I've always thought of Rainbow Islands as a bizarre sequel living in the shadow of an arcade classic. Everybody knows Bubble Bobble is a great co-op game with single screen levels in which you encase monsters in bubbles so you can pop them. Rainbow Islands, in a way, is the exact opposite. Rather than remaining on a single screen, you climb your way up increasingly tall levels, and instead of having to trap enemies, you either shoot them for a direct kill or crush them with your rainbows from above. You also can't play it with two people simultaneously, which seems like a huge downgrade at first glance. But after giving Rainbow Islands more time than I did back when the NES was contemporary, I found that it faithfully picks up where Bubble Bobble left off in terms of its creativity and how it gets so much mileage out of simple game mechanics. Fear not, for Rainbow Islands is absolutely a worthy sequel.

It's worth noting that there are actually two NES versions, the US/Japan release that does more of its own thing and the European release that sticks closer to the arcade version. The US/Japan version replaces one of the worlds with one that's themed around Kiki KaiKai (aka Pocky & Rocky), so that made it an easy choice for me!

As mentioned before, your one and only option (aside from jumping, anyway) is the ability to create rainbows in front of you. These are used to defeat enemies and can also serve as makeshift staircases, allowing you to climb upwards in an arc. You can't jump on them without them crashing down, which is something that you'll be making use of a lot, but it means that you can't use them as traditional platforms. Therefore, you need to be careful with how you use them, since it's easy to slide off of rainbows or accidentally walk into an enemy. This unique projectile takes getting used to and the difficulty curve thankfully takes this into account.

The first few worlds are easy enough, featuring slow enemies and plenty of platforms to give you enough time to learn how setting up rainbows should be done. Later worlds become pretty merciless though, as per Bubble Bobble tradition, and the game starts taking away platforms and expects you to deal with fast foes that shoot projectiles en masse. The endgame feels a bit too harsh and the overly long levels combined with limited continues can cause unneeded stress, but this is ultimately a game that can be mastered and doing so comes with noticeable results. Once you've gotten comfortable with rainbows, you can set up multi-kills, blaze through levels quickly, and make it impossible for foes to approach. It's really satisfying to get the hang of this game's unique mechanics, and much like fellow NES classic Bionic Commando, this is a game where I went from not really getting it to fully grasping just how clever it is by the time I was done.

It wouldn't be a game in the Bubble Bobble series without an incredibly elaborate, entirely hidden system for power-ups and other items, and Rainbow Islands delivers in spades. Killing enemies gets you power-ups, but what exactly determines what you get felt all but random to me. According to various online resources, every 3rd kill is supposed to get you a power-up from a fixed sequence, all of which make Bubby a much more capable fighter, but I found myself never able to follow that sequence consistently. Sometimes I'd get some of the more powerful items like the potions and tiaras that make short work of enemies, but oftentimes I'd either get items I already had or the diamonds that you need for the true ending (not a bad thing!). There's a crystal ball item that's required to see the bosses of worlds 5-7 and it doesn't sound like it should be too rare to come by, but I had no clue how to get it to appear and experimenting didn't really help. I did it in world 6, but for worlds 5 and 7, I had to fight invisible bosses. An interesting idea to be sure, but not exactly one I'd call fun! You lose your power-ups should you die, and you'll definitely die, so learning how exactly this convoluted system works isn't necessarily useful or additive to the experience unless you're looking to get an impressive score.

The most important items are the seven colored diamonds that need to be collected in each world. They match the colors of the rainbow and the ones you get are supposedly determined by where on the screen you kill an enemy, which isn't something I even knew about until after I beat the game. Diamonds will primarily be generated when crushing enemies with rainbows, so going for them adds a satisfying layer of complexity that requires you to set up kills more carefully. Anybody can fire rainbows indiscriminately, but only those who know how to maneuver and patiently create the necessary moments will reap the rewards. Collecting all 7 in a world gets you one of the 7 huge diamonds needed for the true ending and 8th world, so they'd be very much worth it just for that, but they come with additional benefits too.

If you obtain the huge diamond, you'll be given the opportunity to either get a free power-up from one of two treasure chests or to speak with a NPC. The NPCs don't always have useful information, but what they have to say can sometimes be amusing enough that it's worth sacrificing a power-up for. In one world, a NPC talks about how he was a hero until he fell victim to his vices and couldn't support his family anymore, and in another world, you get to see Bubby cure Bobby's sudden bout of vampirism by breathing garlic into his face. The game also gets weirdly horny at times and Bubby is way too eager to flirt with every girl he meets despite having a girlfriend and looking like he's 5 years old. It's really something else! If you manage to collect the 7 colored diamonds in ROYGBIV order, you not only get the above perks, you also get the chance to skip the boss fight (if you want) and a special item that permanently improves Bubby in some way. It's cool that playing the game extra carefully and extra well is rewarded in such a significant way, and while none of those power-ups are needed, they're worthwhile rewards nonetheless and I'm sure speedrunners appreciate being able to skip bosses too. The bosses aren't bad or anything, but most of them come down to just moving and shooting while you avoid their large sprites, so being able to skip them to preserve lives once their novelty has worn thin might actually be for the best.

Rainbow Islands feels like a celebration of Taito at times and I really appreciate how it goes about doing that. Worlds 5-8 are all dedicated to themes based on other Taito games. World 5 is based on Arkanoid and replicates the audiovisual experience by removing the music and having the sounds of the blocks constantly echo throughout the stages. World 6 not only takes the yokai from Kiki KaiKai, it also provides renditions of its music and even recreates the final boss within the context of Rainbow Islands. World 7 is themed around Darius, so it naturally has enemies that favor projectiles. Best of all, its boss encounter uses the same "A huge battleship is approaching fast!" warning screen to introduce the fight, which brought a smile to my face. The final world is based on the original Bubble Bobble and plays its iconic theme as you deal with familiar foes. Taito has such a fun and memorable catalog of franchises, so it's nice to see them flaunt it here in such a creative and high effort way.

Though it may be needlessly obtuse and punishing at times, Rainbow Islands is a joyous game that has no problem standing alongside its predecessor. It's easy to see why it was a hit in its time, between its easy to learn yet hard to master mechanics and its colorful presentation, and those factors are why it still holds up so well today. This is a game that rewards practice and mastery like any good game of this vintage should and it does so in a way that allows you to learn something new with every play session. Whether you like Bubble Bobble or not, you should absolutely try this game and give it a chance to allow its best qualities to shine like a rainbow.

Reviewed on Mar 24, 2022


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