Tombs and Treasure Review (Nintendo Entertainment System)
~by tankMage (October 2023)
Score: 8.3/10
Pros
-Imaginative story and setting
-Interesting mix of RPG and adventure
-Nice music
-Decent User Interface for an NES Point ‘n Click Adventure
Cons
-A lack of hints make some puzzles extremely difficult to figure out
-RPG aspect of the game is very simplistic
-It is easy to get softlocked and permanently stuck
Looting tombs has never been so much fun!
Imagine if you will: The year is 1990 and you are basking in the warm, mildly radioactive glow of a tube TV playing Tombs and Treasure on a rainy night. You walk into a tomb and suddenly a weird beetle lizard thing called Skorper attacks! You manage to kill it and find a secret room with a creepy mask. It’s all very spooky and you’re probably happy you dropped the sixty bucks or whatever this game cost back then, because it’s a pretty good mix of point ‘n click adventure and RPG.
Well, that’s how I like to imagine things going if I owned this game as a kid. However, I did not get to play it until I was well into adulthood and that’s probably a good thing, because I would have never been able to figure some of the puzzles out back then. Ok, to be honest I couldn’t figure the puzzles out now and had to look some of them up. That said, this is a solid NES adventure game that brings some RPG mechanics and a few other cool ideas to the table. It’s not the best, but it is certainly worth playing if you enjoy this genre.
Story
You have to put on your “suspension of disbelief” hat to get into the plot of Tombs and Treasures, because it really stretches creditability, even more so than an Indiana Jones movie. Players control a male and female character (their default names are Rick and Tess) who are visiting the jungles of Central America. Tess’s uncle is a famous archaeologist who disappeared while studying some Mayan ruins. The duo learn about his ill-fated adventures in the lab where the game starts and set out to save him with the help of Jose, a former employee of the good doctor.
Rick and Tess soon find that the ruins are full of monsters. It seems the ancient Mayans had a lot of problems on their hands. Luckily, Rick can use a sword found in the ruins to slay the demons.
For the most part, I really like the story. There’s a lot of twists and turns as well as a few mysteries that are never fully answered. I know some people like to call anything that isn’t explained to death a “plot hole” and maybe there are a few of these in the story, but I like the fact that some things are left to the imagination whether intentionally or not.
The only thing that bugged me were the historical inaccuracies, like Mayans having metal swords and working machines being in ruins that were likely buried in soil for centuries. That said, this is supposed to be a fun adventure game and the story is entertaining, so I can’t hold the fact that the writer took some liberties against the plot. It would have probably been boring if Tombs and Treasures were about a couple of teens digging up broken pottery anyway. Also, there’s a lot we do not know about the ancient Mayans, so who am I to judge?
Graphics
I really like the art style. The character portraits are nicely drawn, especially the close ups, and everything has a great 1980s anime aesthetic. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell what some of the demons are supposed to be, but they’re demons in a Mayan ruin, so it’s ok for them to be a little strange.
I have to criticize some of the icons used for the various actions the heroes can perform, because some of them are very similar to others. It is also difficult to tell what some of them do from sight. Luckily they are labeled, so it’s not like you have to guess what they are or memorize them.
User Interface
I have not played a lot of point and click adventures, but the few I have tried often feature controls that were very crudely adapted to the NES. Tombs and Treasures does a bit better in this regard than some of its peers, though it’s not perfect. One of the things I like most about the controls is how the cursor that’s used to navigate in the gameplay window snaps to relevant objects. This might not sound like much, but there are more than a few PC games that got ported to consoles with slow moving cursors that were a pain to use, so Tombs and Treasures has a leg up on some of its peers.
I wasn’t a big fan of how a lot of the options on the action bar are kind of hidden and the player has to dig around to find them. Aside from that, the system is pretty darn good considering the fact the the NES doesn’t give devs a lot of buttons to work with.
Gameplay
As I said earlier, I didn’t play Point ‘n Click Adventures often when I was younger and have only just started to try them out, so there’s a lot of stuff I probably struggle with that may be obvious to veterans. This leads into the puzzles, which are the meat and potatoes of Tombs and Treasures. While I was able to figure a few things out on my own and thought the puzzles were very creative, I’m don’t see how someone was supposed to beat this game back in the early 90s, especially a child. A lot of the puzzles don’t have much in the the way of hints, so you just have to look around and guess.
Another issue was softlocking; it’s very easy to go to the wrong place or do the wrong thing and get stuck forever. The only way you can fix this is to start over or use a password. This seems kind of normal for this type of game, because it also happened to me in Deja Vu a few times. Once again, I’m really not sure how someone is supposed to complete this game without extensive guides. That said, maybe I’m just dumb. I suppose the idea was to take notes and figure the game out through trial and error? It’s also worth mentioning that this game would probably be fun to play with a friend even though it’s made for a single player. Having someone to help with the puzzles and maybe notice things I missed would have been nice in retrospect.
Aside from the difficulty, I genuinely enjoyed the game and it felt good when I managed to figure something out. Puzzles were very cleverly constructed and you could tell the devs were using their imaginations. They also fit the theme of a 1980s/90s adventure game really well.
The RPG battles were fun, though they were very simplistic. Battles basically boiled down to a monster attacking the party and the player having to use the sword as well as another item to fight it. If you are too weak or use the wrong item, you’re probably going to die. While this may seem rough, there are no random battles and the monsters serve as hints in a weird way, since getting killed by a super tough enemy is a good indicator that you should probably check another area.
Finally, the player can switch characters and try to solve puzzles with one of three people. Each character has a unique ability. Rick (the boy) can fight monsters, Tess (the girl) can use certain items, and Jose can push things that are too heavy for the others to move. Like the combat system, it’s not very fleshed out, but it is creative and adds another layer of complexity to the game.
Music and Sound
Much of the music in this game is generic despite being competently made. You’d think a game about exploring haunted Mayan ruins would have a very unusual soundtrack, but instead we get music that could fit into just about any RPG or Point ‘n Click Adventure. It’s sad, because the right set of songs could have made the game really pop, so it feels like a lost opportunity.
Final Thoughts
I waited nearly thirty years to play this game after reading about it in an old Nintendo Power. It always interested me for some reason. Maybe it was the artwork or the unique setting. While I am happy I played it, I will say that I probably would have been disappointed with Tombs and Treasure if I played it in the pre-internet era. Solving the puzzles would have been impossible for me when the game came out since I was eight at the time. Like I said, maybe I’m just too much of an adventure game noob or maybe I’m dumb.
That said, it’s a rewarding game that has a lot of personality. There’s also not a ton of titles like this for the NES and the fact that it’s pretty good helps set it about from the rest of the console’s library.
Recommendations
Tombs and Treasure is worth playing, but you either have to be really good at this type of game or be willing to look things up if you get stuck.
Thanks for checking out my Tombs and Treasure review!