Rainbow Islands

Information

Genre

Arcade - Platformer (Scrolling)

Language

Machine Language

Controls

Joystick, Keyboard

Players

1, Demo

Resolution

Low

Programmer(s)

Braybrook, Andrew, Robinson, Dominic

Graphic Artist(s)

Cumming, John

Game design

Taito

Musician(s)

Turner, Steve

Sound FX

Page, Jason

Year

1990

Publisher

Ocean Software

Distributor

-

Developer

Graftgold

Licensed from

Taito

Country

United Kingdom

Software

English

Box/Instructions

English, French, German, Italian

License

Commercial

ST Type

ST, STe, 0.5MB

Number of Disks

2, Single Sided

Votes / Statistics

Rating: 6.8/10 · Votes: 204 · Downloads: 5,814 · Hits: 107,681

Screenshots (13)

Cover Art (4)

Instructions (2)

Ads (4)

Article (3)

Work in Progress

Tips (1)

The One Players Guide

Trivia (4)

Origins

Based on Taito 1987 coin-op.

Graphics

John Cummings used STOS BASIC to create mapper utility for building Rainbow Islands backgrounds. He also coded an IFF interpreter with STOS to convert original graphics sent by Taito. These graphics were then converted to NEOchrome's format for further processing. (Source: The One issue 6)

Temporarily unreleased

Rainbow Islands almost was one those games that never saw the light due a disagreement in licencing with Taito. Game wasn't finished in time so Taito saw that the agreement was over. They also claimed that they now own the homeconversion code.
Graftgold weren't too happy about that because game was developed by their OOPS! development system and refused to give any code to Taito. Fortunately the situation has cleared when Microprose bought three British Telecom's software labels and eventually got the rights to publish the game. (source: The One issue 15 (dec 1989).

Charts

Top UK ST charts position: 1 (6/1990, 7/1990, 8/1990), 3 (8/1992 budget)
Months on charts: 15 between 5/1990 - 11/1992

Book / Magazine Reviews (4)

ACE · September, 1989 · Rating: 934/1000

The One · August, 1989 · Rating: 94%

ST Format · April, 1990 · Rating: 93%

ST Review · June, 1992 · Rating: *****

Comments (3)

• Petari — 25 Apr 2017

  Looks nice, plenty of levels and enemies. But it is just way too hard. Needs probably 200 instead 2 lives to finish :-) Part of difficulty lies in laggy controls of hero.

• mymoon — 27 Oct 2013

  Whatever Graftgold did, they did well. Thanks Andrew Braybrook & Steve Turner.

• goldrunner — 25 Jan 2012

  Possibly one of the best arcade conversions ever.