Game Club 2017 (December) - Rainbow Islands

[Centrale]

I'm happy to announce that the SMS Game Club's challenge for this month is Rainbow Islands! I hope you're ready for a very unique game that has been nicely converted to the Sega Master System by Taito from their quarter-munching coin-op arcade hit.



There's no other game quite like Rainbow Islands. It's the sequel to Bubble Bobble, but the gameplay has been redesigned in an intriguing new way. Instead of blowing bubbles this time around, our hero Bubby (a.k.a. You!) can create rainbows to knock into the monsters running rampant throughout the Rainbow Islands. You can also jump on the rainbows from above to make them fall on enemies below. If the timing and placement is just right, enemies can be trapped inside a rainbow. And you can even climb, run and bounce on rainbows, effectively making staircases or trampolines to get to anywhere you want to!



The game starts off nice and easy so you can get a feel for all the things you can do with your rainbows. Gradually the difficulty ramps up as you proceed through the islands. Pretty soon you'll start to sense that there's more depth and strategy to this game than first meets the eye. It might be easy enough just to get to the end of a level, but what you really want to be doing is taking out enemies in just the right way in order to collect Rainbow Diamonds that will spell out the word RAINBOW. (Try to form a rainbow above an enemy and then make it fall on the enemy to make Rainbow Diamonds appear more often.) Collect them all and you'll be rewarded with a Big Diamond and some choices to make during the cutscenes between each island. Along the way you'll find some other useful items that will increase your speed, give you faster rainbows and double rainbows (what does it mean?!), and other cool powers to help you along your journey.



Each island has 5 areas, and you'll be working through 8 islands in all. (You'll need to collect all 7 Big Diamonds to be able to get to the 8th island!)

D-Button: Move
Button 1: Rainbow!!!
Button 2: Jump

Thanks for letting me select the game of the month for December. Since it's the holiday season, I put a lot of thought into coming up with a fun, delightful, dare I say heartwarming game for this special time of year. Whether you're celebrating Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, some other holiday that I'll feel like a jerk for not knowing about, a secular frenzy of consumerism, or nothing at all - I hope it's a wonderful time of the year for you ... and while we're at it, all the best to you for the New Year!

[Kaunisto]

Some thirty years ago, before I had Sega, a Commodore bus tour came through this town - which is so small that that is the only time anything like it happened here. There I got to try C64 and Rainbow Islands was the game I played the 15 minutes or whatever was reserved for one person.

I've never played the SMS version, got to go with emulator again.

[Centrale]

I'll be interested to hear your thoughts, Kaunisto. I know you've said you're not a big platformer fan... and I did try to consider the forum users whose preferences I was aware of as I chose the game. I think the versatility of the ways you can use the rainbows in this game, including making your own platforms, gives Rainbow Islands a strategic/puzzle-esque twist.

[asterix]

It’s so fun, when you play the old games again and find out that , there are so much more into the games ( tactically and so on) than you thought ore now . Ore play them fore the first time

[Stan]

Cool haven't actually checked out this version of it before.

[ian]

Great pick! It's not a game I ever owned or played as a kid, so I have no nostalgia for it. I have given it a go in recent years though and not thought too much of it. But as it's Game Club, I decided to give it another shot.

I had a fairly quick blast and got up to World 4 before I got my first game over and stopped playing. It's hard to find much fault with this game. The graphics, sound and controls are all excellent. I guess the thing that's never appealed to me is the classic arcade style, with lots of levels and fairly repetitive gameplay. It's the same reason I'm not a fan of games like Teddy Boy and Bubble Bobble.

I'm guessing like a lot of other classic arcade games though, there's subtle strategies you have to use which make the game all the more interesting. I'm going to put some more time into it and try complete it and then hopefully I'll come to enjoy the game a lot more.

[Kaunisto]

I'm having very busy season, only still given couple quick trys. (I may have to return to this much later...)

First I didn't get far, not figuring out how walking on rainbows worked (without dropping them). Getting the hang of that, on second try I got 3rd island - which seems to be the point where the game gets a step harder.

I suspect that even if I'd had this in my best days, I would've only fought it to end of 7, never bothering to hunt all the diamonds.

The boss fights are much like special levels often are in games: adds some variety like obviously intended, but playability isn't as good as rest of the game so they're not actually enjoyable.

One game RI reminds me of is Bomb Jack I used to play on my cousin's Atari ST.

[nearbythiscafe]

An excellent choice for the game club, ive not played this since my c64 days so ill look forward to slotting it into the sms!

[Melanogaster]

Well, it's always nice to fire that one up again. Never actually had the game back in the day but used to rent it a lot, so nostalgia always sits beside me while replaying it. The soundtrack, although a bit repetitive, is funny and catchy. The graphics gives us colors everywhere, the challenge is adequate and the controls are fair. Massive slowdowns and heavy flickering will eventually have to be dealt with, however, which some may find disturbing.

Below is one of the possible good endings (pardon the scrolling; the forums lack a spoiler feature), achieved with the Tec Toy version on a Master System III. It seems you european members might have some difficulties upon finishing it, depending on your hardware.

[Phil]

It's a good game, but not the best conversion in the world. I seem to prefer the Zx Spectrum version over the Master System one, that goes for Paperboy and Chase HQ too!!!