Blog - Princess Tomato
Princess Tomato
Since a few days I've been playing サラダの国のトマト姫 (Salada no kuni no Tomato hime, or "saratoma", English NES title "Princess Tomato and the Salad Kingdom") on my AdFami. I found it for ¥200! I had played this game a lot a long time ago on NES, and it's a lot of fun to play it once more!
The AdFami has slightly bad rendering when it comes to small text, but since Tomato hime is a text adventure sort of meant for little kids, it has large and clear text, mostly in hiragana too (actually I think most Famicom games are in kana). So far I've been recalling each scene when seeing it again, but I don't remember the story line enough to know what to do next. The great music is also a lot of fun. Oh, and it had been a long time since I had last written down a password from a game screen.
Searching on the Web about this game, I found out that it first was a PC game released in 1984 by Hudson Soft and sold on a tape. It was apparently a hit despite the very bad graphics. This walkthrough page (I am forbidding myself from reading any of it) shows some differences between the old and new graphics. The general does look tougher in the PC version.
The Famicom game released in 1988 was essentially the same but the story was changed a bit to give it more twists, music was added, graphics were all redone and made much cuter.
I also found out that the game was recently redone into a 3-chapter version for keitai. In 2001 it was released for DoCoMo i-Mode (¥300/month, you can use the QR at the right), and last year for au/EZweb Brew (¥99/chapter).
So now I've downloaded the i-Mode version and am planning to play it in parallel with the Famicom game. Although the story may be similar, it's not identical so it should be interesting to see the differences.
The English NES game can also be played on the Web as a Java applet.
Posted on April 1, 2005 at 17:45 | Tweet
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I *LOVE* Princess Tomato! I played the heck out of this game on the NES. I mean, it's -stupid-, but at the same time totally awesome. I suspect it may have some sort of a cult following :)
Posted by Pete Ellison on April 12, 2005 at 04:50
I know exactly what you mean. :)
Indeed it does seem to have some cult following, such as this fan club with a whole 17 members.
http://saratoma.x0.com/saratoma.htm
Posted by Patrick on April 12, 2005 at 10:21
Princess Tomato in the salad kingdom is the best RPG game that I have seen on the NES console.
I wish to say what Hudson Soft has done an good work and I congratulate for to do my favorite game!
Posted by Gricel Aranguiz on October 11, 2007 at 08:25