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It's Rainbow Islands, but not as we know it.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 7
Date: August 08, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is the first time writing a review on Amazon for me. I felt incredibly compelled to let the world know what to expect from this game. From a hardcore gamer, and retro gamers perspective.

Bubble Bobble is one of my favourite games of all time. And as you may or may not know, Rainbow Islands was the second game in the series. Instead of a one screen at a time affair like Bubble Bobble, blowing bubbles and bursting them with your friend at the same time. Rainbow Islands has you by yourself and throwing rainbows. You'd fire off a rainbow and if it hit a baddy, he would die. You could also walk on your rainbows as if they were platforms (now there's a revolutionary game idea), leap off them, or even break them and watch as they take out any baddies below. That's the basic concept of the game. But as any die hard bub and bob follower will know, there is so much more underneath.

Rainbow Islands, the original of course, is one of the most complex games around (even today). The huge amount of items and power ups available, the tricks used to make those appear, and the 3 hidden islands if you manage to work out how to unlock them, are just some of the complex elements of this game. There's even bonus areas that give you permanent power ups.. The list just goes on and on. But enough about the original.

Rainbow Islands Revolution takes out the revolution of the original, and tries to make its own. Unfortunately, and I mean that very sincerly, it misses its mark.

On the surface, the game looks absolutely amazing. The colour, the characters, it's all here from the past but updated to look even greater. The sound is the same too, and the music for the most part (some levels have very annoying tunes) is good too. Honestly the presentation is perfect. And that's why I can't help but feel somewhere, in another dimension perhaps, this game might have taken a different route and ended up a classic. But in our dimension, they made it all crumble down on some very key areas. The main one being:

The control. It's horrible. It's the worst control I've seen in a game for possibly 10 years. You don't walk around in the levels anymore throwing rainbows and walking on them. Instead you sit inside a bubble and drag yourself around using the stylus. Not a bad idea, but horribly implemented. You also fire rainbows by drawing them on the screen. Again, possibly a great idea, but combined with trying to control your character, it makes for an incredibly frustrating affair. Sometimes you'll go to move and instead draw a rainbow. Sometimes you'll go to draw a rainbow and move your guy. Then while this is all going on your character is blown about the level by the wind currents. It's MADDENING! If you've never let fly obscenities before when playing a game, you will now. The control is horrible, horrible, horrible.

Another area where the game falls, is it's buggy. The developers must have seriously spent all their time making the game look and sound great. Because they sure didn't test this one as much as it should have been before letting it out the door. In order to collect gems that are required to unlock the 3 hidden islands, you have to draw a circle around a baddy, then throw him into other baddies. I'd say 70% of the time the rainbow does not draw. It's like most of the time it doesn't recognise that you've drawn a circle. It just goes away like you weren't even doing anything. Grabbing your guy to move him around doesn't work about 5% of the time. And, if two gems happen to land next to each other, you can't draw a rainbow on it to collect them. It just ignores it. Instead you have to race around all the spikes to try and pick them up the normal way. It's as if we are back in the 80s where hardware restrictions meant that if too many sprites inhabited the one line on the screen, then they flickered in and out or became unusable. It's 2006, we are using a Nintendo DS. There is no such limitation. There is no excuse for this sloppy programming.

It had so much potential. The power ups all seem to be there. One of the boss encounters was awesome (against Doh, you draw a line to send the ball back at him to register a hit, lots of fun). The colour, the look, the sound, it was all there. But this game is let down by terrible frustrating unusable control, and shoddy programming.

I'm afraid it's one to avoid at all costs. No matter how much it pains me to say it. Instead buy Rising Star Games other GOOD efforts. Such as Bubble Bobble (includes a complete and perfect version of the original arcade, as well as a 'revolutionised' version).

Nearly unplayable

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: May 15, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Graphics: B+ The graphics are nice looking and are improved over the Playstation version, though I don't think that they are the best that the DS has to offer. The style is truly adorable and the character models are particularly good.

Sound: C- The sound is about what you would expect from a game like this: cute, sometimes annoying, and often forgettable.

Gameplay: F The gameplay is wretched. I owned the Playstation version of the game, which had basically the same levels, but which had much, much superior game play, involving shooting a series of rainbows at creatures to turn them into items and climbing on the rainbows to reach the end of the level. In the DS version, you draw the rainbows with a stylus, but you use the same stylus to move your player who is in a bubble that can move in all directions. This takes out the fun of having to aim your rainbow, and carefully time your play so that you climb the rainbow at the right time. It also means that you often end up moving your character when you meant to shoot a rainbow which makes just controlling your character difficult.

Entertainment: D It has a certain cuteness, but the horrid game play makes it nearly impossible to appreciate the adorable world and characters.

Overall: D If you can suffer through some truly wretched gameplay, then there are a few moments interest: a diversity of creatures, a lot of attention put into the different levels. I would recommend buying the Playstation version as the gameplay on it is fairly good.

Truly fun DS game marred by sluggish controls

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: October 07, 2006
Author: Amazon User

The successor to the Taito classic Bubble Bobble was Rainbow Islands, a game that featured very similar run-around-and-kill-enemies gameplay. Rainbow Islands Revolution, the DS remake made by Rising Star Games, is nothing like the old-school classic in execution. The game is controlled differently in every single way, and ultimately it's this control that keeps Rainbow Islands Revolution from being a very, very fun arcade title.

Instead of manually moving around and jumping from platform to platform, Bubby and Bobby (the human forms of Bub and Bob from Bubble Bobble) are trapped inside of a floating bubble. It's up to you and the trusty DS stylus to keep Bubby and Bobby away from enemies as they float towards safety at the top of every level. To attack enemies, instead of blowing bubbles or jumping on them, you'll draw rainbows that can be "dropped" on enemies to kill them. Unfortunately, both moving around and attacking are sluggish thanks to the game's design mechanic that controls the rate at which rainbows are drawn and characters can be moved. Drawing rainbows at a quick speed is worthless, because they don't actually form at the same speed in which you draw them. Similarly, moving your characters around quickly won't do much to help because the bubbles they're trapped in move at their own speed. These gameplay mishaps are a shame, because Rainbow Islands Revolution isn't a bad game at all--it's actually pretty fun to play, though there are already two similar DS games in Kirby's Canvas Curse and Yoshi's Touch & Go that are far better in almost every way.

Visually, it keeps an old-school look while still managing to look like a decent handheld offering. The music and sound effects are appropriate as well. Nothing stands out, but nothing is degrading, either. That's more than I could ever say about Rising Star Games' other recent remake, Bubble Bobble Revolution.

Overall, Rainbow Islands Revolution isn't a bad game. I'd go as far as to say it's a fun remake. I just wish it was a little less sluggish--the controls are just a little too unresponsive and don't dynamically react to anything you're doing on the touch screen. That crummy $30 price point is also a real shame, and like Bubble Bobble Revolution, Rainbow Islands Revolution doesn't do anything to justify that sticker.

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