Man, I love Rainbow Islands – The Story of Bubble Bobble 2. Ever since it was released in the arcades in the late 80’s, it has always been one of the very few platforming games that I hold dear to my heart. The concept was beautifully simple. Guide one of two boys (who were once dragons in Bubble Bobble) to the top of each vertically scrolling area by firing rainbows to climb on to get higher. Those very same rainbows could kill enemies below by jumping upon them, and those enemies would drop a jewel in one of the seven colours of the rainbow. Pick up the jewels in order (red, yellow, pink, green, purple, orange, and blue) to access the bonus rooms.
I used to play the hell out of that game, and even more so when I got the Amiga home conversion. I played it for hours at a time… so naturally when I walk into my local game store and see a version for my wonderful Nintendo DS system called Rainbow Islands Revolution with touch screen enhancements, I picked it up without hesitation, put my money on the counter, and ran home full of excitement like a giddy teenage boy all over again. I put my DS on charge (ready for a several hour long session), plug in the game, and get ready to smile…
My first impressions after the title screen were “Oh wow! They kept the same islands as the original game! Hurray! Oh, and the brilliant original music is still intact! This is gonna’ ROCK”… and then the main game came on screen. Again, I thought “oh cool! They’ve kept the same cutesy style graphics that made the original game so good, but they’ve improved the animations and added more colours to the palettes… top stuff.”
After my pleasing first impression, I put my thumb on the pad to move my character, and that’s when I said...
“WHAT THE F***?” My initial happy impressions turned to horse crap. Your character is encased in a bubble, and no longer can you use the d-pad to run and jump… oh no, now you have to use the stylus to float your character around the map, totally ruining the fact that it’s a PLATFORM game. Also, you quickly realize that having stylus control for both movement as well as firing off rainbows is rather cumbersome.
Article comments
1 - adrian
sooo disappointed in this game. i was hoping it would at least have the original NES/arcade version on it, but we don't even get that. wtf. bubble bobble for the ds has it. out of the two, i'd say go with bubble bobble. although the "revolution" version of that also Sucks.