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Rainbow Islands - The Story of its Port

  • Thread starter Deleted member 9305
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Deleted member 9305

Oct 26, 2017
4,064
The micro computer legend Andrew Braybrook wrote a great piece about Rainbow Islands and its home conversion in '89. These ports were excellent and pretty close to the arcade original, the development came with a few surprises.

rainbow-islands_3.gif


We agreed to do the job, for a fixed sum, based on getting the arcade machine and source graphics and documentation from Taito. The job, we reckoned, would take about 9 months and milestones were assigned, based on our knowledge of the game and that it showed 7 islands on the start screen.
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One Friday night we got David to play the game the whole way through. [...] By this time we had discovered that the game had a "bad" ending after island 7, i.e. well done but you didn`t do it quite right. We needed that on video too, so he played it wrong, then followed the advice given in the ending to play it right. Imagine our surprise then when he got to the end of island 7 and 3 more secret islands rose up out of the water. We were expecting just a different ending.
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The full article is a great read, lots of insight. It can be found here: https://uridiumauthor.blogspot.com/2018/03/rainbow-islands.html
 
EccoCid

EccoCid

Member
Mar 7, 2018
705
London
oh that's a nice read, loved those blogs about detailed game development from past.

It's amazing game had such complex systems haha.
 
michalmarek77

michalmarek77

Member
Nov 14, 2017
23
Ruda Śląska, Poland
I love that conversion on Amiga. Arcade perfect! Braybook was amazing - his Uridium 2 and Fire&Ice are among the best Amiga games.
Ahmn...great topic BTW. And very good Avatar :) (but i never played as Navvie - Brigand and Preacher still is my team to go)
 
QuixoticNeutral

QuixoticNeutral

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,644
Thanks so much for this; what a fantastic read, with exactly the kind of technical depth behind the scenes that we don't see publicly enough. I played the heck out of the Famicom port back in its day, and it might have been the first game I felt like I knew inside and out, though of course, back then I couldn't have known about the tremendous degree of variation between versions (including differences between the Famicom and NA NES ports, never mind the computer conversions and the arcade original).

Interesting note in this post about the music, too. The way I knew the game, through the Famicom cart, the theme music was unambiguously a rip of Harold Arlen's "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz, and it wasn't until long afterwards that I realized there was no way the US release could have gotten away with that without running into licensing difficulties. It seems it was this team that put together a replacement for the soundtrack.
 
score01

score01

Member
Oct 27, 2017
3,701
Thank for posting op. That was a great read. Game dev was a totally different beast back in the day where a couple of coders would knock out pretty great arcade conversions.
 
Vinegar Joe

Vinegar Joe

Member
Oct 26, 2017
1,156
Really interesting read, thanks for posting.

I had the Amiga version and loved it, but I did find it very difficult at the time. Some of the tips in that article would have been useful!
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 9305

Oct 26, 2017
4,064
Glad I'm not the only one enjoying this, lol.

Two longplays for comparison since I've actually never seen them side by side:



 
Sidewinder

Sidewinder

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,192
Rainbow Island was so damn good on the Amiga, but I sucked at it though ;)

Gonna read that article later.
 
Gelf

Gelf

Member
Oct 27, 2017
5,313
That was a good read, they did a great job. I was never any good at the game but it remains one of my favourite platformers. I played so much of the Atari ST version despite rarely even getting halfway through.
 
Bucket-o-roadkill

Bucket-o-roadkill

Member
Nov 13, 2017
158
Any info on any potential sequels that were in the pipeline after Parasol Stars? Or any other ports of Parasol Stars (aside from the ones that did come out, amiga, tg16, gb, etc)?
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 9305

Oct 26, 2017
4,064
Bucket-o-roadkill said:
Any info on any potential sequels that were in the pipeline after Parasol Stars? Or any other ports of Parasol Stars (aside from the ones that did come out, amiga, tg16, gb, etc)?
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AFAIK, there was only "Bubble Memories - The Story of Bubble Bobble III" after Parasol Stars.
 
Solaire of Astora

Solaire of Astora

Member
Oct 30, 2017
861
Ottawa
Great read. Thanks for sharing. I played a ton if the Amiga version back in the day. I love stories like these.

Glad these devs had easy access to the arcade game. The Amiga port was amazing and having their own cabinet no doubt attributed to that. I remember reading about some sf2 port where the developers had to make frequent trips to a local arcade to make notes.
 
Gen X

Gen X

Member
Oct 31, 2017
987
New Zealand
Gary Penn was an idol of mine growing up so reading that he helped Taito and Ocean come to a licensing deal to publish Graftgolds work after Telecomsoft was sold off gave me a smile on the inside.
 
Lordciego

Lordciego

Member
Oct 27, 2017
528
Spain
Loved this. I love articles of these old ports where they had to work around the constraints of the platform to make a port as close to the source as possible and also the overcoming of external hurdles that make the release possible too.
 
SPG

SPG

Member
Oct 28, 2017
81
Co. Durham
Great read. Fond memories here of the Spectrum and Atari ST versions. Rainbow Islands was one of the those conversions where, no matter what format you played it on, you were going to be alright with it. R-Type would be another example of this.
 
Mcjmetroid

Mcjmetroid

Member
Oct 28, 2017
1,843
Limerick, Ireland
Had rainbow islands for the C64. I enjoyed it at the time but couldn't tell you if it was a good conversion now. I also had it for the PS1 of all things. Did it have many worthy console ports?
 
SJPN

SJPN

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,023
I've always wanted to hear the thoughts of the original (normally Japanese) developers on home ports of their games. It would be like a musician hearing covers of their songs, sometimes appalling ones.

It could be they never played them, as the 8 and 16 bit computers were very Euro-centric.
 
Stefarno

Stefarno

I ... survived Sedona
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Oct 27, 2017
893
OP
OP

Deleted member 9305

Oct 26, 2017
4,064

Deleted member 28967

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amstradcpc said:
I remember it playing great.In the Rainbow islands case CPC's version was one of the best 8 bits conversions,with great music included while playing and quite colourful.
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The CPC port of rtype was awful, speccy graphics and slower than the spectrum with horrible scrolling( was done in only a few weeks though )
The CPC rtype remake is stunning though and shows what can be done with time and effort.
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 9305

Oct 26, 2017
4,064
Not to go further off topic, but I think R-Type and its ports would also be thread worthy. There should be so many good stories.
 
fiendcode

fiendcode

Member
Oct 26, 2017
24,926
Mcjmetroid said:
Had rainbow islands for the C64. I enjoyed it at the time but couldn't tell you if it was a good conversion now. I also had it for the PS1 of all things. Did it have many worthy console ports?
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Dunno which were "worthy" but it had a ton of console ports. So did Bubble Bobble and also Parasol Stars and Bubble Symphony had a few.

  • Bubble Bobble (FDS) Taito 1987
  • Bubble Bobble (NES) Taito 1988
  • Final Bubble Bobble (SMS) Sega 1988
  • Bubble Bobble (GB) Taito 1990
  • Bubble Bobble (Marty) Ving 1993
  • Bubble Bobble (GG) Taito 1994
  • Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands (PS) Acclaim 1996
  • Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands (SS) Acclaim 1996
  • Bubble Bobble: Old & New (GBA) Mediakite 2002
  • Bubble Bobble DS / Revolution (DS) Taito 2005
  • Bubble Bobble Plus! (Wiiware) Taito 2009
  • Bubble Bobble Neo! (XBLA) Taito 2009
  • Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 (FC/NES) Taito 1988
  • Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 - Extra Version (MD) Taito 1990
  • Rainbow Islands: Bubble Bobble 2 (NES) Ocean 1992
  • Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 - Extra Version (Marty) Ving 1992
  • Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 (SMS) Sega 1993
  • Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 (PCE CD) NEC Avenue 1993
  • Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands (PS) Acclaim 1996
  • Bubble Bobble also featuring Rainbow Islands (SS) Acclaim 1996
  • Rainbow Islands (GBC) TDK Core 2001
  • Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III (PCE/TG16) Taito 1991
  • Parasol Stars: Rainbow Islands II (NES) Ocean 1992
  • Parasol Stars: Rainbow Islands II (GB) Ocean 1992
  • Bubble Symphony (SS) Ving 1997
  • Bubble Bobble II (PS) Virgin 1998 (canceled)
These are all full ports too. Some versions have been emulated for various compilations and retro services since, usually the arcade or NES versions.
 
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KentP

KentP

Member
Oct 28, 2017
703
Bucket-o-roadkill said:
Any info on any potential sequels that were in the pipeline after Parasol Stars? Or any other ports of Parasol Stars (aside from the ones that did come out, amiga, tg16, gb, etc)?
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Whilst Parasol Stars lacked a coin-op variant, it plays very similarly to Taito's earlier arcade game Don Doko Don, which was released in (I think) '89

Replace bubby/bobby with old beardy guys and parasols for hammers, and you've basically got the same game
 
gingerbeardman

gingerbeardman

Moai Master
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,032
Cornwall, UK
I read this recently and what I loved the most was the discovery that Fukio "MTJ" Mitsuji had designed Rainbow Islands over the course of 2 years.

Taito designed this game very, very nicely. Sure, our implementation was quite accurate, thanks to the documentation that we received, plus Graftgold`s attention to detail and hard work, but the real reason this game received attention is because it was designed really well. The notes we got alluded to the fact that the game was designed and written over about a 2 year period, that's where a lot of hard work went in.
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(emphasis mine)

I also recently uncovered "long lost" guides to both Rainbow Islands and Bubble Bobble in old issues of GAMEST:
 
OP
OP

Deleted member 9305

Oct 26, 2017
4,064
Booya_base

Booya_base

Member
Oct 31, 2017
747
Jersey
Here to backup the love of Rainbow Islands and Rtype ports. It's easy to pick apart the master system R type port but it was phenomenal when it came out (stage 1 boss feels impossibly good for the hardware) but I played it again this year and it's still really fun!
 
Wintermute

Wintermute

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,051
great, now i have the rainbow islands music stuck in my head again.

great article OP thanks for linking. Rainbow Islands was one of the amiga games of my childhood.
 
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