Some may have strong memories of "Tomba," which they saw on a PS1 demo disc in the 1990s.

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Some may have strong memories of "Tomba," which they saw on a PS1 demo disc in the 1990s.

Remember "Tomba"? No." It was a very strange platformer by Tokuro Fujiwara in the 90s. It involves a little wild cave boy with pink hair who controls a little wild cave boy on an adventure to rescue his grandfather's bracelet from a group of evil pigs. The pigs are so excited that they jump and knock him down.

You may remember that demo, though. That's because it was included on the demo disc in PlayStation Magazine back in 1998. I spent hours immersed in that thing, obsessively searching and sniffing around for the secret way to trick the demo into a full game, which in the UK version I had was called "Tombi". Anyway, there is an avid YouTuber playing the demo in question.

Published today: Tomba! Special Edition was released on Steam after being announced last year. The game was created by Limited Run Games in collaboration with Fujiwara and runs on LRG's Carbon Engine, and while some reviewers have cursed the old millennials with memories of the PS1 demo disc, others have lamented the lack of settings that the PS1 game had and the period-appropriate load times Some superfans bemoan the

That said, I'm still eager to get my hands on it. There is something about Tomba that has stuck in my brain like a splinter since I was six years old and slammed the black-backed demo disc into my gaming console the year after Tony Blair became prime minister. It's so much stranger and more special than anything I've ever played in that childhood, and along with the eerie "Alone In The Dark" demo and the original Xbox demo of "Deus Ex: Invisible War," it ranks as my bite-sized all-timer game of the I'm not sure I've ever seen a game that's as good as this one. Steam Next Fest was a bit different back then.

Anyway, consider this my PSA to my fellow aging millennials who harbor the same intense nostalgia: for $20 (£16.75), the magic of youth is within reach. The magic of youth should be released one day.

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