Bub and Bob are Back!
Written: Mar 04 '05 (Updated Mar 10 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Classic arcade action relived
Cons: Thrown together menu interface, would be nice to have updated graphics and sound option
The Bottom Line: If you loved the originals, you'll love this. Modern gamers may not be too impressed though!
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| captaind's Full Review: Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands for Windows |
Anyone who remembers the coin-ops of the 80’s / early 90’s will remember the classic Taito games Bubble Bobble and its sequel, Rainbow Islands. They both feature the characters Bub and Bob, who have to travel through monster-inhabited levels to free their girlfriends from evil enchantments or whatever. (The plot is very unimportant!!) These games helped to define the platform genre, but each in their own way had a cuteness and insane addictiveness that has rarely been equalled.
(There is one other sequel, Parasol Stars, that is not included on this collection. It is a good game in its own right, but for me Rainbow Islands is the best of the three and in fact probably my favourite 2D platform game ever.)
In Bubble Bobble, you play a little dinosaur chappy who traps monsters in bubbles. You then jump on the bubble to zap the monster and get a power-up or piece of fruit. Other power-ups / downs float randomly down the screen including letters that, if you collect them all, grant you an extra life. The game looks extremely dated now but is still good fun to play, especially in 2-player mode. There are 100 levels so it’ll keep you going for quite a while!
In Raindow Island Bub and Bob are back, but this time in human form and rainbow power instead of bubbles. You can zap the monsters or trap them underneath your rainbows and dissolve them, which gives you power ups, more valuable items (in terms of points), and gems. When you collect all seven colours you get an extra life. At the end of each themed world (set of islands) you get a boss to defeat – some of the later ones are very tricky, particularly if you’ve lost your power ups! (Annoyingly you lose them all every time you die) This makes progressing through the game a case of not only knowing how to get past different obstacles or monsters but also a case of managing not to die just before you really need those power ups!
This package is designed to give a completely authentic version of the original coin-ops, with all the graphics, sounds, and gameplay being identical to the original. It does this job admirably, and a few goes of Rainbow Islands made me remember exactly why I spent so much time trying to beat the Atari ST conversion! The games may look old but fir sheer fun you just can’t beat them.
Like the coin-ops they work on a “Credits” system, so when you die you have the option to continue the game as long as you have credits available. The advantage of this over the coin-ops is of course that you can get more by pressing F instead of churning more 10 pence pieces (those were the days eh? Now it’d be more like pound coins…) into the hungry machine.
Now for the niggles…
Having an authentic version is nice, but surely having an option to play the game with more up-to-date graphics and sound would have been a nice extra without being all that difficult to achieve? Also, while it stays true to its coin-op roots and resets the high score table each time you load the game, I would have liked it to save your previous high scores. The default keyboard controls are atrocious, though obviously these are customisable. The install is fine, while the options program to change various features is perfectly usable – though it does give the impression of something that was just thrown together quickly.
Overall, if you loved the original games, this is a priceless bit of nostalgia. A bit more effort and this could have easily been 5–star product, as it is I heartily recommend it to retro-gaming fans. If you like your games complex and visually stunning, you might as well forget it though.
Minimum System Requirements:
Processor: 450Mhz
RAM: 128Mb
Graphics card: 2Mb
Free HDD space: 100Mb
CD-ROM: 4x
DirectX: version 7.0a
Windows versions: 98, 2000, ME, XP
Other classic games of ye olde times that have re-appeared on the computer screen (albeit with extra sparkle) are:
Robin Hood: Defender of the Crown (the original was, of course, simply Defender of the Crown - Cinemaware are BACK!!
Pirates! - Sid Meiers updates his wonderful game for the modern computer :-)
Another golden oldie still available is: The Monkey Island Archives (MI1-3) - the LucasArts legend and still one of the best adventure games of all time.
Remember the olden days? Blasts from the Past: Coin-Ops
Recommended:
Yes
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