Bubble Bobble Also Featuring Rainbow Islands
released on Sep 02, 1996
Bubble Bobble Also Featuring Rainbow Islands (commonly shortened to just Bubble Bobble & Rainbow Islands) is a compilation of both Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands, two popular arcade games developed by Taito in the 1980s and early 1990s. It was released for the Sega Saturn (alongside PlayStation and PC versions) in 1996.
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played at a friend's house but we didn't get very far because i suck
Can't review much higher due to simplicity but decent
Terrible, terrible ports of some classic arcade games.
Bubble Bobble is the worst offender, with a lot of it's gameplay being very off and buggy (and in the case of the PS1/Saturn version of this compilation, the graphics being redrawn terribly, and the music being replaced with awful MIDI renditions of them, the DOS version doesn't suffer from these issues weirdly). I suppose I can sorta give them a break since Bubble Bobble's source code is confirmed to be lost, but come on, the Namco Museums on PS1 also dealt with this same issue on some of its games and they were ported better than this.
Rainbow Islands is better in this regard (even if the music was understandably altered due to copyright), but it suffers from a major flaw: the secret islands are completely missing. In my opinion, that's half of the damn game gone since they're needed to get the true ending, and are a pretty cool example of Taito fanservice at that too. It at least gives you the option to select between old and new graphics for this game (without having to buy another version of this compilation entirely like with Bubble Bobble), but the new graphics are still very pointless and doesn't stack up to the excellent pixel art of the original.
Just play Bubble Bobble: Old & New on Game Boy Advance and the PC-Engine CD version of Rainbow Islands instead. Avoid this crap unless you stumble upon the DOS version, then I suppose it's slightly better. Even then, just use MAME.
Bubble Bobble is the worst offender, with a lot of it's gameplay being very off and buggy (and in the case of the PS1/Saturn version of this compilation, the graphics being redrawn terribly, and the music being replaced with awful MIDI renditions of them, the DOS version doesn't suffer from these issues weirdly). I suppose I can sorta give them a break since Bubble Bobble's source code is confirmed to be lost, but come on, the Namco Museums on PS1 also dealt with this same issue on some of its games and they were ported better than this.
Rainbow Islands is better in this regard (even if the music was understandably altered due to copyright), but it suffers from a major flaw: the secret islands are completely missing. In my opinion, that's half of the damn game gone since they're needed to get the true ending, and are a pretty cool example of Taito fanservice at that too. It at least gives you the option to select between old and new graphics for this game (without having to buy another version of this compilation entirely like with Bubble Bobble), but the new graphics are still very pointless and doesn't stack up to the excellent pixel art of the original.
Just play Bubble Bobble: Old & New on Game Boy Advance and the PC-Engine CD version of Rainbow Islands instead. Avoid this crap unless you stumble upon the DOS version, then I suppose it's slightly better. Even then, just use MAME.