Rainbow Islands Amiga 1990 Graftgold Andrew Braybrook

Rainbow Islands Amiga 1990

Graftgold ported Taito's Rainbow Islands aka Bubble Bobble 2 coinop of 1987 to the Amiga in 1990. Sequel to Bubble Bobble of 1988 and predecessor of Parasol Stars of 1992, Rainbow Islands is an innovative vertically-scrolling platformer that employs rainbows both as weapons and as temporary and destructible platforms.

Rainbow Islands consists of seven islands of four rounds each and a boss-fight at the end of each of the fourth rounds. In controlling Bub or Bob the object of Rainbow Islands is to reach the top of the round (Goal In!) by moving, jumping and firing and climbing rainbows. In rare cases, even flight is possible.

Note that some rounds do not feature many or any fixed platforms, meaning that players rely on rainbows to climb up through the round (e.g., Doh's aka Arkanoid island).

Each round is timed as well, with the island eventually sinking into the sea and threatening to drown Bub or Bob (unlike Bubble Bobble and Parasol Stars, Rainbow Islands is not 2-player simultaneous, only 2-player alternating).

Via collectable pots the rainbows can be powered up in terms of speed and number. Rainbows can be fired at and dropped on monsters by jumping onto or falling into them, at which point the rainbows break and fall downward in crumbling pieces, killing monsters beneath them. The more monsters killed simultaneously by a rainbow, the more points yielded.

Powered-up rainbows can be rapidly stacked in great density before they begin to expire. If such a rainbow stack is collapsed, it cascades down the screen in shards wiping out everything in its path (which causes some slowdown). Stacking triple-rainbows is highly effective versus bosses. It is also possible though improbable to acquire quad-rainbows; that is, hit the fire-button once and a chain of four rainbows arcs across the screen. However, it is sometimes more efficient to only have two rapid-fire rainbows.

Rainbows can shield the avatar; most monsters and projectiles cannot penetrate them.

Items can be collected by running over them, firing a rainbow at them or dropping rainbows on them. Firing rainbows across the screen can also reveal hidden items that increase in value, round by round.

Thus, one can begin to appreciate the multi-faceted mechanics of rainbows: they are conventional weapons, AoE weapons, shields, platforms, item-revealers, item-collectors and even point-generators in themselves (repeatedly breaking rainbows, even when you don't need to, yields points).

In addition, Rainbow Islands contains secrets based on the collection of colored gems, which represent the colors of the rainbow.

The main secret is to collect the rainbow gems in order from left to right in order to access the secret room at the end of each island, which confers a permanent power-up that cannot be lost on subsequent loss of life. If one succeeds in doing so for the first few islands, it becomes easier to press on when a life is lost on subsequent islands. In essence, players do not have to worry about recollecting speed boots and rainbow power-ups when they lose a life. And recollecting power-ups is not possible during boss fights. Moreover, a couple bosses cannot be defeated without power-ups (fail-state).

Invisible to the player, the screen is divided into segments representing each color of the rainbow. In order to collect the gems in the correct order, rainbows must be dropped on monsters when the monsters move into the desired invisible color-segment. Thus, to yield a red gem a rainbow must be dropped on a monster when the monster is positioned at far-left of screen; to yield purple, at far-right of screen. It is more difficult to measure the middling segments of the screen. And it is hugely disappointing when one requires just one more colored gem, is on the last round of an island, but cannot call forth the color.

Rainbow Islands is subtle in terms of secrets and controls. Anyone can play it and have fun getting through the first few islands, but hardly anyone can master its control-nuance, beat the game and achieve a hi-score worth showing to friends.

Some of the boss fights are difficult. And in later islands the movement speed of monsters and the speed at which they change direction and fire projectiles greatly increases. Insect, Combat and Toy Island are relatively easy.

The Amiga version of Rainbow Islands was programmed by Andrew Braybrook of Paradroid and Uridium fame; its graphics were drawn by John Cumming; its audio composed by Steve Turner and Jason Page.

While by no means arcade-perfect, the Amiga version of Rainbow Islands is one of the best coinop ports of the 16-bit era. The controls and audiovisuals are pretty much perfectly replicated, but the 16-bit ports lack a lot of the coinop's content. In fact, the ports lack no fewer than three islands and thus three bosses and 12 rounds: Magical Island, Darius Island and Bubble Island. In addition, the ports lack separate maps of each island. Also, 16-bit Rainbow Islands runs at only half-frames (25 FPS), but nevertheless plays quite smoothy, even on the ST.

The ST/Amiga could have easily handled the extra islands. All it would have required is a second diskette. However, due to the number of on-screen sprites (e.g., breaking several rainbows simultaneously), I doubt Amiga 500s could have handled 50 FPS (that would probably require an A1200 of 1992).

Rainbow Islands was distributed on 1x 3.5" 880 kB diskette.

List of Rainbow Islands & Monsters

Each of the 28 rounds in Rainbow Islands is 320px wide and up to 2016px in height (320x2016). I have rated each island's difficulty out of 10.

• 1. Insect Island: caterpillars, spiders, crows (Spider) 4/10
• 2. Combat Island: tanks, planes, helicopters (Helicopter) 5/10
• 3. Monster Island: bats, werewolves, ghosts (Dracula) 7/10
• 4. Toy Island: water-pistols, deadly disks, teddy bears (Clown) 6/10 
• 5. Doh's Island: balls, spheres, capsules (Doh) 8/10
• 6. Robot Island: spanners, robots, bolts (Robot) 9/10
• 7. Dragon Island: cyclops, dragons, spirits (Dragon) 9/10

cf.

• Bubble Bobble Amiga 1988 Software Creations David J. Broadhurst
• The New Zealand Story Amiga 1989 Choice Colin Gordon
• Flood Amiga Bullfrog Productions 1990 Sean Cooper and Kevin Donkin
• James Pond Amiga Vectordean 1990 Chris Sorrell
• Parasol Stars Amiga 1992 Ocean Software Mick West
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