I played the game in Japanese, so opinions might be different from the English release.

I'm shocked that a game like this even got an English release, a text-base adventure game for the Famicom given to the NES when the most popular games of the same year were SMB3 and Tetris in the Western world. The US was still very used to arcade style gaming, rarely having success with games that branched from the side scrolling that was almost expected of video games at this point and instead focusing on story-based little movement gameplay.

As fun and wacky of an idea that Tomato-Hime is, it is a game that did not age remotely well, and I can imagine did not translate very well into English either, with a majority of the plot based around this mix of 75% Japanese royal influence and 25% around what Japanese people imagine Western fairytale royalty to be like. Though honestly, I find that charming in its own way.

Princess Tomato is a genre of game that absolutely had the technology to perform what it wanted to do, but also had the unfortunate luck to be one of the first to do what it does, helping pave the way in learning what to do and NOT do for a player-friendly experience. The game is extremely unfriendly with mistakes that could be made per chapter, where if you do choose to play the game wandering around without a guide and experiencing things naturally (as you SHOULD in a story-heavy adventure game) you absolutely will need to restart the chapter over multiple times from spending your limited money where you weren't supposed to or using an item for an event you thought you needed.

The story is cute and definitely very creative, having you learn to flirt with tipsy lemons in the cabana club and punch potatoes (but not the carrots!!) in order to gain more information on the rebellion. The story is cute but the game feels like pulling teeth in order to continue with any of it! Obviously, playing with a guide would be the quickest and easiest way to get through the whole thing, which is what I ended up doing, but for this genre of game, that takes away all the fun.

Play it if you'd like, the story is fine, but also something you can just read online. The fun of exploring and figuring out the plot yourself in the game is practically impossible, and may cause more rage than you expected going into the game if that's how you intend/want to play.

Guides for both versions if you play, you're going to need them -
ENG: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Princess_Tomato_in_the_Salad_Kingdom/Walkthrough
JP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCIexaIxPOE

I know the point of the game is supposed to be the charm of the animation, and the way it sticks out amongst every other game in an arcade, and while the animation is gorgeous, it really is the only positive aspect of this “game”.

I’ve never been a huge fan of how Dragon’s Lair works. The beautiful art style always drags me in, but then I remember that I’m supposed to fail (ie. put more quarters in) in order to learn the exact moves to make. It’s not really a game, more so just a movie you have to spend money throughout in order to see more of the story. While I greatly appreciate how unique and beautiful the game is, it’s just not what I look for in a video game.

It's definitely a game that is very special for a certain group of people. I grew up with not the most money, I'm a very early gen-z baby, born in 1998. Normally, that would mean the systems I grew up with were a PS2 or a Wii, etc. The system I grew up with was an Atari 2600. In the early 2000's. While other kids would talk about Kingdom Hearts during recess, I would come home from school and play Keystone Kapers until my hands hurt.

I first played EarthBound when I was 15. I had NO idea what the hell EarthBound was. I didn't even know what an JRPG was let alone the Mother series. I picked it up because someone on Reddit posted a screenshot from the game (the joke with the abandoned house in Onett) and I just thought the game looked gorgeous. Super colorful and fun. I wanted to play it.

I had NEVER played such a cheeky game before, and I never played a game where you played as just some kid either. Video games were always escaping reality to play as a knight or a wizard or something, not some random chubby boy. It had me sucked in the second the apparent "savior" of the game who was to protect and train us gets smacked by some Karen in the first 10 minutes and dies without much of another mention. It was insane to me to play a game where the cops and the politicians were the BAD guys. It was insane to me as a person coming to terms with my own sexuality that they had a gay child in the game, something so taboo that it was a breath of fresh air to finally see a little boy with a crush on another little boy treated like all the little boys and girls who had crushes on each other, rather than being seen as a groomed and hyper sexual kid for just having a crush on the same sex.

The game was what made me see games as art instead of just arcade jumpers you could play at home. I completely understand people now not really getting it. Now all the triple A games have messages such as 'fuck the police' and go against the odds of story-telling that as a result, the humor in EarthBound might not seem like anything special. But being that little kid that thought the original Legend of Zelda was insane for letting you do any dungeon in any order that you wanted, or that Tunnel Runner felt like a real maze that you the player was walking through, EarthBound blew my fucking mind for what it was and continues to be in the world of gaming.

While this game goes against my common complaint of games that are more movies than being a game... I never would have thought that there would be a game that so beautifully captures the horrors and what felt like the sudden destruction of Iran as we knew it. Americans rarely think of Iran other than "hey isn't that one of those desert countries we're killing terrorists in" (hint: if you're going to someone's home country to completely undo their government and kill their civilians... you might need to look more into what being a terrorist entails), but Iranian/Persian culture and history is truly one of the most beautiful and influential of humanity's time on earth.

Cat and the Coup perfectly encompasses it, with the entire game being in the art style of classic Persian paintings and Iranian art. The game barely even speaks, but still you perfectly get the message as Mossadegh's cat, doing what you can to control the course of history, only to have nothing you do change the events of Iran's unfortunate future; "A metaphor for the uncertainty of historical outcomes," it's often quoted with.

I can't even think of another video game that exists and focuses on Iranian history, but I'm glad the game that we did get so perfectly encompasses it in such a beautiful way.

I love my $12.99 a month fishing game.

I play this game with my online friends as a way to hang out - it's fun to mess around with friends on. I even connected better with some of my coworkers outside of work here, too. 3-star is very high ranking for an MMORPG for me as the idea of playing a game live with a bunch of players who have to see how stupid I am when learning a game becomes way too much to the point I get so embarrassed I feel I need to log off. I also start to get too self conscious about how I design my character and how everyone who's currently playing is subconsciously judging how I act/dress/fight.

The story is fine, the game play seems to be mostly run from point A to point B in order to complete something in order to run from the next point A to point B. Dungeons are very fun, and I'm lucky enough to have friends willing to help my stupid ass figure out how to do them.

I played the game first in about 2020, and got too overwhelmed. Had friends begging me to try again, so I joined again, really putting in an effort this time. Still only got to the point that I was playing it only 2 times a month, making it not remotely worth the 12.99 for me to just fish and cook and talk to friends I often already do in real life or through discord.

I understand the appeal, and greatly appreciate the amount of love put into the game. But in the end, it's something I will only pay a subscription for every once in a while in order to hang with some friends when they ask me to.

Anyone else's parents make them play this?

Clever idea that was influential to the revival of handheld puzzle games (if you like Professor Layton, you can thank this game for letting Nintendo know to make more puzzle games). Brain Age is fine - it does what it’s set out to do successfully, but I wouldn’t be surprised if many of us have bad memories of it with our parents forcing us to play something educational.

Additionally, I was a big cry baby as a kid and the floating realistic head that got upset at you for not doing well freaked me THE FUCK out. I preferred Brain Academy a lot more as a kid because of this lol.

Oh, Second Life… what a mess you were… are?

I don’t even know where to start with Second Life. Should it even be considered a game, when there’s really no motive? Even Minecraft has the goal of not being killed by the creatures at night. But then, what makes a game a game, then? Ugh, I’m not going to allow Second Life of all games to get me started on thinking about this.

Second Life was influential. It’s probably the reason why we had games such TF2 and Fortnite get so wildly successful. It’s arguably a reason for why Bitcoin is even a thing. It let developers know that players are willing to spend real money to customize their fictional characters. Linden dollars showed that online currency could hold real monetary value and that people’s outside worlds could completely change from learning how to market in Second Life.

Second Life is remembered by most, myself included, as extremely predatory, creepy, and in general, not a good time. But the influence it had on the video game world that we see today is monumental. Whether you see it as positive or negative (and by looking at my score, I’m sure you can see where I stand), we can all agree that it’s an enormous part of video game history.