Tommy Kombat by Cascata Games, $19.99
Reviewed March 2004 by LightMan

When I took a fist look at the early screenshots, I noticed the hero's resemblance with the classic Rick Dangerous (now there's a decent name for a hero…ok , I'll put a sock in it)

Rick Dangerous and me were close buddies on my early PC gaming days, and I was happy to see resemblances to some positive aspects of Rick Dangerous, namely in level design and the character animations.

After loading up the game, you're presented with a nice animated background (using the game's characters) which serves the main menu area. The menus are available in a bottom bar that auto-hides. While I think it makes perfect sense for the bar to auto-hide within the game, on the main menu screen, I'd really prefer the options to stay there and not hide, but this is me being picky.

The usual sound/music controls are available (although there's only music in the menu screen), as well as a help option with some details about how to get on within the game (the manual in pdf has more detail, if you need).

There is a very nice and well thought tutorial with 5 levels which is very helpful in making the user familiar with the gameplay and most of the important aspects of the game.

The remaining menu option is the level codes. Since the Tommy Kombat holds 64 levels, as you progress, you will have to resume from a given level you have beaten. And here lies a problem: the way to resume a game is to type in an 8 character code that is provided on the initial screen of every new level. So far so good. The thing is that the game never saves or records those codes, which makes it mandatory for you to write down (somewhere) the 8 char code when you beat each level…this makes it near-impossible to play this game on-the-go, say on a train or bus…since you always have to have a pen and paper nearby or your mobile phone to save the code as note (whatever)…also, when you want to resume a game and start playing again, you have to get the piece of paper or phone note where you wrote down the code and type it in … 8 alphanumeric chars …, I do apologize to the developer for this public note here, but in my opinion, this makes no sense on a mobile platform.

It could have been really simple to have included an option in which it would save or record the levels you have beaten (like Toki-Tori, just to name one) or simply save the last code or level beaten.

The default button mapping has some problems: on my Ipaq 2215, one of the action buttons is mapped to the d-pad middle button, which I didn't find handy. The problem is that if you want to reconfigure the keys, there is no built-in option. Although the (nice) manual provided explains that you have to edit the keys.txt file that is installed on the main dir of the game, one can hardly call that a handy process to change your keys, even more when you have no idea as to what is KEY1 or KEY2. You have to figure out which KEY matches each button while playing the game on your ppc and then edit the file, assigning the proper keys. Another issue I found is that I can't make use of the Contacts button (tried mapping it to all 4 available KEYs but none made it recognizable within the game)

Here's a list of what each KEY matches on an Ipaq 2215 :

KEY1 -> inbox button

KEY2 -> i-task button

KEY3 -> calendar button

KEY4 -> dpad button

I think that this doesn't favor the game in any way and I don't think it would have been that difficult to include an easy-to-use button configuration within the game.

Anyway, the 4 other buttons are enough to play the game, so enough said about this.

On the other hand, after you're set up, the controls are very responsive and the gameplay is very solid and fun, definitely one of the most appealing aspects of the game.

Moving around, jumping, firing, going up and down the stairs, pushing crates, all is very snappy and free flowing. It's quite nice that just like in Rick Dangerous, they made it possible to speed up big ladder climbs by allowing you to keep on jumping up the ladder. Also it is possible to stop while on a ladder and jump to another platform or fire any of your weapons.

Throughout the game, you can use a wide range of weapons like a machine gun, rocket launcher (my personal favorite), time bombs, laser, lightning weapons, among some others.

Also, there's a big variety of items that you can carry: fire extinguisher, passkeys to open doors, night goggles, etc.

Apart from what you can carry, there are still other items to interact with like switches that trigger doors or elevators, magnetic wrenches to help you maneuver crates (which can also be pushed by Tommy a-la Sokoban), valves to shut down deadly steam pipes, the list goes on.

So, as you can see, the variety is definitely there and it will take some levels before you run into all of them.