Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1991) NES Game Review

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes (1991)
Developed by: Imagineering
Released in: NA, EU

Old video games are remembered today for a myriad of reasons. Some were always well known and still held in high regard, while some are considered highly underrated gems that didn’t get the fanfare they deserved in their hey-day. On the flip side, some titles are scornfully remembered for being about as entertaining as taking a math test, or doing your taxes.

But then, in the center of those two extremes, is a mysterious grey area. Many games have slipped through the cracks of history, being neither fondly remembered nor despised by the general public. Where does Attack of the Killer Tomatoes fall on that scale? Smack dab in the middle, I’d say; it’s not so good it’s good, so bad it’s good, or so bad it’s bad. More like so so-so it’s so-so. Lemme count the number of so’s there to make sure I got that right.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes is based on a cartoon I’ve never seen, which is further based on a series of live-action movies I’ve never seen. Though the Killer Tomatoes movies are somewhat well known by schlocky cult movie connoisseurs, the dumbed down cartoon is a branch of the Tomatoes oeuvre that’s fallen into obscurity over the years. Spanning two seasons and barely scraping past 20 episodes, it seems painfully forgettable, much like the game.

Confession time: I’m only bringing up the cartoon so I can have an excuse to share this bizarre image gallery I found on the fan-maintained wikia.

Enough about the source material – let’s talk about the video game. It was developed by Imagineering, who are best known for making a mountain of middling titles for the NES, Game Boy, and anything else you could smash a cartridge into during the late 80s/early 90s. I took a quick scan through some video game mags of the time to see if there was any can’t miss Tomato hype, and found next to nothing. What few mentions there were sounded more like pre-written statements by the game’s publishers than any actual insights from the magazines.

To summarize: even when Killer Tomatoes on NES was fresh off the vine, the press of the time couldn’t give a damn.

Confession time number two: I did a little dive into the press of the day hoping to find something interesting because there isn’t much to say about Attack of the Killer Tomatoes as a game. But I’ll try my best.

You play as Chad, a cool 90’s dude with ‘tude who wears his cap backwards and likes to skateboard and recycle, among other hip hobbies cartoon protagonists had back in 1991 I’m sure. The manual for this game describes him as “small, yet defiant” which sounds like something I’d call my cat.

As the radical Chad, you have next to nothing at your disposal to help you squash the evil tomatoes. You can jump on enemies’ heads, and hold B to run (but only past the third level for some reason – before that, you’re forced to walk at a brisk pace). On one occasion, you get to throw some rocks at one of two bosses in the game… and that’s it. Other than health restoring lunch bags, and slightly different looking bags that do nothing but increase your score, there are no power ups at all. Even for an NES era platformer, this is as bare bones as it gets.

It’d be remiss of me to not mention that this game makes you feel like a sad little rat in an 8-bit maze. Each level has you trying your luck down long pathways that lead to dead ends, with nothing but a lone, moldy packed lunch waiting for you at the end. There’s an especially obnoxious level later on that has you wandering to-and-fro in an air duct, with the gravity reversing so you’re walking on the ceiling of the duct, for some reason. There’s also like, a tomato ghost in the vent with you? I don’t know. Killer Tomatoes is an amalgamation of a handful of half-baked ideas coming together to make a whole tedious experience. Not that I particularly blame the developers for this one – after all, who would want to waste their good game design ideas on a throwaway marketing tie in for a cartoon nobody was watching?

But it wasn’t all bad. Hell, it wasn’t bad at all – just terribly, terribly average. A few highlights were the first (and basically the only) boss being an innovative idea: a Phantom of the Opera-like specter living in the sewers uses his dramatic pipe organ to launch deadly tomatoes at Chad from a distance, and you must throw rocks at each of the organ’s pipes to bust it. Another plus was that the background graphics were quite pleasing to the eyes; from the sleek colour palettes of the very first level, to the final gauntlet somehow managing to look gruesomely gory even though it’s just a bunch of tomatoes, the visuals were a surprising standout. One last small mercy is that it was surprisingly short: I beat it in just under an hour on my first try, which is an absolutely pathetic time compared to the Tomatoes speedruns that are ~5 minutes long.

And… that’s it. Nothing left to say. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes isn’t juicy and refreshing, but it won’t have you throwing rotten fruit at the devs, either. Unless you’re the guy who runs the Attack of the Killer Tomatoes fan wikia or some nutjob who’s decided to beat every single game on the NES, there’s probably nothing here for you.

Initial Interest Rating: 4/10
Final Rating: