A cute little adventure with some comedy included. Music is not bad, plot is a bit silly, but staightforward. Sometimes progression is hindered by requiring some action that is not obvious to do, forcing you to try every single option which is a bit tedious.
it's a text adventure game about vegetable people and there's just nothing quite like it.
Azura's favourite game!
this game is weird ur a veggie dude out on some epic quest and u can find funy stuff hot eggplant women a concentration camp but its actually a concentration farm some japanese rope bound tree and so and so i was not expecting such a weird take on point and clicks its pretty based tho i also remember seeing this mentioned as being one of hihi puffy amy yummy actresses fave games once i think on game center cx damn i remember puffy amy yummy on cartoon network it kinda rotted my brain into being a weeb and my friends were like why u watch that and tokyo meo meow but they also watched sakura card captor so wtf no diss against sakura tho she is based and i loved that story too what was this about again oh yeah this game is kinda bussin
the constant bits where the game arbitrary requires you leave and reenter a location are ass and the janken minigame is pretty much the worst shit ever but this thing is soaked in charm. just, absolutely sopping wet. would love to play the pc88 game sometime, i know its pretty radically different and the art is fucking bonkers. a strawberry gets crucified at one point. just wild.
A very cheeky graphic adventure game. While there's nothing revolutionary here, the silly plot and world keep it more engaging than the usual crime solving detective fare.
(This game was too hard to rate, but if I did it would be 2.75 stars, just below 3 stars.)
Incredibly charming, but incredibly outmoded adventure game that's kind of hard to recommend without a guide.
Well, I'm not sure I've been starting 2024 off on a great foot game-wise, because I've shelved more games then I've actually completed, and for some reason I feel a kind of shame about it. I also want to say sorry to Hudson because my previous attempt with one of their games (Elemental Gimmick Gear) resulted in a similar shelving rather than completing due to mechanical issues within the game itself, although the atmosphere was breathtaking.
While I might not describe Princess Tomato's atmosphere as breathtaking, it did have a sort of quaint almost dreamy feel to it. Even the cover art, where the characters seem to be made of clay has an incredibly vintage feel to it, vegetable and fruit characters in semi-medievalist, fairy tale attire is an oddly comforting kind of surrealism.
Princess Tomato is one where I don't really know what went wrong - because you can say that a lot of it's gameplay is just bound up in the tropes of the early adventure games, part and parcel of a game around its era. The puzzles are just barely solvable without a guide, but I highly recommend using one anyway at parts.
So where do I put the blame? Frankly, I don't know. There was just something tiring here. If Princess Tomato is vintage, it's vintage, but with a slight musty smell. Some might like the smell of an old book for example, maybe because it "brings them back" (but not always). Anyway, I bring that up because I think for people who are nostalgic for this time of gaming and old text adventures (A la Portopia Serial Murder Case and maybe Shadowgate) the jank is almost a part of the fun nostalgic trip. It's a "you had to be there thing", that I think this game kind of suffers from.
To follow the less than perfect metaphor, the smell of an old book might be off putting, especially if one can tell it's pages are filled with labyrinth prose, winding plot threads and such. Not that Princess Tomato is at all a dense tome, but it does have a sense of confusion and you will be lost. There's a painful maze section, it drops you into combat with kind of no explanation on how to actually fight (you do it through rock paper scissors and then a guessing game, it's hard to explain). Then there is the insane amount of menu options: LOOK, CHECK (why aren't look and check the same thing?), FIGHT, PUNCH, etc. that makes me appreciate the sleek interfaces of the modern point-and-clicks.
Yet, like I said, it's quaint, humorous and has some banging chiptune. It's kind of a pick-your-poison with this and equally old text adventures (not that they are all abstrusely designed), where you have to kind of make a trade-off between charm and ease of play. If you have nostalgia for this kind of thing, this might not even faze you. I'm not sure how this game would even translate into a remake, though it would help to modernize it a bit at least graphics wise, although the graphics are charming in an 8-bit interface and look good on the NES (and according to Hardcore Gaming 101 it did get a remake for Japanese mobile phones).
Finally, believe it or not I actually played this game on my dreamcast, using an emulator, so the fact that I had to wait for my boot disc to load, after about 15 tries each time, didn't help with making me want to play it. I'll definitely give it another go... with a different setup.
Incredibly charming, but incredibly outmoded adventure game that's kind of hard to recommend without a guide.
Well, I'm not sure I've been starting 2024 off on a great foot game-wise, because I've shelved more games then I've actually completed, and for some reason I feel a kind of shame about it. I also want to say sorry to Hudson because my previous attempt with one of their games (Elemental Gimmick Gear) resulted in a similar shelving rather than completing due to mechanical issues within the game itself, although the atmosphere was breathtaking.
While I might not describe Princess Tomato's atmosphere as breathtaking, it did have a sort of quaint almost dreamy feel to it. Even the cover art, where the characters seem to be made of clay has an incredibly vintage feel to it, vegetable and fruit characters in semi-medievalist, fairy tale attire is an oddly comforting kind of surrealism.
Princess Tomato is one where I don't really know what went wrong - because you can say that a lot of it's gameplay is just bound up in the tropes of the early adventure games, part and parcel of a game around its era. The puzzles are just barely solvable without a guide, but I highly recommend using one anyway at parts.
So where do I put the blame? Frankly, I don't know. There was just something tiring here. If Princess Tomato is vintage, it's vintage, but with a slight musty smell. Some might like the smell of an old book for example, maybe because it "brings them back" (but not always). Anyway, I bring that up because I think for people who are nostalgic for this time of gaming and old text adventures (A la Portopia Serial Murder Case and maybe Shadowgate) the jank is almost a part of the fun nostalgic trip. It's a "you had to be there thing", that I think this game kind of suffers from.
To follow the less than perfect metaphor, the smell of an old book might be off putting, especially if one can tell it's pages are filled with labyrinth prose, winding plot threads and such. Not that Princess Tomato is at all a dense tome, but it does have a sense of confusion and you will be lost. There's a painful maze section, it drops you into combat with kind of no explanation on how to actually fight (you do it through rock paper scissors and then a guessing game, it's hard to explain). Then there is the insane amount of menu options: LOOK, CHECK (why aren't look and check the same thing?), FIGHT, PUNCH, etc. that makes me appreciate the sleek interfaces of the modern point-and-clicks.
Yet, like I said, it's quaint, humorous and has some banging chiptune. It's kind of a pick-your-poison with this and equally old text adventures (not that they are all abstrusely designed), where you have to kind of make a trade-off between charm and ease of play. If you have nostalgia for this kind of thing, this might not even faze you. I'm not sure how this game would even translate into a remake, though it would help to modernize it a bit at least graphics wise, although the graphics are charming in an 8-bit interface and look good on the NES (and according to Hardcore Gaming 101 it did get a remake for Japanese mobile phones).
Finally, believe it or not I actually played this game on my dreamcast, using an emulator, so the fact that I had to wait for my boot disc to load, after about 15 tries each time, didn't help with making me want to play it. I'll definitely give it another go... with a different setup.
text based adventure game about funny vegetable people, sure alright. Has a lot of charm to it that makes it a bit memorable though if you aren't into the genre this isn't gonna convince you. The english version of the game definitely got hit by nintendo censors making the game more kid friendly by changing any drug and alcohol references the JP version had. There's a retranslation that puts all that stuff back in so you can honestly pick either and probably have a good time. The fact that they officially localized this back in the day in general is insane as most text heavy games weren't back then. shoutouts to the salad kingdom i guess.
I played the game in Japanese, so opinions might be different from the English release.
I'm shocked that a game like this even got an English release, a text-base adventure game for the Famicom given to the NES when the most popular games of the same year were SMB3 and Tetris in the Western world. The US was still very used to arcade style gaming, rarely having success with games that branched from the side scrolling that was almost expected of video games at this point and instead focusing on story-based little movement gameplay.
As fun and wacky of an idea that Tomato-Hime is, it is a game that did not age remotely well, and I can imagine did not translate very well into English either, with a majority of the plot based around this mix of 75% Japanese royal influence and 25% around what Japanese people imagine Western fairytale royalty to be like. Though honestly, I find that charming in its own way.
Princess Tomato is a genre of game that absolutely had the technology to perform what it wanted to do, but also had the unfortunate luck to be one of the first to do what it does, helping pave the way in learning what to do and NOT do for a player-friendly experience. The game is extremely unfriendly with mistakes that could be made per chapter, where if you do choose to play the game wandering around without a guide and experiencing things naturally (as you SHOULD in a story-heavy adventure game) you absolutely will need to restart the chapter over multiple times from spending your limited money where you weren't supposed to or using an item for an event you thought you needed.
The story is cute and definitely very creative, having you learn to flirt with tipsy lemons in the cabana club and punch potatoes (but not the carrots!!) in order to gain more information on the rebellion. The story is cute but the game feels like pulling teeth in order to continue with any of it! Obviously, playing with a guide would be the quickest and easiest way to get through the whole thing, which is what I ended up doing, but for this genre of game, that takes away all the fun.
Play it if you'd like, the story is fine, but also something you can just read online. The fun of exploring and figuring out the plot yourself in the game is practically impossible, and may cause more rage than you expected going into the game if that's how you intend/want to play.
Guides for both versions if you play, you're going to need them -
ENG: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Princess_Tomato_in_the_Salad_Kingdom/Walkthrough
JP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCIexaIxPOE
I'm shocked that a game like this even got an English release, a text-base adventure game for the Famicom given to the NES when the most popular games of the same year were SMB3 and Tetris in the Western world. The US was still very used to arcade style gaming, rarely having success with games that branched from the side scrolling that was almost expected of video games at this point and instead focusing on story-based little movement gameplay.
As fun and wacky of an idea that Tomato-Hime is, it is a game that did not age remotely well, and I can imagine did not translate very well into English either, with a majority of the plot based around this mix of 75% Japanese royal influence and 25% around what Japanese people imagine Western fairytale royalty to be like. Though honestly, I find that charming in its own way.
Princess Tomato is a genre of game that absolutely had the technology to perform what it wanted to do, but also had the unfortunate luck to be one of the first to do what it does, helping pave the way in learning what to do and NOT do for a player-friendly experience. The game is extremely unfriendly with mistakes that could be made per chapter, where if you do choose to play the game wandering around without a guide and experiencing things naturally (as you SHOULD in a story-heavy adventure game) you absolutely will need to restart the chapter over multiple times from spending your limited money where you weren't supposed to or using an item for an event you thought you needed.
The story is cute and definitely very creative, having you learn to flirt with tipsy lemons in the cabana club and punch potatoes (but not the carrots!!) in order to gain more information on the rebellion. The story is cute but the game feels like pulling teeth in order to continue with any of it! Obviously, playing with a guide would be the quickest and easiest way to get through the whole thing, which is what I ended up doing, but for this genre of game, that takes away all the fun.
Play it if you'd like, the story is fine, but also something you can just read online. The fun of exploring and figuring out the plot yourself in the game is practically impossible, and may cause more rage than you expected going into the game if that's how you intend/want to play.
Guides for both versions if you play, you're going to need them -
ENG: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Princess_Tomato_in_the_Salad_Kingdom/Walkthrough
JP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCIexaIxPOE
This cover art looks like it’s been sitting on grandmas porch for 14 years