Created by Tokuro Fujiwara, the same mastermind that brought us the memorable Ghosts & Goblins and Mega Man, the fresh mix of platforming and sub-quest based adventures make Tomba! one of the most ingenious and versatile PlayStation titles in the Store.

The story follows Tomba, a wild jungle boy who needs to get his lucky golden bracelet back from demon pigs that have overrun his land. He’ll be using numerous weapons such as boomerangs and a large mace to overthrow a wide range of foes from evil pigs, spiders and large forest creatures.

The combination of unique 2D sprite and 3D backgrounds for Tomba! are great examples of game art at its finest in the late 90s, and remains visually pleasing even to this day. Also intriguing is that Tomba!’s gameplay is structured around earning Adventure Points by completing certain tasks such as helping trapped villagers or finding a lost item in a cave. Collecting more and more Adventure Points (AP) enables your wild jungle boy to pass through numerous area zones in the game. This is what truly makes Tomba! a unique and classic PlayStation platformer.

One of the most critically acclaimed features about the game is that all the sub-quests are different, eliminating repetition and keeping gameplay fresh from beginning to end. This also allows players to complete areas at their own pace with an option to undertake the hundreds of other hidden sub-quests. Exploration certainly isn’t discouraged here!

If you’re looking for hours and hours of classic PlayStation fun, look no further and download Tomba! Later today when it hits PlayStation Store. MonkeyPaw Games hopes you’ll like this edition and continue to give us your game suggestions. Like Tomba!, we’ll continue to listen and go after those otherworld classics! Follow us on Twitter at @MonkeyPawGames and help us relive your favorite PlayStation memories or reignite forgotten ones.

MonkeyPaw Games strives to bring you excellent content from Japan. Today we’re announcing the anticipated digital download release of Class of Heroes II on the PlayStation Network. The digital release, playable on PSP and PS Vita, will give users a chance to play the game with a beautifully localized adaptation, care of our partners at GAIJINWORKS. The game is set to debut this fall.

The game is a charming take on the Wizardry-style dungeon crawl games with a twist – all the party members are drawn from a pool of newly-enrolled students at a Sword and Sorcery School. It features 10 classes to choose from: Novice, Fighter, Swordsman, Ranger, Monk, Ninja, Sorcerer, Puppeteer, Idol, and one Mystery Class. Once the party is created, quests are offered and the party can choose their adventure path, unlocking ever more distant and dangerous areas to conquer as they grow in power and confidence.

Monster parties can be more than one level deep in a single combat episode, leading to epic encounters of up to 12 or more monsters at a time, where managing a party’s ranged and melee skills can be the difference between victorious life and an ignominious death. There are over 200 dungeon maps and more than 100 monsters to conquer as the story unfolds.

The school that serves as a base of operations is populated with professors and staff that can be helpful, mysterious, or provide comic relief – like the Professor of Alchemy and Cosplay, Giorgio.

Class of Heroes II makes full use of PSP’s wireless capabilities, enabling players to swap items with friends who also have the game and have their PSP in wireless range.

Japanese RPGs have a strong following in North America and Europe as we’ve discovered with our stable of hit PSN releases such as Vanguard Bandits, Alundra and the Arc the Lad series. These games had a common thread in that Working Designs was the North American publisher and localization house. Their reincarnation has brought us into contact with Victor Ireland and GAIJINWORKS and we’re pleased to have them working with us on this game as well. Fans of their work will feel right at home with the charming, engaging localization and characters in Class of Heroes II.

We hope everyone has a chance to play Class of Heroes II, as its rejuvenated release is streamlined with a more robust experience. We believe our fans will appreciate how the game has elevated and what a premium localization can do for a deep game like this. It is a pleasure to be a part of this effort and to have our stamp on a series that will attain the same plateau of excellence in the West as it has in Japan.

It’s been 29 years since BurgerTime hit arcades, but there’s still there’s a legion of fans waiting for a modern revival of one of the tastiest puzzle games ever. BurgerTime World Tour isn’t just BurgerTime with HD graphics; it’s a maturation of the arcade classic with evolved elements and platform features that make for a whole new game. BurgerTime World Tour has been re-built from the ground up on a rotating cylindrical 3D world upon which you build your burgers from top to bottom.

Follow famed burger chef Peter Pepper as he traverses four different culinary destinations (New York, Paris, Mexico, and Tokyo) and creates giant burgers while dodging zany condiments and frenetic foods like Frank Furter, the splenetic sausage or Sonny, the indelible edible egg. Peter Pepper will have his way with these ingredients as he drops burger pieces onto them to include them in the burger (bonus points and custom burgers!), flips them off the screen with a tornado spatula attack, or engulfs them with flames from the new hot sauce powerup, just to name a few. With over 50 levels, BurgerTime World Tour’s a meaty package.

The recipe has been enhanced with intense boss battles in which you build burgers as fast as possible to force-feed each boss towards its food-coma doom. BurgerTime World Tour also brings to the table tons of new platforming and puzzle elements such as the new rocket packs, a new power-up that allows you to scale large buildings faster and earn more points for your ranked level score. Of course, the game’s signature power-up, the pepper shaker, is still used as a great method for dazing enemies and allow for easy bonus points for combining these ingredients onto your finished burger.

The multitude of new elements and items also allow for more efficient burger-making, important for one of the series’ most requested features, four-player local splitscreen and online multiplayer! BurgerTime World Tour includes fast and furious multiplayer modes: Burger Battle and Rocket Race. Both competitive modes, which can be played by up to four players via local splitscreen or online, are fresh additions to the menu this time around. Burger Battle is an all-out burger making competition that has chefs creating as many burgers as they can and eliminating nearby enemies within a specific time limit. The chef with the most points when time expires wins the battle. Rocket Race is another competitive mode that uses the game’s new rocket packs as players must navigate their way through tall, challenging levels using the rocket pack powerups littered throughout the map. The first player to complete the final burger at the finish line wins the race. Adding to the game’s replay value is the online arcade leaderboard, which tracks single-level scores and multiplayer victories against the world’s top scores. BurgerTime World Tour gives everyone the chance to be the best burger chef in the world.

This isn’t the BurgerTime your Dad grew up on; BurgerTime World Tour is a re-invention of the retro classic. Follow our retro-evolution and pick up BurgerTime World Tour as it arrives on the PlayStation Network this Tuesday, November 15th for the low price of $9.99. Then challenge your Dad to a hamburger fight!

Originally published as Epica Stella by Human Entertainment in Japan, Vanguard Bandits was released by legendary publisher Working Designs in North America. The PSone game was loaded with content: 60 different missions, three branching storylines, crazy plot twists and dialogue on the Ruin Branch, five endings and path-crossing narratives. Vanguard Bandits kept gamers glued to their screens for marathon gameplay sessions.

The game is played from an isometric camera view similar to most games within the SRPG genre. But the 3D battle animations were fresh additions to an already robust adventure. Every attack or defense action brings up a dramatic close-up of the fight, each complete with energizing music and charismatic dialogue. Working Designs included fan-friendly options, such as being able to bypass these sequences and speeding up the overall battle for players that like speed runs.

Similar to another classic strategy RPG called Front Mission, players must take control of entire mecha squadrons which consist of ATACs, or All Terrain Armored Combatants, robotic armor that is controlled by gemstones. These ATACs battle in vast environments, each with differing levels of terrain which gave the player advantages or disadvantages on the battlefield. Working Designs added an assist feature that increases your attack power if you have friends nearby. If you manage to surround an enemy before attacking, your pimp-hand will be stronger than you can imagine, laying down some impressive damage, sometimes taking out that enemy with one round of combat. But the inverse is also true, so players have to think ahead or else they’ll end up surrounded by enemies thirsting for blood in a juiced-up robo-alliance.

Vanguard Bandits isn’t just one of the rarest PSone games ever (a sealed copy can set you back more than $200), it’s also a game that feeds to the strengths of the genre, namely a deadly combination of gameplay challenge, thought provoking strategy, and extremely high replay value.

Vanguard Bandits is a huge game and even three different playthroughs might not be enough for some hardcore gamers. MonkeyPaw Games also plans to release a free licensed PDF of the original 200+ page Working Designs strategy guide for download at www.monkeypawgames.com. Gamers who remember the golden days of strategy RPGs should pick up Vanguard Bandits in the Classics section on the PlayStation Network. For $9.99, you’ll be in strategy RPG heaven. Show your support, follow us on Twitter, and look for more hidden gems to gradually come from MonkeyPaw Games.