I'm convinced my generation was subliminally programmed by this thing.
Remember Tomba(!)? No? It was a profoundly odd ’90s platformer from Tokuro Fujiwara where you play as small, feral cave-boy with pink hair on a quest to rescue his granddad’s bracelet from a cabal of evil pigs. Pigs that he defeats by excited leaping.
You might remember its demo, though. Tomba is lodged firmly in the minds of an entire generation of PlayStation owners because it once came on a PlayStation magazine demo disc back in 1998. I poured hours into that thing, relentlessly hunting for some secret way to trick the demo into becoming the full game and snuffling around for secrets, though on my UK version it was called Tombi, which sounds like some kind of grave-sharing app in 2024. Anyway, here’s a dedicated YouTuber playing the very demo in question, if you need your memory jogged.
It came out today: Tomba! Special Edition is live on Steam right now after an announcement last year. It was created by Limited Run Games in collaboration with Fujiwara and runs on LRG’s Carbon Engine. It’s faring mostly well in the few reviews it’s picked up so far, with some of them even calling out other aged millennials with PS1 demo-disc memories, though some superfans do lament the lack of certain settings from the PS1 game, as well as what you might call era-appropriate load times.
I’m still tempted to grab it, though. There’s something about Tomba that’s stuck in my brain like a splinter ever since 6-year-old me whacked a black-backed demo disc into his console one year after Tony Blair became Prime Minister. It was weird and special like nothing else I’d played at that tender age, and it sits alongside a creepy Alone In The Dark demo and an original Xbox demo of Deus Ex: Invisible War in my mental pantheon of bitesize all-timers. Those were the days, eh? Steam Next Fest just isn’t the same.
Anyway, consider this my PSA for fellow ageing millennials with the same potent nostalgia. The magic of your youth is within reach, although it does cost $20 (£16.75). I’m sure the magic of your youth will go on sale at some point, if you want to wait.
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