Thanks to ININ Games for the review code
Title: Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $9.99
Release Date: 07/11/2024
Story
In this sequel to Rainbow Islands, you take control of Human Bub and Bob yet again as they set out to free planets from all sorts of baddies! A simple story that doesn’t have much to it, save for the returning tradition of an extra ending hidden behind secret doors.
Presentation
The Ratalaika wrapper powers this port, and much to my joy it turned out far better than the last ININ collab that they developed. CRT and assorted filters are back, as are the screen size options, and just like the Puzzle Bobble port you have a lovely region select menu themed after the game.
No gallery or scanned materials unfortunately, but once you’re into the game Parasol Stars looks sharp and colorful, showing off the glorious technical prowess Taito had for the PC Engine. Everything is very bright and expressive, and it visually carries the lineage of Rainbow Islands in great fashion. The music is equally outstanding, being one of the catchiest HuCard OSTs to ever grace the console, and is a cheery set of tunes I consider to be even better than the previous Bubble Bobble games.
Everything sounds just as it should be here, with no audio glitches that I noticed, not even when using rewind or fast forward, leading to a rock solid port here on Switch.
Gameplay
Confusing series naming structure aside, Parasol Stars continues the lineage from the original Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands. Unlike the last game which mostly focused on vertical stages, here in Parasol Stars we’re back to mostly single screen stages where the goal is to clear out all the enemies and move onto the next level. But rather than shooting bubbles at enemies, you use your parasol to push and hit enemies, eventually picking foes up when weakened to throw them at other enemies. It almost reminds me of Tumblepop in a sense, only at a much faster pace and with far more scoring items dropped around the stages, leading to a ton of crazy scoring possibilities.
With you or a friend in local co-op, there are eight worlds to traverse and take out the baddies in, and at the end of each world is a boss battle, where the main method of attacking shifts to launching elemental bubbles at them by stacking them on your parasol. You do run across these bubbles in the normal stages sometimes, but until the second half of the game they aren’t really required to beat the stages, and moreso work as another way to try out some scoring tricks or unleash a strong attack enemies when enough of them are stacked together. To be quite honest, the bosses in Parasol Stars are incredibly easy, at least right up until the last few worlds of the game, since as soon as you realize the rhythm for stacking a bubble on your umbrella, they can be pummeled in next to no time at all, but at least you get a hefty score bonus upon beating one.
More kudos to this port come in how the input timing is incredibly responsive, making this a very smoothly controlling port that again, feels far better than the last time ININ and Rataliaka put out a compilation. Everything controls smooth as butter here with the returning Rewind and Fast Forward features working just as good as they’re meant to. Everything I could think of doing to try and break the wrapper or make it bug out like in Irem 1 didn’t happen, so rest assured you have a rock solid, very quality port here.
It even has save states and some optional cheats, which the Puzzle Bobble port didn’t even get, and while the cheats are as you’d expect with infinite lives and such, there’s also a handy one that outright guides you to the secret ending requirements, since yep, this is another game with a super secret ending you need to achieve if you want to see everything, and having that toggle really helps to make getting to those secret levels a lot easier.
Last but not least is the return of the Online leaderboards, also introduced in the Irem set. Oddly enough, the EN/JP language options change the leaderboard you play on, yet the ROM is still only the Japanese version no matter which one you pick. Still, the goal here is pretty simple, with you playing the game on default settings with no cheats, and having to survive on a single credit to get the highest score possible. It’s effective, it works wonders with a scorechaser paradise like Parasol Stars, and I got my fun with trying the 1CC challenge here. I had no noticeable bugs with the leaderboard this time either, as both of them registered my scores as they were supposed to, leading to this being a very fine mode.
Conclusion
After quite a wait, ININ brings out another retro port that finally gets back to the quality they used to have, and I’m very thankful Parasol Stars was given a good port here, rather than a disasterpiece like the Irem and Jajamaru collections. One of the PC Engine’s absolute best has been brought back and ported in excellent fashion, with a very responsive, fun way to experience this rare scorechasing classic.
Throw in online leaderboards and a lot of scoring potential to mess around with, and you have yourselves one heck of a way to get into this Taito PC Engine classic. Yes, the PC Engine game is the original version, and while I do wish maybe they could have thrown in the NES/Game Boy ports as an added bonus, there’s only one version of Parasol Stars that takes the cake, and thankfully, it just so happened to be the one that started it all. I also wish there was some sort of gallery or selection of box art scans, but alas, nothing in terms of a bonus like that here.
Still, when you’re dealing with one of the best Hucard games on the entire console, the only thing that gets in the way comes from the price being a bit steeper than a VC title on the Wii would have been. For the leaderboards, I still think that Parasol Stars is a pretty great deal, and an absolute gem worth playing for score again and again, especially if you bring a friend along.
I give Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III an 8 out of 10.