Rainbow Islands Extra. Yes it's real, and it's not a fan-made hack (which was my assumption at first). This is Taito's Rainbow Islands combined with Taito's Darius shoot-'em-up franchise (sorry, no kings of Persia here). I can't say I understand why such a game needs to exist, but it does, and I'm here to review it... sort of.
Released exclusively on the Sega Mega Drive in Japan, Rainbow Islands Extra is essentially a standard port of Rainbow Islands, the arcade sequel to Bubble Bobble. However, an "extra" mode is turned on by default, repopulating the islands once filled with bugs and happy creatures with aliens, machines and probably fish. It's something I hope you'll agree is quite bizarre, especially seeing as the graphics don't match and Bub and Bob are huge in comparison to their enemies.
If you're not famililar with the Rainbow Islands formula, you take control of one of the monsters/dragons from the previous game, now in their correct human form. Rather than being armed with bubble making facilities in your gut, you've been given the power to create rainbows, which are used both as a weapon and a platform. Your aim is to get to the top of the screen, defeating enemies as you go and ranking up points. As with Bubble Bobble, there's a variety of different ways to gain more bonuses such as collecting gems, but unlike Bubble Bobble the worlds are now themed and there's scrolling involved.
Rainbow Islands Extra doesn't change any of that (though I guess you technical nerds could spot slight differences in physics and other sections of gameplay), it just addes a bunch of clashing enemies into the game for no apparent reason whatsoever. It also borrows music from Darius, giving you the full Darius experience without the need for Darius at all. The enemy patterns are slightly different and some fire projectiles, but otherwise the extra mode behaves identically to the normal mode (which is an option, by the way). Oh except for the bosses of course, with their classic Darius intros.
I must admit there isn't that much to say about this one, I just thought it was a nifty piece of history that most people either don't know or have forgotten about. The two franchises are literally worlds apart but hey, Rainbow Islands Extra - can't get this on Nintendo.
Oh and if you're wondering whether the normal Rainbow Islands mode is any good - there's been a lot of unnecessary cuts and things are a bit blander, but it's mostly accurate. Not the best version by a long-shot though.
"Oh and if you're wondering whether the normal Rainbow Islands mode is any good - there's been a lot of unnecessary cuts and things are a bit blander, but it's mostly accurate. Not the best version by a long-shot though."
ReplyDeleteMostly accurate? What part of this magnificient conversion is inaccurate? And which version is in fact the best version?
Probably a bit late to continue this discussion, but here goes: the Mega Drive version is missing the yellow/red stars which explode taking out enemies (even the 8 bit versions had these). Also, the background of the first stage is dull black instead of the blue sky of the arcade. Overall I'd say the Amiga is the better port.
ReplyDeleteThe red and yellow stars are in the game, they are on my copy for sure. Plus even the arcade version of RIE has the dark backgrounds, but has some clouds to at least give it a little life. The original RI also had the Darius stage (the Amiga version is missing 3 key islands) as stage 10, same backgrounds, enemies and all. Research goes a long way before writing an article. ;)
ReplyDelete