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Games I Have Played: Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom is an odd little text adventure game. There's a still image of what's in front of you and you have fourteen commands at your disposal for interaction. The basic plot is fairly standard - someone evil has captured the princess and you have to rescue her - but there are a lot of gameplay hoops you have to jump through in order to save her.
I played it because I thought it'd be cute since all the characters are anthropomorphic fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, the graphics are so simplified and pixely that any charm they might have had is lost on me. (The graphics for the original, computer version have a lot more personality than the NES version, but on the other hand the NES version is the longer game.) Also, the game is nearly impossible to lose unless you give up because it won't allow you to proceed until you've done everything you need to do in an area. I say nearly impossible because there is exactly one point in the game where you can die, and I managed to find it. Go me! The downside of that style gameplay is that I often ended up stuck and trying every vaguely relevant command I could over and over in the hope of doing whatever the game wanted me to do.
And it is so rarely obvious what you need to do in order to move on. Either you need to talk to someone three times in a row in order to get more information from someone else, or you have to visit the dark cave to find out it's dark then visit someone to find out who has a lamp you can borrow and then you can get the lamp needed for the cave. And those are some of the less complicated sequences you have to do. Needless to say, I often got stuck and would then pass the controller to the BF who tooled around checking stuff until one of us had an idea. We managed to get by with only checking the walkthrough twice in the first seven levels. Level 8 required extensive checking of the walkthrough because ughhh.
I can see why Princess Tomato has a small cult following. There are some fun elements: battles are done via rock-paper-scissors followed by a staring contest, and the mazes are constructed so that hugging either the right or left wall doesn't always solve the maze. The "what do I do next" frustration is probably much lessened when you've played to game before, so that everything is quirky fun rather than nonsensical vexation. (I did enjoy playing when I was making progress and figuring stuff out, but I think it's far too easy to get stuck without a clue as to what you're missing.)
There are also some creepy sexist bits that I did not appreciate. The kidnapped Princess Tomato is being forced to marry one of the bad guys, so rescuing her from that is good. Except your reward for rescuing her is that she now has to marry you instead, which I feel defeats the point of rescuing her. There's also another point in the game where you walk into a bathroom that an orange lady is showering in and she rightly calls you a pervert. The BF and I ended up perving on her a lot because we kept getting stuck and hoping she would have some new information for us because she was the only person we could find to talk to.
I played it because I thought it'd be cute since all the characters are anthropomorphic fruits and vegetables. Unfortunately, the graphics are so simplified and pixely that any charm they might have had is lost on me. (The graphics for the original, computer version have a lot more personality than the NES version, but on the other hand the NES version is the longer game.) Also, the game is nearly impossible to lose unless you give up because it won't allow you to proceed until you've done everything you need to do in an area. I say nearly impossible because there is exactly one point in the game where you can die, and I managed to find it. Go me! The downside of that style gameplay is that I often ended up stuck and trying every vaguely relevant command I could over and over in the hope of doing whatever the game wanted me to do.
And it is so rarely obvious what you need to do in order to move on. Either you need to talk to someone three times in a row in order to get more information from someone else, or you have to visit the dark cave to find out it's dark then visit someone to find out who has a lamp you can borrow and then you can get the lamp needed for the cave. And those are some of the less complicated sequences you have to do. Needless to say, I often got stuck and would then pass the controller to the BF who tooled around checking stuff until one of us had an idea. We managed to get by with only checking the walkthrough twice in the first seven levels. Level 8 required extensive checking of the walkthrough because ughhh.
I can see why Princess Tomato has a small cult following. There are some fun elements: battles are done via rock-paper-scissors followed by a staring contest, and the mazes are constructed so that hugging either the right or left wall doesn't always solve the maze. The "what do I do next" frustration is probably much lessened when you've played to game before, so that everything is quirky fun rather than nonsensical vexation. (I did enjoy playing when I was making progress and figuring stuff out, but I think it's far too easy to get stuck without a clue as to what you're missing.)
There are also some creepy sexist bits that I did not appreciate. The kidnapped Princess Tomato is being forced to marry one of the bad guys, so rescuing her from that is good. Except your reward for rescuing her is that she now has to marry you instead, which I feel defeats the point of rescuing her. There's also another point in the game where you walk into a bathroom that an orange lady is showering in and she rightly calls you a pervert. The BF and I ended up perving on her a lot because we kept getting stuck and hoping she would have some new information for us because she was the only person we could find to talk to.