Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is a fun series of movies, a Saturday morning cartoon that I remember fondly, and a really awful video game. THQ made this, and it feels like they were picking up where LJN left off by publishing bad games.
This game isn’t based on the movies. It’s based on the cartoon, and I feel they could have done better. The developers decided to make this a side-scroller. When in doubt, copy a Mario game.
This shouldn’t have been hard. It’s a game where tomatoes mutate and try to eat people. However, it seems like they grabbed a bunch of bad ideas and tossed them into the game.
TLDR: This is another example of a bad movie/TV licensed game.
History
THQ published the game while Imagineering developed the NES version, and Equilibrium did the Game Boy version. The NES version came out in 1991 in Europe and 1992 in North America. The Game Boy version came out in 1992 in Europe and North America, with Japan getting it in 1993.
In 1986, there was a game released on some home computers. It was closer to the first movie as that was all the source material available at the time. It was on the Amstrad CPC, Sinclair Spectrum, and the MSX.
The Game Boy and NES games are based on a cartoon based on a movie. The movie was a low-budget comedy/horror film released in 1978. There was a sequel in 1988.
I get why the Game Boy and NES games used the cartoon. It was new, and kids would potentially want to play a game based on it. I probably would have if I knew this existed in the early 90s.
Gameplay
You play as Wilbur Finletter, I think. It could also be Chad Finletter, Wilbur’s son in the cartoon. He sort of looks like a paratrooper, so I guess it might be him. He was one of the main characters in the cartoon and was in the movie from the 70s. He is also awful in this game.
First off, the attack and jump buttons are switched. You can attack while jumping, and you’re going to need to master this so you can break boulders that are in your way.
Apparently, you can jump on the enemies to kill them. Sure, why not. I was kicking them. I doubt that it would have made a difference for me.
Within the first few seconds, you come up to a wall of bullshit. There are a bunch of boulders that you need to break. Some of those boulders are enemies because, of course, they are. This is where the awful controls come in.
Jumping feels off, there are spring floors and platforms that do more harm than good, and for some reason, the start button throws your sword. I’m not sure why you can’t just use the sword as a normal attack. Instead, you’re given this pathetic kick.
Also, for some reason, the platforms will crumble if you stand on them for too long. I don’t understand the point of this. It does give you some time to plan your jump, but it is entirely unnecessary.
It’s like the developers are saying “good luck and thanks for your money,” like many other developers at the time did.
I wouldn’t say I liked this one at all. It should have been fun. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find where that fun was supposed to be.
You get three lives. With each life, you get three hit points. Once all of your lives are gone, the game mercifully ends. Unless you want more torture by using a continue. I have no idea why anyone would want to do this.
I wish this game had been a beat-em-up. I want too many games to be beat-em-ups, but I think it would fit a lot better in this case.
Visuals
This isn’t a bad-looking Game Boy game. The enemies are more blobs than tomatoes. It’s the Game Boy, so I can’t complain too much about it.
The levels seem to be a conglomeration of things rejected from other games. The cartoon takes place in a city, but this game seems to occur in a drug addict’s dream.
There are blocks of crap floating in the air, textures that are sometimes in the background until they aren’t, and piles of breakable boulders that don’t need to exist. I don’t get why this was so hard.
I understand that game development is complicated. I don’t get why taking some existing source material and adopting its art style to a video game.
Replayability
If you want to beat it, then yeah, there is some replayability. This feels like a game that would eventually show up on an AVGN episode at some point.
Alternatives
You have a lot of options here. I’ll give you a shortlist, but any platformer you could think of would be better. Anyway, here are some of the games that I would recommend:
- TMNT: Fall of the Footclan
- TMNT 2: Back from the Sewers
- Super Mario Land
- The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening
- Kid Icarus
- Kirby’s Dreamland
- Gargoyle’s Quest
- Super Mario Land 2
- Metroid II
- Wario land
4/10. I don’t think this is a good game: decent graphics and bad gameplay.
Pros
- If you wanted a game based on Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, this is it.
- It’s a playable game.
- I think it has decent graphics, even if they don’t make much sense.
Cons
- The controls are pretty bad
- It feels like it wants to be Mario but fails at it
- There are a lot of better platformers out there
Conclusion
This wasn’t very pleasant. I liked the cartoon when I was little, and this felt like it was trying too hard to be something besides the cartoon. It doesn’t make sense as a side-scrolling platform game.
If this had been a beat-em-up, I think it could have been better than what we got. I’m not saying it would be great, but it probably would have been better. I wish there were a 16-bit version of this game that was a beat-em-up.
Whenever you have a licensed game like this, it is either a disaster or good. I think, in this case, it was closer to disaster.
There is something about movie and TV show licenses that rarely translated to good games. Saturday morning cartoons seemed to have faired better than movies, but there are a lot of bad games in there.