fight the Evil Swine, who have turned the world into a much darker place through the power of their own evil magic, using platforming skills across a fairly large game world.

The game is notable for its quest structure, in which you receive points for every objective completed, instead of just simply going from one point to the next as is the case with many platformers. Also, the plethora of hidden objectives made this a kind of Platformer-RPG fusion.

In 2023, a Video Game Remake was announced by Limited Run Games, with help of the original director of the game, Tokuro Fujiwara, for the Playstation 5, Playstation 4, PC via Steam and Nintendo Switch.

Two games were released for the PlayStation:

  • Tomba! — 1997
  • Tomba! 2: The Evil Swine Return — 1999 (known as Tombi! 2 in the UK and Europe and Tomba! The Wild Adventures in Japan)


Both games provide examples of:

  • And Your Reward Is Clothes:
    • In the first game, some quests gave you new pants which had different abilities, like moving faster or jumping farther. The second game gives you new pants and suits (like the flying squirrel outfit) from quests and treasure chests.
    • The 100% ending for the second game takes this to its literal extreme; for getting 100% Completion, you get a tuxedo and Tomba trying it on. That's it.
  • Anime Hair: Tomba, who is one of the few male characters with a pink hair.
  • Big Bad: The Evil Pigs who place curses on several areas of the land and collect gold to power their magic.
  • "Blind Idiot" Translation: Both games suffer from it at points.
    • The Swedish translation for the first game mixed up "frog" and "fog", which result in one hint asking the player to "Bring the fog home". One event failed to translate the English word "find" to Swedish "finn", which is really bad considering it is the very first event of the game. Several menu options and most locations have their English names, despite having very literal meanings, such as "Phoenix Mountain", being a mountain with a phoenix.
    • The translation for the second game starts to suffer around when you get to the Water Temple, with grammar errors and pronoun trouble here and there. An early example is Mizuno saying that the Hot Powder and Cold Powder "boosts damage due to heat or cold", which may cause players not to use them — why would you use an item that makes you take more damage from hot and cold? Actually, it turns out it was just translated badly — they actually make you impervious to damage from heat or cold.
  • Clean Dub Name: The series is known as Tombi! in Europe, presumably because "tomba" is Italian for "grave".
  • Market-Based Title: In Europe the game is called "Tombi!" because "Tomba" is Italian for "grave", as in "where you bury the dead".
  • Mercy Invincibility: Every time you get hit, of course.
  • Messy Pig: The Evil Pigs, led by the Seven Evil Pigs (or Five Evil Pigs in the second game).
  • Metroidvania: You get more and more abilities and items as you progress through the game, allowing you to find secrets and solve quests that you couldn't before.
  • Mooks: The different types of pigs found in both games, of course.
  • Old Master: The first game has four of these! And they go up in age - from 100 to 1,000 to 10,000 to the Million-Year-Old Man. Kainen from the second game is even older.
  • Permanently Missable Content:
    • In the first game:
      • Break the rolling Spiked Barrel on the Mushroom Forest bridge and that's it! The event involving that Barrel will never be fulfilled!
      • You can trigger the Take Out event, but if you accidentally eat the special lunch box before you find who it belongs to or finish Yan's hide and seek quest before obtaining the lunch box, there's no way to ever complete it.
    • In the second game:
      • Make sure that you have every side quest you want to do completed, because once you enter the door with the final Evil Pig Gate, time will stop and you can only finish the main story.
      • One of the Pots of Life in Kujara Ranch is well-hidden and can only be obtained before the curse is lifted.
  • Psychopathic Man Child: Judging by the dialogue, it seems like the True and Last Evil Pigs are this. Both of them refer to their battle with Tomba as "play".
  • Puzzle Boss: The fights against the Evil Pigs, which consists of trying to throw and trap them inside their dedicated bags.
  • Red Ones Go Faster: In both games, red pants go faster. Or rather, wearing red pants makes Tomba go faster.
  • Stock Animal Diet: Charles the monkey will reward Tomba for giving him bananas (though in one instance, he is thirsty and wants banana juice, and in the second game, he won't eat the bananas unless they are baked in an oven.)
  • Super Drowning Skills: Present in both games... until you do a couple of missions in the first game or get the Swimming Pig Suit in the second.
  • To Create a Playground for Evil: The Evil Pigs' motives aren't fully explored, but given that they use their powers to warp the world in chaotic ways, and the Real Evil Pig's statement of thinking of the world as a giant toy box, this appears to be what they are aiming for.
  • Warp Whistle: The Wings (which are one-use) and, later, Baron (who can be used infinitely).

The first game provides examples of:

  • Awesome, but Impractical: The "Iron Boomerang"; It has good range and can flat-out kill most if not all normal enemies in game. It can even kill a Needlegator while it's still in its shell. Problem is, you can't even get it until just about the end of the game, and the earlier-acquired GrappleJack, while less powerful offensively, is infinitely more useful overall.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy: The Masakari tribe, courtesy of the Jungle Pig, act hostile towards Tomba and have laid traps for him.
  • The Chosen One: Tomba is said to be this by the Million-Year-Old Man.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience:
    • There are Red, Blue, and Green gems that gave you Fire, Water, and Wind powers.
    • Averted with the Evil Pigs, as none of their colors related to their respective attacks or elements, except for the True Evil Pig, who was the final boss.
  • Cute Witch: Mizuno, who's actually referred to as such.
  • Dark Action Girl: The Jungle Pig, the only female Evil Pig.
  • Death Mountain: Phoenix Mountain, especially when under the Evil Pig curse.
  • Developer's Foresight: Baron is needed to open the last Evil Pig's gate. However, if he had not been given all of the healing items, or even if he was ignored entirely, he will be given to Tomba, fully grown, by the Million Year Old Man, who mentions he had been looking after Baron.
  • Do Well, But Not Perfect: "I Want a Silver Medal" requires you to not beat 24.96 seconds, the best time on the kart race, but rather to beat the second-best time, 26.55 seconds. "I Want a Bronze Medal" requires you to play worse than that, only beating 28.16 seconds, the third-best time, without either going over that and getting nothing, or going below 26.55 and getting a Silver Medal.
  • Guide Dang It!: Some of the side quests will require this.
    • Some of the side quests are so obscure that even finding them is enough of a hassle.
    • Two words that'll make everyone flinch, "Seven Friends". This is one of the last and mandatory quests in the game. The required friends are in random places all over the world, and when you find the first six, you might go crazy looking for the last friend only to find out that it's actually Baron.
  • Lethal Lava Land: The inside of Phoenix Mountain.
  • Load-Bearing Boss: after defeating the Real Evil Pig, the entirety of Pig Island immediately crumbles into the sea, with Tomba flying away on top of Baron.
  • Mix-and-Match Weapon: You start the game with the Blackjack, good for smacking around enemies. Outside of the Lava Caves, you get the Grapple, which lets you swing around and hang from walls and ceilings. If you complete the "Power Up for Tools!?" event, you can get the Grapplejack, which functions as both.
  • Plot Coupon: The Evil Pig Bags, which Tomba needs to collect so that he fight Evil Pigs directly.
  • Real Men Wear Pink: One of the Evil Pigs in the game wears a pink outfit and is male. Tomba's hair is bright pink as well.
  • Remixed Level: Every level becomes one when it is lifted from the Evil Pig Curse.
  • Rouge Angles of Satin: At the end of the first game, the Million-Year-Old Man asks "What? Your heading back home already?" A few seconds later, the 100-Year-Old Man says "Now who's memory is fading, ehh gramps?"
  • Running on All Fours: Tomba does this when he learn to run faster with the Animal Dash move.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can: What Tomba does to the Evil Pigs when he traps them in their dedicated Evil Pig Bags.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Possibly coincidental, but an early task in the first game requires the rescuing of seven dwarves.
    • When the 100-Year-Old Man tells Tomba about the coming of the Evil Pigs, there is a scene in the FMV of the seven Pigs scattering all over the lands that is similar to the seven Dragon Balls scattering after a wish has been granted.
  • Smurfette Principle: Only one of the evil pigs in the game is female, and no, it's not the Pink Pig. It's actually the Navy Blue one.
  • Speaking Simlish: Characters speak in gibberish when talked to. Averted in the second game, which was fully voiced.
  • Sprite/Polygon Mix: How the game is presented. Averted in the second game which has a much higher proportion of polygons.
  • True Blue Femininity: The Navy Blue Pig is the only female villain.
  • Walking Shirtless Scene: Tomba himself. Less so in the second game, where he can wear a variety of costumes.
  • Wind Is Green: The Wind Jewel is green, as is its experience tracker. And Tomba's hair once it's activated.

The Evil Swine Return provides examples of:

  • Artistic License – Physics: The propeller that can somehow carve steps out of stone - said steps also seem to be able to stay there perfectly fine without any kind of supports at all.
  • Ass Kicks You: When wearing the Pig Suit, pressing X while in the air causes Tomba to take on a position similar to a cannonball. This is strong enough to kill any enemy that is immediately vulnerable by landing on them.
  • Beat Them at Their Own Game: The Last Evil Pig uses the items you have equipped at the time, including attacking you with whatever weapon you currently have equipped.
  • Big Bad: The Last Evil Pig, like in the previous title.
  • Big Boo's Haunt: Donglin Forest under the Evil Pig Curse.
  • Blessed with Suck: Some enemies will turn you invisible, which might seem cool at first, until you realize that you can't use any of your clothes or interact with anybody.
    • One adventurer lampshades it. Semi-subverted, due to Tomba being able to interact with the invisible adventurer.
  • Bottomless Pits:
    • The Pipe Area starts having these after defeating the Evil Fire Pig.
    • There are also some gaps to fall into in Deep Forest, Kujara Ranch, and the Water Temple.
  • Bubblegloop Swamp: Donglin Forest.
  • Butt-Monkey: Charles in this game (no pun intended); whenever he appears, he suffers various misfortunes: falling into mud that hardens into a ball of dirt, becoming hungry to the point of exhaustion, feeling uncontrollably itchy, and getting trapped in a cocoon of leaves.
  • Casting a Shadow: The power of the Ghost Pig.
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: There are 4 different colors of Inexplicable Treasure Chests: red, green, blue, and white. Random people all over the world have the keys for them, and you need to complete quests involving them in order to get them.
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Only two elements, though. Fire and Ice.
  • Dub Name Change: Most of the characters kept their names, but a few were changed.
    • Scara to Zippo
    • Santa to Charles (carried over from the first game, ironic since the Santa Claus is also featured in the game)
    • Pansy to Tabby
  • 11th-Hour Superpower: The Golden Powder. See Invincibility Power-Up for more info.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: There is an item called Getwell Plant that is used for... getting well.
  • Excuse Plot: Screw the plot, people play the game to bite pigs.
    Quick! Tabby went missing! She was captured by the Evil Pigs because they wanted her necklace for no reason whatsoever! You've got to save her by capturing them in colored purses! You may also deviate from your objective to do ridiculously unnecessary quests that add nothing to the story whatsoever, like transporting cement in a trolley, washing up oversized chickens, and guiding a worm through a series of booby-trapped seesaws so it can eat a leaf!
  • Fat Bastard: The Earth Pig is really fat compared to his colleagues. If his claims are to be believed, he's 78% body fat.
  • First Town: The Fisherman Village. Sometimes, it's even referred to as The Starting Beach.
  • Forced Transformation: The Evil Pig Curse over the Circus Village has turned its inhabitants into pigs.
  • Forgot I Couldn't Swim: Inverted. Somehow, Tomba forgot that he can swim!
  • Foreshadowing: Even if you lift the curse on the Donglin Forest, Baron remains as a statue. This is because he's under the curse of the Last Evil Pig, whose last-ditch effort to stop Tomba involves him doing this to the entire game world.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Baron has been Taken for Granite and left as a statue in Donglin Forest. You're supposed to use Holy Water to un-petrify him, but the thing is that this is a sidequest, and thus you don't really have to free him. Even if you don't, though, he still shows up in the ending.note 
  • Grimy Water: The water in the cursed Donglin Forest is rainbow-colored, and Tomba drowns in it even when he's wearing the Swimming Pig Suit. After defeating the Evil Ghost Pig and removing the curse on the forest, the water becomes a pleasantly clear cyan and is no longer hazardous to the touch, allowing Tomba to swim in it.
  • Guide Dang It!: The "Precious Ring" sidequest requires you to drop into a very specific and completely unindicated location in the giant bottomless pit of the Pipe Area, when falling into the pit in any other location instantly kills you.
  • Hamster-Wheel Power: The lift of Kujara Ranch is powered by a couple of Kujara (giant, rotund bird/seal hybrids) running in one of these. Tomba needs to find their favorite food if he wants to go further.
  • Heart Container: Collecting 2 Half Pots of Life (or the single Pot of Life) increases Tomba's health by one. Completing a certain quest involving Charles prompts the monkey to give him a fruit that allows Tomba to have up to 16 health.
  • Inconsistent Dub: Some of the items in this game which were also featured in the previous game have different translations here. For instance, Megumi no Hane (literally "Wings of Blessing") are translated as Magic Wings in this game, while the previous game called them Charity Wings. The Doka Pin also keeps its Japanese name here, while the first game called it the Grapplejack. (The Japanese name is a combination of the Japanese names for the Blackjack and Grapple, which are Gurudoka and Gurupin respectively.)
  • Invincibility Power-Up: The Golden Powder. In order to get it, you have to get the Golden Moon, Golden Star, Golden Sun, Glacier Boomerang, Torch Hammer, and Doka Pin and then go to the Golden Tower and talk to the Pig Elder while wearing the Swimming Pig Suit. What you get for doing all of that is invincibility that you can enable and disable whenever and wherever you want.
  • Knights and Knaves: The "Who's the Liar?" sidequest has Tomba listening to what 3 girls say and then presenting the "Badge of Liars" to the liar, 3 times. The second session of this quest has the girls calling each other or themselves liars or truthful people, requiring Tomba to figure out which one is feeding him bull.
  • Meaningful Name: The Toradako, those tiger-striped octopodes, are named after tigers (tora in Japanese) and octopus (tako).
  • Minecart Madness: Two of the sidequests in the game have you delivering quick-drying cement by riding minecarts that you must keep on their tracks.
  • Mix-and-Match Weapon: Like the previous game, you start with the Blackjack. In Laughing Crying Forest, you get the Grapple, which lets you swing around and hang from walls and ceilings. If you find the Tower of Wisdom, you can get the Doka Pin, which functions as both.
  • Mood Motif: The music playing during a conversation or cut scene usually depends on the situation. For example, during a normal situation, peaceful music will play. Also, during a emergency or a serious situation, really frantic music will play.
  • Mr. Exposition: Zippo takes the trophy, although there are a few others serving this purpose as well.
  • My Name Is ???: Two endgame areas both have their name as question marks.
    • "...???" is where you can meet Kainen after defeating the Evil Flame Pig, and the gate to the final area.
    • "????" is said final area, the room where the Last Evil Pig's door is hidden.
  • Old Save Bonus: Four additional events are only available if you have a save file from the first game that has certain events cleared ("The 100 Year Old Wise Man", "A Lost Child", "Hide and Go Seek", and "The Cute Witch"). These events can only be unlocked late in the game in the Mini Temple, after completing "Nishiki Bird Servants". With the exception of Mizuno, who is already possible to see in the base game, all four of these events have cameos of characters from the first game, who are each tied to the aforementioned Tomba! 1 events.
  • Point of No Return: At the end of the game, just before the final boss, the world state changes and you can no longer do anything but progress towards the final boss. Unfortunately, you can save during this point, and in the era of small memory card space, you may unknowingly overwrite your save here not realizing you're permanently stuck here, and need to restart the entire game.
  • Power Copying: Defeating one of the Evil Pigs grant you a robe with the powers of said pig.
  • Priceless Ming Vase: One of the miners in the Coal-Mining Town has a pot made for him by another resident of the town. Interacting with it twice causes it to fall on the floor and gives you the Clay Spatula, which you can give to the guy who made the pot. Giving him the spatula along with clay lets you defy this trope by making another pot, which you aren't allowed to break, and giving it back to the first miner finishes a quest.
  • Quirky Miniboss Squad: The five evil elemental pigs: the Fire Pig, the Ice Pig, the Ghost Pig, the Earth Pig, and the Water Pig.
  • Remember the New Guy?: Both Zippo and Tabby, introduced at the start of the game. They are Tomba's friend and childhood friend, respectively, but were never even mentioned in the previous game.
  • Shaped Like Itself: "This is called a Fire Hammer. As you can see, it's a hammer that has the power of fire."
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Kujara Ranch, when it's under the Evil Pig Curse.
  • Taken for Granite: Tomba's canine companion Baron was turned to stone. Fortunately, a bucket of Holy Water will cure him (and even if you don't, he shows up during the ending).
  • Vent Physics: Tomba's primary means of navigating around the Pipe Area.
  • Violation of Common Sense:
    • The best way to get oil off of yourself is to swing the Flame Hammer as soon as you're covered. Normally, exposing yourself to flames while covered in oil deals damage to you and removes the oil, but using the Flame Hammer during your Mercy Invincibility from being hit by the oil will instantly get it off without the damage. And since the only enemy that can cause the Oil status effect is found in an area full of icy blocks that need the Flame Hammer to break, getting oiled is basically just a minor inconvenience.
    • There's a sidequest where you have to fall into a very specific spot in the huge pit in Pipe Area in order to find a clump of mud with a Miner's Ring in it. Falling in the incorrect area is an immediate Game Over. At least Death Is a Slap on the Wrist.
  • Vocal Dissonance:
    • Apparently, the voice actor for the Water Pig didn't realize that she was female, even if she refers to herself with feminine pronouns and has a clearly female-shaped body and lipstick. (They may have just thought she was a crossdresser or a transvestite or something, especially since the English voice sounds like a man trying - with limited success - to do a feminine voice.) Averted in the Japanese version, where she has a clearly female voice.
    • Mizuno has a mild case of this too - she's supposed to be young and cute, but the voice actress made her sound like an old woman.
    • The three little girls who speak with adult womens' voices in the Kujara Ranch.
  • Water Is Womanly: The only female of the Evil Pigs is the Evil Water Pig, who has the power to control and weaponize water.
  • Wholesome Crossdresser: Tomba can wear the Water Pig Robe. Despite what her voice would tell you, the Water Pig is female. Zippo even mentions that it's a woman's robe, but it fits Tomba, too.

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