Since I saw Bubble Bobble get released for XBLA I'd hoped that it's sequel, Rainbow Islands would be released and wouldn't be as big a dissappointment as Bubble Bobble was. Back in the days of the ZX Spectrum I often played Rainbow Islands and it was one of my favourite games back then. When it was announced that it was coming to XBLA it's fairly obvious to assume I would look forward to it's release with eager anticipation.
I soon found out it was going to be subtitled with "Towering Adventure" - I had no idea what that meant but I was told it was the same version that had been released on WiiWare previously and that it was terrible. Quite a few people told me this too, but I continued to hope that the XBLA game would be okay.
Unfortunately my hope for this game did not pay off - after downloading the demo I played what was quite obviously "Insect Island" from the original game as it was a similar layout just with updated graphics and an added "story". There were a few bits they changed too - instead of the water level slowly rising and that being the only time limiter, there is now also a clock which cannot reach 0 otherwise it's game over. First time I played it I wondered what happened, but then on the 2nd play through I realised what was going on.
Most of the original power ups are there, the enemies are familiar, but the game over all just "feels" wrong. It doesn't have the same charm that the lo-res classic had. After playing this I'm tempted to see if it's available for a Spectrum emulator as I imagine that would be more fun.
