If every fighting game in the entire world were at a dance club together (well, I suppose we should start with imagining every fighting game in the world is a person and they are all attending a dance together . . . this metaphor is already off to a rough start). Let’s try this again. Every fighting game is a person and they are at an amazing club. Super Street Fighter II is the cool guy that everyone wants to be. Tekken 4 is the guy who tries too hard. D.O.A. 2 is the slutty girl. Soul Calibur 2 is the guy who might kill everyone around him.
Then, there is Tobal No. 1.
Fear the frump.
Tobal No. 1 is the fat, frumpy girl with the lazy eye that no one wants to make eye contact with.
And for good reason.
Tobal No. 1 was a launch title for the original Playstation, and it looks like it. The graphics are blocky, the controls are unresponsive, the fighters are on a giant platform that is difficult to navigate, and the characters are completely uninspired.
Catpig attack!
The only remotely cool thing about the game is the dungeon crawl mode. Players run through a gauntlet of henchmen on their way to fight a giant cat/pig with boxing gloves.
Of all the fighting games I’ve ever played, this has to be one of the worst. Still, it’s one of those games that is so bad and so ugly that it’s fun. Tobal No. 1 is like a bad movie – you experience it for the sheer crappiness of it all.
Think of it like this: you bought this new video game system, the Sony Playstation and you couldn’t be more excited about it. It’s a CD based system and that’s never been done correctly before (your uncle had the Sega CD and the Saturn and those were both duds), but this one is different. You know it.
No matter what Jared Lee says, this game sucks.
At launch, what are your choices? You buy the launch RPG, Beyond the Beyond, because if the SNES can have a game like Final Fantasy III, then surely the Playstation can have an RPG that’s even better, right? But what about for when your friends come over?
Tobal No. 1 it is!
It’s on a CD, so surely that means it’s great, right?
WRONG!
DEAD WRONG!
I have a copy of this game, and I love the dugeon crawl mode.
Truthfully I haven’t played the “fighter” portion more than a handful of times in all the years i’ve owned this.