It’s been a really long time since I played my last RPG. That’s not really my fault of course—ever since the N64 days, there hasn’t really many RPGs to play. And the GameCube still doesn’t have any RPGs, though that will change with the release of Rune and PSO. However, things are quite different on the Game Boy front. To the already well-furnished list of good RPG games that are Nintendo’s Golden Sun, Enix’s Toruneko no Daibouken, and Capcom’s Breath of Fire, Nintendo has added Tomato Adventure to the GBA RPG line up. Looking for a RPG game to play before I go to sleep I picked up Tomato Adventure. I bought the game only knowing that it’s developed by Alpha Dreams, published by Nintendo, and that according to the box it’s an “action command RPG.”

Let me begin with the storyline, which goes basically like this: the main character Demil lives in Ketchup Kingdom, where all the inhabitants are kids and love tomatoes. Demil is an outcast because he doesn’t like tomatoes. As a result, Demil and other kids who don’t like tomatoes are banned to a city on the outskirts until they like tomatoes. One day Demil’s girlfriend, Paseran, gets kidnapped because she possesses certain “heart powers” that is vital to a new invention by King Abilla. Demil attempts to go to the Tomato palace to rescue her, and realizes that he can’t enter the palace. He discovers that he needs to obtain 6 robot parts, which are possessed by the six Super Kids of Ketchup Kingdom. And your journey begins, in order to beat the Super Kids and retrieve the robot parts to get into the palace.

The most significant part of this game is its battle system. Instead of the traditional fight and magic commands, you fight with gimmicks. Gimmicks are categorized into timing, speed, doki-doki, and button smashing. Every gimmick is executed differently. For example, when using the Magnet Hand, which belongs to the speed category, you have to hit the buttons fast enough to fill up a bar within the given time limit. If you successfully implement the maneuver, you inflict a critical hit. You can also adjust the difficulty of your gimmicks to inflict more damage. As another example, in order to execute the Snee-Ka, you have to press the right combinations of directions and buttons the game shows you. In the easiest mode, you are thrown a sequence of 4 icons consisting of directions and buttons at a relatively slow pace. When you bump the difficulty up to max, its feeds you 6 icons at blazing speeds.

Playing it for a bit, I thought to myself how nice it’d be if I found a really powerful and easy to execute gimmick, so that I could just keep using it. To prevent this from happening, Alpha Dreams limits the usage of each gimmick. Your gimmick comes with a usage count, and once you use up your gimmick, the usage count won’t be reset until you used up all your gimmicks. In addition, Alpha Dreams built a gauge feature that gets filled every time you execute a gimmick successfully. However, if you screw up once executing the gimmick, you gauge gets emptied. If you successfully charge up the gauge, then you get to execute a special move.

After playing the games for some time, it is clear that this game does away with many of the traditional and sometimes annoying aspects of RPGs. Instead of wandering endlessly inside dungeons or entering battles randomly, Tomato Adventure displays your enemy moving around on the screen, taking its inspiration from Paper Mario. You enter a battle when you bump into the enemies. This simple feature really adds to the fluidity of the game. When you remember you forgot something, to be able to avoid the enemies and move around an area makes everything much easier. On the same note, Alpha Dream also lets your character run by holding down B so you can get to places faster. In addition, the story is cleverly crafted so that you never have to walk out of dungeons. For example, on the mountain stage, after you beat the Super Kid, instead of getting back by the way you came from in the first place, you are treated to an air-surfing game, in which you glide down the mountain trying to collect pearls.

If you have looked at some screenshots, you might feel this game’s graphics are designed for 5 year olds or something. However, you really have to play it to appreciate the artwork. It’s colorful, and will surely bring back memories of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest on your Super NES. Just think Paper Mario. It’s kind of like that. As for the music in this game, it is excellent in case you haven’t heard the Mp3s (which can be found in the Tomato Adventure game profile ). The battle music is very upbeat, and music for the cities and towns are fun and jumpy.

The game is quite straightforward, and you could possibly get through the game even without knowing any Japanese. However, I would recommend putting off this as an import if you do not understand the language. You will neither get the jokes nor the story. In addition, some of the action commands are quite hard to understand if you cannot read the explanations. If you know some Japanese and have a dictionary, then you may want to consider into importing this game.

Tomato Adventure is fun, and will keep players interested even if they’re not RPG fans. The story is very clever, and moves along at a good pace. Executing the different gimmicks is in itself a lot of fun. However, for the serious RPG gamer, this game might not provide enough depth. There is no leveling up and item-collecting here, and there are not a whole lot of items to equip. The puzzles in the game are fun, but not difficult. On top of that, there is only a total for 4 characters to use of which 2 characters can be used at once in battles. Finally, the game takes a good 10-15 hours to complete. All in all, Alpha Dream has a done a decent job. Expect a review soon!