Summary
No one is braver than Sir Cucumber!
The Good
This game reminded me of a certain book by an Italian writer named Gianni Rodari, which I liked very much when I was a child: it is called
Cippolino, "the little onion", and is set in a world populated by vegetables and fruits - all acting like human beings, naturally. The Little Onion is a boy from a poor family, and soon he finds himself involved in a revolutionary struggle against the ruler of the country, Prince Lemon, and his henchmen. It was a really thought-provoking book with some expressive naturalistic moments: the villain Tomato pulls Little Onion's hair, but instead of harming him he begins crying... well, we all know what happens when you cut onions. Another excellent episode depicted the musician, Prof. Pear, playing his violin that was made out of a pear, and when he gets thrown into the prison, mice eat his violin, so that he can't even console himself and fellow prisoners by playing music. Uncompromising social criticism was evident also in the story of a young Count from the Cherry family, who was a rich boy and had everything he needed... except freedom, real friends, and social struggle for simple proletarians! The Count therefore switches sides and helps Little Onion and his friends to defeat Prince Lemon and even reform the fat Duke Orange: after the inevitable revolution he gets a job in a railway station and carries suitcases for passengers.
Sorry I got off the topic, starting with this short "review" of the book, but I was struck by the similarity between the Little Onion saga and "Princess Tomato". The game is far from being as socially meaningful as Gianni Rodari's opus, but it features the same cute idea of setting a typical "good vs. evil" story in a very untypical environment. Yes, all the heroes of this game are vegetables and fruits, but its plot is far from being "children's variant" of a real "save the world, get the girl" story - it is no less (and no more) "mature" than most other games of the time. You almost never feel the storyline is too "cute" or "innocent" - in fact, some scenes are pretty strong and expressive, you get to see some tortured vegetables and at a certain point even get thrown into a torture chamber yourself... and no, there is no vegetable nudity in the game, sorry to disappoint you. And no explicit sex scenes, although the choice of a Cucumber as the hero does bring some ideas to mind... What would Mr. Freud say?..
Back to the review. The story of "Princess Tomato" is in fact pretty interesting, you must save the princess Tomato (hey, I'm used to think that Tomato is the bad guy!) from the clutches of hostile fruits, and on your journey you encounter a lot of memorable food... ehhh... characters, including some eccentric figures like Sgt. Pepper or the great wiseman Garlic. You'll also have to join an underground resistance movement and to meet the bad guys face-to-face.
The game has a distinct Japanese flair, particularly the city areas look a lot like modern Japan, with a variety of shops which sell pretty much everything, commercials, and even casinos and bars. The game is divided into levels, each level being a large location with various places to visit; once you finish a level, you get transported to the next location and start again, without even keeping the items you have accumulated during the previous level (a nice idea: it prevents you from carrying tons of useless items with you - just think of classic games like
LeChuck's Revenge, where you are stuffed with all possible items, useful things and total junk, until the end phase of the game).
The gameplay is your typical Japanese adventure business. You probably know how Japanese adventure gameplay works from such games as
Deja Vu or the various hentai adventures. The Japanese usually tend to guide the player through the game rather than to throw him into it - compare Japanese RPGs with Western ones, for example. In adventure gaming it is no different. Japanese adventures always use first-person perspective with still pictures as environments, and in many cases you cannot really interact wíth those environments, can't "click" on it or type a word you like; the menu does it for you. Some games even go as far as making the menu dependable on the situation, i.e. instead of standard choices you have a few commands suitable only for the current situation. In "Princess Tomato", this is not the case: you have a stable menu of verbs which appears all the time, and at any time you can choose any verb and see what happens. Unfortunately, you can't choose
what to interact with: the game lists people and objects for you, and those lists are anything but complete. However, the command menu works well, and includes, together with the usual "Look" and "Take" stuff, such commands as "Hit" (yeah!), "Praise" (flatter to someone, and see how it changes everything), or "Percy". Percy is a little guy who appears early in the game and becomes your side-kick: you can, in a certain way, "use" him the same way Sam uses Max in
Sam and Max. The puzzles are very easy, in fact it is hard to call them "puzzles": most of the time you just have to go carefully through all commands on each screen, sometimes checking other locations and seeing if anything has changed there. Because of the low difficulty level the game can serve very well as an introductory adventure for children.
The Bad
At one point in the game there is an annoying maze. I don't like mazes. I think nobody does. Mazes make sense only when there is some in-game possibility to map them: I like drawing maps, but it is even better when the game does it for you, and you watch how a totally "dark" map grows more and more, the more you move around. But most of the time, mazes are just there to get on the players' nerves. Why do designers keep inserting them into games?..
The interaction is pretty limited, much more limited than in a standard Western adventure, and, unlike Japanese RPGs, this adventure game (and other Japanese adventures) doesn't really compensate the lack of truly involving gameplay and possibility of exploration with a great story and memorable cast of characters. Sure, the game is cute and all, you'll probably smile a few times while playing it, but the humor is
very mild, and it can't be regarded as a comedy. It also can't be taken absolutely seriously, not only because of the vegetables, but also because of the numerous plot clichés it contains. The dialogues are also nothing to write home about. Of course, we shouldn't forget this is a very old game, but at that time early Sierra titles were already out, and of course they surpass "Princess Tomato" both in terms of humor and gameplay.
The Bottom Line
...But before a rookie adventurer starts playing Sierra's classic adventures, it would be a good idea to let him check out this little game. Sierra's early games are anything but easy, require sometimes a lot of creativity in typing, and often have pretty nasty humor (even in King's Quest games: just think of all those gruesome death scenes... Sir Graham being eaten alive by alligators... pure horror). "Princess Tomato" has a good enough story, interesting characters, and unusual, refreshing setting in order to be a good introduction to the world of adventure for children or novice gamers in general.
