Square no Tom Sawyer — stories left

The same magazine's special supplement "Famicom ROM Cartridge All Catalog" (1991-5-10 issue) introduced it as "a multi-member party RPG that adopts a novel system", adding that "being able to name the special moves used in battle freely is also unique" and that "however, the absence of money will divide opinion".

The game is directly based on Mark Twain's renowned 1876 novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and was developed in the role-playing video game niche that made Square famous with its acclaimed Final Fantasy series of video games.

In GameSpys retrospective overview of the Famicom, Benjamin Turner and Christian Nutt's Square column concludes that "one of the most amusing Square games that didn't come [to the U.S.] was Square's Tom Sawyer, an RPG starring the happy-go-lucky boy wonder that featured a...racially insensitive...character".

Artist Takashi Tokita explained in 2018 that when the game was made, there was not a "standards and practices" department to ensure that games did not contain materials that would be offensive in other cultures.

In the "Cross Review" feature of the magazine Famitsu, the four reviewers gave 6, 6, 7, and 5, for a total of 24 out of 40. In the "Game Report Card" reader poll run by Family Computer Magazine, it scored 24.45 out of 30, as shown below.

Takashi Tokita developed some of the graphics, and designed Tom Sawyer as well, but working on the game was difficult for Square to do as teams struggled to finish both games at once, and help was given by the different teams to complete the titles.

The game was never localized outside Japan, and was noted by IGN as an example of racism in video games.