Author Topic: 2021/09: Tomba! (PlayStation) - VGCartography  (Read 15010 times)

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Offline JonLeung

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2021/09: Tomba! (PlayStation) - VGCartography
« on: August 31, 2021, 09:19:49 pm »

For this month's "Maps Of The Month" featurette, I wish to draw your attention to VGCartography's Tomba! (PlayStation) maps.

A feral boy named Tomba lives on an archipelago terrorized by a group known as the Seven Evil Pigs and their army, the Koma Pigs.  After a confrontation with some Koma Pigs, Tomba loses a golden bracelet that belonged to his grandfather.  Tomba sets off to recover the heirloom and learns that the stolen gold is the source of the Seven Evil Pigs' magical power.

Tomba! is a platforming adventure with some RPG elements.  There are 130 "Events", which are a variety of objectives that usually award Adventure Points for triggering and completing.  Some Events are required to make progress in the story, while some are optional.  As this is an open world with many places to explore and items to find, we are thankful to have these maps by VGCartography!

VGCartography has tackled the technical challenges of mapping PlayStation games and has started adding to the PlayStation atlas page here on VGMaps.com, with more maps from other 32-bit classics on the way.  This early effort is especially impressive, considering the World map, which stitches together all of the area maps, despite the various perspectives of each area; you definitely have to check this one out!  The Haunted Mansion is mapped from each side, and there is some skill in handling three-dimensional backgrounds like in the Lava Caves.  There's a map specifically showing the locations of all of the Pump Rocks, to help clear that particular Event.  It's all incredible work on a quirky game by the short-lived Whoopee Camp (founded by Tokuro Fujiwara, a longtime director and producer of some of Capcom's biggest games).

So to recognize the effort put into mapping this colourful PlayStation adventure, VGCartography's Tomba! (PlayStation) maps will be known as VGMaps.com's Maps Of The Month for September 2021.
« Last Edit: April 29, 2022, 09:49:33 pm by JonLeung »

Offline VGCartography

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Re: 2021/09: Tomba! (PlayStation) - VGCartography
« Reply #1 on: September 01, 2021, 12:54:48 pm »
Thanks! Tomba is one of my favorites. In general most of my favorite games from the NES/SNES area are well-covered here but the PS1 era not as much, understandably because the areas are 3D and not easily extracted so your options are either drawing maps from scratch or trying to pull out the assets in some form like I've done here. Anyone interested in PS1 work, happy to answer questions here/twitter/etc. Every game is different but some are easier than others.

Tomba 2 will be along in the coming months, here is a preview map for the sequel: https://twitter.com/vgcartography/status/1429861130709708802
« Last Edit: April 29, 2022, 09:50:56 pm by JonLeung »