Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom (NES) Playthrough
323A playthrough of Hudson Soft's 1991 adventure game for the NES, Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom.
With home computers quickly gaining traction in the Japanese market in the early eighties, the popularity of the text adventure skyrocketed, and Hudson was one among many software companies that eagerly jumped on the bandwagon.
Originally released in 1984 for the NEC PC-88, Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom puts players in the role of Sir Cucumber, a knight loyal to the late King Broccoli. The wicked Minister Pumpkin has kidnapped Princess Tomato and is planning to force her to marry his son in a bid to take over Salad Kingdom, and Sir Cuke is rather displeased at the prospect.
Joining Sir Cucumber in his quest to save the lycopene-rich princess is Percy the persimmon, an ever chatty font of advice and comic relief. The pair wander the kingdom, talking to and helping out the locals as they search for a way to topple Pumpkin's oppresive regime.
In 1988 the game was ported to the Famicom with simplified graphics and a verb-based point-and-click interface similar to MacAdventure games' (Deja Vu, Shadowgate, The Uninvited) to replace the PC original's keyboard-driven text parser, and in 1991, Hudson finally translated and re-released the game for North American audiences.
The gameplay is a simple matter of clicking the right option in the right place at the right time, and as you trip invisible progress triggers, more and more options are made available. Fortunately, unlike in many games of this type (the MacVenture titles, King's Quest V), there is no way to unwittingly place yourself in a dead-end situation. Creative experimentation is rewarded instead of punished, and it will often be needed to figure out how to move forward.
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom‘s graphics have been significantly altered from their higher-resolution PC counterparts, but they're still appealing. The ridiculous premise populates the storybook-like Salad Kingdom with sentient fruits and vegetables (the sole exception being Princess Tomato’s inexplicably human sister, Lisa) that give it a quaint, nostalgic charm, however absurd. The bizarre styling also allowed Hudson to circumvent a few of Nintendo’s notoriously strict censorship policies.
For example, Bananda, an evil seven headed banana, kidnaps Nutty, a little peanut girl. To save her, Sir Cucumber lobs a bomb at Bananda, blowing him up into several pieces. Then he has to dig through the chunks of ragged skin to find and free Nutty buried beneath the “gore." It's a bit surreal to say the least, especially once you realize that the game is posed as a clumsy allegory for the evils of Communism.
How red must the salad become? Think of the children!
Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom is a wonderfully unique game that deserves props for its attempt to address heavy-handed subject matter. Though the sheer inanity of the script takes away most of its bite, the cutesy character designs, vibrant illustrations, comic writing, and silly puzzles make Princess Tomato an obscure oddity that no true NES fan should miss.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.
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