Sure, why not? You've got your enemies, an evil scientist and his mutant killer tomatoes, and you've got your goofy little hero, a ten-year old boy. You've got your gameplay: side-scrolling, tomato-squashing goodness. What else do you need? Oh that's right, fun. Yeah, video games tend to suck when they're not fun, and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is no exception. Only better controls, more health, and a bottle of tequila would make this game worthwhile in any way.
The game is based on the cartoon which is in turn based on the cult movie from the '70s. I saw snippets of the cartoon when I was younger, but I haven't seen the movie or its sequels so I'm not exactly sure how true this game is to its source material. One thing about the Killer Tomatoes, though, is they have camp value up the yin yang. Inserting said camp value should have been priority number one in making this game. Throw in so many ridiculous movie/cartoon references, and weird happenings that no one will know what is going on, but no one will care because it's just so zany! Instead of camp, the best this game could offer was make you wander through an endless sewer cause, you know, THAT'S WHERE TOMATOES COME FROM!
You play as a kid, so already your play control has potential to be limited, because he's a kid and not a burly grown-up. Strangely, this kid can barely walk across the screen, but he can leap like a common-day Mario. It's quite amazing really, until you realize you can't aim properly with your jumps. He can never seem to land on the tomato enemies 100% accurately. This wouldn't be so bad, except the jump is your only attack through the game. Frankly, it's the easiest thing in the world to make a decent jump and Mario 1 proved this: jump on the goombas head, squish, dead. A Goomba is essentially a brown tomato, and although the killer tomatoes move a touch differently than goombas - jerkier, consumed by their lust for blood - that's no excuse for the kid to not hit them properly. At the very least, have the kid be able to pick up a bat or something.
Here's a bad joke: you start off the game with half-health. BWAHAHAAH!!! It apparently doesn't matter that in every other game ever made you start with full health. I think this whole "half-bar" thing was the point, though, because the whole purpose of the game seems to be to get the other half of your life-bar filled by eating sack lunches. Seriously, in the twenty minutes I devoted to this game (all I could stomach), there didn't seem to be a point to the game other than potentially jumping on tomatoes and collecting sack lunches.
Graphics and music lend themselves to the general crappy aura of the game... yeah. I don't know, it's a licensed game on the Nintendo, what do you want? If a licensed game isn't made by Capcom, don't expect it to be worth much, and even then... (see "Adventures in the Magic Kingdom"). Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is, like many other games I review, a complete waste of time, and that's all I have to say.
On an unrelated note, this is the last game I'll be reviewing that begins with "A"! Look for some fun statistics soon.
D-
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