Tomba!

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Tomba!, known as Tombi in the UK and Europe and Ore! Tomba in Japan, is a cult-favorite 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.

Two games were released for the PlayStation:

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

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Tropes used in Tomba! include:

• Airborne Mook: Flying Pigs.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: In the first game, some quests gave you new pants which had different abilities.
  • The various suits in the second game, which allowed Tomba to do different things.
    • Taken to its literal extreme in the second game; for getting One Hundred Percent Completion, you get a nicer set of clothes. That's it. Sure worth the countless hours you invested clearing every event, eh?
    • Even WORSE, you can't use those clothes IN THE GAME, since it's the ending, and there's no new game plus!
• An Ice Person: The Ice Pig in Tomba! 2.
• Anime Hair: Tomba, to an extreme.
• Back Tracking: Expect to do a lot of this if you want to get 100% Completion. In both games.
• Badass Adorable: Tomba and Baron.
• Bag of Spilling
• Baleful Polymorph: The Evil Pig Curse over the Circus Village in Tomba! 2 turns them into pigs.
  • Same thing with Baccus Village in the first game, with mice though.
• Big Bad: The True Evil Pig in both titles.
• Big Boo's Haunt: Donglin Forest under the Evil Pig Curse in Tomba! 2.
• Big Friendly Dog: Baron.
• Blessed with Suck: Some enemies will turn you invisible in the second game, which sounds cool, until you realize that you can't use any of your clothes or interact with anybody.
• Bottomless Pits: Lava Caves in the first game is riddled with these.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: The Masakari tribe, courtesy of the Jungle Pig.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: Donglin Forest in Tomba! 2.
• Casting a Shadow: The Ghost Pig in Tomba! 2.
• Character Title
• Chokepoint Geography
• The Chosen One: Tomba is said to be this by the Million Year Old Man.
• Color Coded for Your Convenience: In the first game, there were Red, Blue and Green gems that gave you Fire, Water and Wind powers.
  • Averted HARD with the Evil Pigs in the first game, as none of their colors related to their respective attacks or elements, except for the True Evil Pig who was the final boss.
• Cool Old Guy: Kainen from the second game.
  • In the first game, there's the Hundred-Year old man, Thousand-Year old man, Ten Thousand-Year old man and the Million-Year old man.
• Cute Witch: Mizuno, who's actually referred to as such.
• Damsel in Distress: Tabby in the second game.
• Dark Action Girl: The Jungle Pig, the only female Evil Pig in Tomba! 1. Also the Water Pig in Tomba! 2 who despite her voice is clearly female.
• Death Mountain: Phoenix Mountain in the first game.
• Drop the Hammer: Part of Tomba's arsenal, including the Fire Hammer and Torch Hammer in Tomba! 2.
• Elemental Powers: The Evil Pigs; in the first game: the Blue Pig, the Red Pig, the Green Pig, the Orange Pig, the Pink Pig, the Navy Blue Pig and the Yellow Pig.
  • In the second game: the Fire Pig, the Ice Pig, the Ghost Pig, the Earth Pig and the Water Pig.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Only two elements though in the second game. Fire and Ice.
• Epic Flail: Tomba's main weapon.
• Eternal Engine: Iron Castle in the first game.
• Everything's Better with Monkeys: Charles, although he's arguably reduced to The Scrappy on the second game.
• Excited Show Title!
• Excuse Plot: Specifically in the second game. 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 oversized chickens up, and guiding a worm through a series of booby-trapped seesaws so it can eat a leaf!

• Eyepatch of Power: Yan's father wears one.
• Fat Bastard: The Earth Pig in the sequel is really fat compared to his colleagues.
• First Town: The Fisherman Village.
• Forgot I Couldn't Swim: Inverted. Somehow in the second game, Tomba forgets that he can swim!
  • In the opening cutscene, he jumped in the ocean and almost drowned. Tomba may have been traumatized by this and was afraid to swim again.
• Gentle Giant: Gran.
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: In both games, there's one or more naked Cupid-like angels peeing on a fountain.
  • Also "the peach flower" and its "gas" in the first game.
• Gold Fever: Gold powers the magic of the Evil Pigs. In both games, the final arena where the True Evil Pig is fought is made of/full of gold.
• Green Hill Zone: The Forest of All Beginnings in the first game.
• Guide Dang It: Some of the sidequests will require this.
  • Some of the sidequests are so obscure that even FINDING them is enough of a hassle.
  • Two words from the first game that 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.
  • The Evil Pig Gates may also count.
• Gusty Glade: Phoenix Mountain under the Evil Pig Curse in the first game.
• Heroic Dog: Baron again, although defying the Evil Pig all by himself didn't work out well.
• Heroic Mime: For some reason, Tomba seems to be fairly able to understand what people say, but he's unable to talk. In the second game, his Non-Human Sidekick is there to do the talk for him, and to serve as Mr. Exposition.
• Hidden Elf Village: The Hidden Village fits this trope exactly to the point where it actually is almost impossible to find.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Something Tomba is terribly guilty of, by stocking countless items, including living creatures and objects bigger than him, inside of his stomach!
• Incendiary Exponent: The Jewel of Fire in the first game let's you do this. It also gives you the appropriate hair color.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Key
• Jungle Japes: Masakari Jungle in the first game.
• Just Add Water
• Lean and Mean: The Yellow Evil Pig in the first game.
• Lethal Lava Land: The inside of Phoenix Mountain in the first game.
  • Also the Great Underground Mine under the Evil Pig Curse in Tomba! 2.
• Lost Forever: Break the Spiked Barrel on the first game, and that's it! The event involving that Barrel will never be fulfilled! Goodbye, One Hundred Percent Completion.
  • You're bound to miss a lot on your first playthrough due to this trope, and during your second playthrough, (if you aren't using a guide) you're going to be scared to even touch anything that isn't plot-related.
  • Make sure that you have every sidequest you want to do completed in Tomba! 2 because once you enter the door with the Evil Pig Gate, time will stop, and you can only finish the main story.
• Luck-Based Mission: All the boss battles in Tomba! 1 are this. Essentially, you have to toss the pig inside the giant, rotating bag in order to seal it away.
• Making a Splash: The Water Pig in Tomba! 2.
• Meaningless Lives: On the first game. Was thankfully averted on the next one.
• Mega Manning: In the sequel, defeating one of the evil pigs grant you a cloth with the powers of said pig.
• 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.
• Minecart Madness: One of the hardest sidequest in the second game.
• Mood Motif: In the second game, the music playing during a conversation or cutscene 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.
• Mooks: The different types of pigs found in both games, of course.
• Mr. Exposition: Zippo takes the trophy, although there are a few others serving this purpose as well.
• Ninja: Yan.
• Non-Human Sidekick: Zippo in the second game. Baron could also count.
• 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.
  • And Kainen is even older.
• Old Save Bonus: Several of the quests in the second game are only available if you complete a series of quests and have a save file from the first game (at the Grapplejack point or later).
• Playing with Fire: The Fire Pig in Tomba! 2.
• Plot Coupon: The Evil Pig Bags to...
• Precision-Guided Boomerang
• Psychopathic Manchild: Judging by the dialogues in Tomba! 2, it seems like the True Evil Pig is this. He even refers to his battle with Tomba as a "play".
• Puzzle Boss: Besides the Evil Pigs, a few normal enemies also count.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad: The five evil elemental pigs in Tomba! 2, including the Fire Pig, the Ice Pig, the Ghost Pig, the Earth Pig and the Water Pig.
• Real Men Wear Pink: One of the pigs in the first game wore pink and was male.
  • Real Men Have Pink Hair: Tomba is one of the few male characters who can pull this off nicely.
• Remixed Level: Every level becomes one when it is lifted from the Evil Pig Curse.
• Revenge of the Sequel
• Rose-Haired Girl: The mermaids in the first game.
• Rube Goldberg Device: Win's machine in the second game.
• 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.
• Shaped Like Itself: "It's a fire hammer. It's a hammer with the power of fire."
• Shout-Out: Possibly coincidental, but an early task in the first game requires the rescuing of seven dwarves.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Kujara Ranch under the Evil Pig Curse in Tomba! 2.
• Smurfette Principle: Only one of the evil pigs in the first game is female, and no, it's not the Pink Pig. It's actually the Navy Blue one. I bet you didn't see that coming.
• Speaking Simlish: Arguably in the first game. The second game was fully voiced.
• Super Drowning Skills: The second game.
  • Tomba also starts with these in the first game, but after doing a couple of missions they become Super Not-Drowning Skills.
• Time Stands Still: What the second game's final antagonist does to the rest of the world before the final confrontation. It's rather creepy...
• Too Good to Last: Only two games have been made. Justified since the company behind the games went defunct not long after the release of the second game.
• Underwater Ruins: The Water Temple in Tomba! 2.
• Vocal Dissonance: Apparently, the voice actor for the Water Pig in Tomba! 2 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.
• Warp Whistle: The Wings and, later, Baron.
• Wild Man: Tomba, our hero.
• Wutai: The Hidden Village.
• You Gotta Have Blue Hair: Everyone comments on Tomba's pink hair. It was even part of the ad campaign.