Tomato Adventure

Gameplay

Players control DeMille through the Ketchup Kingdom while talking to people, entering places and collecting items. The object of the game is to save DeMille's girlfriend, Patharan, and the Ketchup Kingdom from King Abira by going through every village to obtain the missing parts of a robot that can give anyone access into the Gimmick Palace, a tower-like structure with a tomato on it. Instead of wandering endlessly inside places or entering battles randomly, Tomato Adventure displays enemies moving around on the screen while entering battles by bumping DeMille into them.

Battle system

During battles against enemies, the player must fight using toy-like weapons called "Gimmicks", which require the player to play a mini game correctly in order to land direct hits on the enemies, depending on which Gimmick the player uses. While using Gimmicks correctly, the player will earn stars for the extreme attacks, but if the player increases the difficulty of the Gimmicks, the player will increase the attack points of the Gimmicks and earn more stars, while the mini games would be more difficult than before. When one or two gears light up above the Gimmick meter, the player now has the choice to use one of two extreme attacks, if the player has a partner joined in. If the player fails in any mini game, the Gimmick meter will drop down to zero, and the player will have to start it all over. There are four different types of Gimmicks.

Gimica

Gimica is a special card game that can only be available when the player talks to a card-like character named Gimicamania at the stadium in Ois Town after the player defeats the third Super Kid. However, there are also some other characters that the player can either duel with or receive a new Gimica Card from. The object of this card game is to make the opponent have less HP than the player's HP, or drop it to zero. There are two kinds of cards:

Player must put his/her Gimmick Cards at a higher color rank than his/her opponent's; however, green beats blue. If both players have their Gimmick Cards on the same color rank, the player who has more attack points in his/her Gimmick Card will attack the opponent. If both Gimmick Cards' attack points are equal, it becomes a draw. If the player's opponent is at a higher rank, the player must either make his/her Gimmick Card's attack points the same (or nearly the same) as the opponent's in order to receive a small amount of damage, or move their Gimmick Cards up to the same color rank as the opponent's Gimmick Cards.

You can also play Gimica with Seremo if your rank on the Lard Collosuem is Level 2. At Level 3, You must play against Enokin. To rank up, Play and see the stars at the top side. Talk to him to see how many starts you gotten.

Plot

The story takes place in a land ruled by and intended for young characters, the Ketchup Kingdom, which is also filled with devices like Jack-in-the-Boxes. The protagonist is a hare-like boy in blue clothing name DeMille, who lives in a school bus with no wheels in a village on the outskirts of the Ketchup Kingdom called Cobore Village. DeMille is an outcast because he dislikes tomatoes. As a result, he and other kids in Kobora who dislike tomatoes are looked down upon as "Droppers", banished for heresy, and locked up in Cobore Village until they change their attitudes towards tomatoes. While watching television, DeMille sees that the main antagonist, King Abīra, is celebrating a holiday called Tomato Day, while showing his project he created called the Super Cara-Cooker, a laser-like gun that transforms people, places, and things into dolls, toys, and playgrounds. After DeMille's television set gets severely damaged, he visits his neighbor and friend Seremo and asks him if he could fix his television set. Seremo says he will and gives DeMille his first Gimmick, called the Gear Yo-Yo.

After Seremo teaches DeMille how to use it, DeMille's girlfriend Patharan comes to tell him that she wanted him and her to venture into the dangerous Toy Ruins to look for her Fantastic Toy, the Gimmick Robo, but by the time they arrive, it is absent. Then, two purple creatures with zippers on them, Brikky and Grikky, capture Patharan with a hook. DeMille grabs on to her while being pulled up to the airship, the Carorna No.2, piloted by Brikky and Grikky. As soon as DeMille and Patharan come aboard the airship, Brikky and Grikky receive a call from King Abīra to bring Patharan to the palace and drop DeMille out of the airship. After DeMille fights Brikky and Grikky, they drop DeMille from the airship into the Tomato Pond, only for him to notice that he is standing near King Abīra's home, the Gimmick Palace, a tall, red, tower with a tomato-shaped top. When he decides to enter and save Patharan, he encounters a wall that he cannot pass through. Then, a mole named Rereku tells him that in order to pass through the wall, DeMille has to defeat the six Super Kids and obtain the six key items called Toy Parts. While DeMille goes on his adventure, he befriends some people for them to join forces with him to defeat King Abira and save Patharan and the entire Ketchup Kingdom. His partners in order of joining him are Aretha, Sofubi, and Rereku.

Development

After AlphaDream developed and released their first video game title, Koto Battle: Tengai no Moribito, Nintendo wanted AlphaDream's permission to develop an entirely new role-playing video game with them, titled Gimmick Land (ギミックランド, Gimikku Rando). They got the name from an idea of a game structure that utilizes gimmicky, toy-like controls that make it an RPG with action elements. It was finished and almost ready to be released for the Game Boy Color in Japan, until Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance to make the Game Boy Color obsolete. After noticing that, Nintendo requested AlphaDream to redevelop and rename Gimmick Land as "Tomato Adventure" for the Game Boy Advance. Nintendo also requested AlphaDream to add some easily recognizable characters in which reflects the new title, so that the game would have a more marketable image. Those were Nintendo's largest requests. Other changes are the quality of the graphics and audio being enhanced. Only two screenshots of Gimmick Land were released to the public by the developers. On the release date of Tomato Adventure, Nintendo and AlphaDream announced a contest where twenty winners won themselves 1 kg of sweet tomatoes from the Kochi Virtue Valley area. The contest ended on February 28, 2002.

Reception