CV and Gambit's Retro Rad Review – Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom
I've played some really weird games in my time. I played the heck out of
Killer7, which featured a character who revealed secret passages by slitting her wrists. I once played a first-person shooter, which had you clearing cancer out of a brain... by shooting it. But, I would have to say,
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom shoots to the near top of the list. It is bizarre to say the least.
Minister Pumpkin betrayed King Broccoli. He kidnaped (sic) Princess Tomato and stole the Turnip Emblem. He took them to his castle in the Zucchini Mountains.
I would love to say that I was writing the sentence above tongue-in-cheek, but I'm not. The above quote, misspelling and all, comes from the game's opening. That is the actual story.
You play as Sir Cucumber, dedicated knight of King Broccoli. You are sent to rescue Princess Tomato. You do this by searching roads and fields, taking flowers and spinach and giving water to vegetables. At its essence,
PTitSK plays like a classic text adventure. And I think that's kind of its charm. This is the type of game, where the story really takes a back seat to puzzle solving.
Your screen is separated into three sections. The big part, and most obvious, is your view screen. This is where you get a glimpse of the area around you, and the things that are there. You have your commands listed on the side—things such as “Move”, “Check”, “Talk” and “Use”. As you might have surmised, you use these commands to interact with the world around you. The last section is the text box at the bottom. This is where you find out all the important information, like room descriptions and dialogue.
The gameplay basically boils down to enter an area, look around, talk to people, find items and use them to make events happen. After enough events happen, you're basically moved to a new section of the game, and a new set of puzzles start. It's pretty simple, but it does its job. The game style is fun and interesting.
The graphics aren't too hot. And they're made worse by the fact that there's really no animation. It's pretty much just still images, with the occasional movement from characters on screen. Nothing much to say here.
The sounds is much better, with some excellent music—something Hudson was known for, back in the
NES days. Mind you, we're not talking about instantly known classics, like
The Legend of Zelda Theme or
Super Mario Bros. Theme or even the brilliant 8-bit scores of
Capcom games. But, what's there is really, really good and definitely worth giving a listen. If there's one complaint about the sound, and it's a big one, the text-scrolling sound effect is incredibly annoying. And since the game is 99-percent text, you'll be hearing that sound A LOT! Unfortunately, that's going to take the score down a bit.
Of course, it's the quirkiness of the game that really makes it fun. All of the characters are based on vegetables, and feature over-exaggerated features. The bulk of the dialogue features plenty of vegetable-based puns, for which I love it. The game is quirky enough to really keep you engaged. And, fortunately, it's just long enough that it doesn't move past fun to annoying.
But, not everything is bright sunshine in this game. There are a few complaints, that kind of detract from the game. For starters, the puzzles are hard. And you have to do the events in the correct order, in order to progress. The problem is that quite often you won't get what you need from a character until you've talked to them three or four times. That means, you'll spend a lot of time moving from area to area, checking things and talking to people multiple times. You will get stumped in this game... multiple times. But, perseverance will pay off, and you do get a nice sense of accomplishment when you finally solve that puzzle you've been working on for a half an hour.
The other major complaint I have is with the password system. Now, I have nothing against passwords. They're a classic staple of the medium, and games like
Mega Man and
Castlevania just wouldn't be the same without countless sheets of paper with symbols and letters scribbled all over them. But, if there's one genre where the password system fails, it's RPG's. They just work better with battery backups. And while
PTitSK isn't really an RPG in the classic sense, it falls into this trap.
There's quite a bit about
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom to love. It's got quite a bit of quirk to it. It's fun and funny. And it plays like a classic text adventure. There are some problems, but nothing so bad that you shouldn't play it. There's a lot here to enjoy.
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom's Scores :
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Overall Fun Factor =
Total =
3.6
