Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom

"Weird Name, Great Game"

This has been a long time overdue. You see, I first played this game when I was about six years old and I first got my Nintendo. It was my birthday and I had just got a load of Nintendo games. One of the games, Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom, frightened me. In fact, the cover alone convinced me NOT to play this game. So, when I put away my Nintendo games, PTITSK found a spot on the top shelf of my cabinet, still in the box, while the others were played to my heart's content.

Skip three years later. At nine years old, I was getting ready to trade in my Nintendo games to a pawn shop so I could get some Super Nintendo games. Of course, I kept the good NES games like River City Ransom and Punch Out, but the rest found their way to the Pawnbroker's Wall O' Games. When I got home with my new money, I noticed that I had forgot to take a game back. That game was Princess Tomato. Rather than sell it without ever playing it, I popped it into my NES. It ends up that This was the game that introduced me to and got me addicted to the Role Playing Game genre, even though this game's classification to that genre is questionable.

The game got me addicted ASAP. While I couldn't tell you every detail of the game, the main plot is simple. Princess Tomato is missing. It's your job to find her. So you and your buddy Percy go out to search for her. Along the way, you run into guards and other people who are not too friendly towards you. Thus, they show their hostilities by challenging you to a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. It's a battle system so ridiculously easy, even a four year old could get it.

Graphically, the game is average NES. Nothing special. But the sound is something different. I found myself humming every song I heard to myself regularly. Heck, the forest wandering theme is still stuck in my head to this day!

I'd recommend that anyone with an NES get this classic, but from what I hear, existing copies are few and far between. And those copies that they have on E-Bay fetch for fifty dollars up! But if you can find a copy, get it. And if you have a copy but have no NES, sell it on E-Bay. This game is a forgotten classic that most likely introduced many to the RPG genre, and quite frankly, could be responsible for the super-success of Square!

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 07/31/02, Updated 07/31/02