Every few years, the memory of a core child pops up and sends me hunting for that weird PlayStation game my brother and I have always thought about but never played all of it. An internet search goes like this: game on the red-and-black PS1 demo disc with a pink-haired deer kid fighting pigs and trees that look like butts. The results tell me that the game I’m looking for is a 1997 platformer Young!then I giggled nervously. Then I forget about it all, and the cycle eventually repeats itself.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when it appeared earlier this summer to announce the re-release of Limited Run Games Young! in all its wacky glory for modern consoles. Young! Special Edition is now available digitally on PS5, Nintendo Switch and PC. Virtual programs, a line of plushies and a themed NEO S controller (pre-orders are sadly sold out) are also on the way. And finally playing it all the way through almost 20 years after it was originally released, I got that Young! more painful than I remembered.
Tomba, the player character, is a wild boy who lives outside of society, hunting pigs and sleeping under the stars. His peace is disturbed one day when a group of delinquent pigs rush in and cause havoc, eventually robbing him of a gold bracelet that belonged to his grandfather. To get it back, Tomba goes into nearby towns to find the Evil Pig leaders and take them down. Along the way, he meets a number of unknown characters who will help guide him in his mission, but only after he has completed a number of their tasks.
It’s a 2.5D platformer, which means most of the game works as a two-dimensional scroller, but occasionally you can go to the back or front to explore the map in more depth. Young! Special Edition It doesn’t change much about the original game. The graphics are still distinctly PS1 polygonal, and the controls can feel fuzzy. There’s a quality-of-life addition, though – a rewind feature that ends up being very useful because, as it turns out, the game is tricky in some areas. I found myself needing to try certain methods over and over to get it right.
Almost every part of the story and its setting is nonsense. Tomba can scale walls, swing from branches, jump with inhuman skill and apparently store things (including living creatures) in his stomach, which he can retrieve when needed later. There are butt trees, as mentioned before, which are said to be intended for tattooing but when Tomba jumps on them and squeezes them, a cloud of magical mist comes out. You will meet a village of dwarves, but you can communicate with them only after jumping on the heads of a few dwarves to learn their language. In another village, everyone has been turned into mice, and for some reason, they are all saddened by the disappearance of a real baby mouse, who never became a human.
One of the most memorable areas is undoubtedly the Mushroom Forest, a sinister adventure filled with creeping flowers, anthropomorphic clownish and mushrooms that cause Tomba certain diseases if he jumps into them. One will make him laugh uncontrollably, while the other will make him cry – and that crying is very sad. It scared me the first time it happened, to be honest. With both mushroom ailments, Tomba is unable to use his weapons, instead flailing his arms and screaming when he tries to attack.
It’s a surprisingly complex game, and one that looks impressive thanks to its vibrant color palette. But the quest can feel confusing as you try to navigate the often confusing map structure and complete the many, many tasks thrown at you. Boss battles are uniquely frustrating, too. Instead of just hitting or killing Bad Pigs, you have to fight each one and throw them into a bag… but the bag floats and, in most cases, spins.
Although often mad, Young! it was a pleasure to visit again. It’s always silly, and the song gave me a welcome blast of nostalgia from the moment its steel drums started playing. (Young! Special Edition it includes both the original song and the remake, and both are great.) If anything, i Special Edition The release made it clear why Young! it stayed in my memory for a long time – I can’t say I’ve ever played another game like it.
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