Rainbow Islands is the return of Bub and Bob, or to give that game its full arcade title: Rainbow Islands - The Story of Bubble Bobble II. The game sees Bub and Bob now placed into human form instead of the designer dino-suits they wore before. The object completely turns Bubble Bobble on its head. The main aim is to have to escape by scambling up the various Islands using a given magic trick: upon pressing fire, a lovely but deadly rainbow spounts out maiming and killing everything in its path. This also aids crossing the platforms making hard to reach places easy to get to it with a few rainbow paths placed in front of the player. But wait, jumping apon them makes them crumble away falling and killing anything under it... Handy sometimes...

The seven large scrolling Islands are covered with many nasty villains that live at each varied place. Starting off with Insects Island with ugh! bees, Combat Island with the cutest tanks with eyes ever, Monster Island so beware of the little werewolfs, Toy Island... deadly water pistols and so on. One of the nicest features is Doh's Island with a large nod to the Taito arcade game Arkanoid. You get the idea. As said before each monster can be killed by a few rainbow shots but a miss timed shot can sometime enable the monster to get trapping within the rainbow and obviously he gets angry (ala last one left in Bubble Bobble screens), so if he gets free he will be after your blood.

There is also a very stern time limit within the game, that floods the screen slowly with water if you are not fast enough. So as you make your way up the top (gaining more points for various goodies and collecting those important power ups such as multi-shots, speed and some important diamond collecting, more of which later) you finally reach the surface and are awarded with a big spray of lovely goodies that must be collected quickly. After the fourth level of each world, the battle really begins with a big boss bash. Large and deadly. So with those powerups you collected on the way up (you did collect those, didn't you?) these should be easy pickings (yeah, right!) the bosses must be hit a number of times shown at the top of the screen. Kill it and it's on to the next world.

Each game is played along with a tuneful melody, yes its "Somewhere over the Rainbow". The diamonds make the games final result a bit more intresting: collect these in a special order and new Islands appear. Also available to the player is various new endings such as even turning back into a Bubble dragon and a sad ending. 
On the C64 version, the levels are loaded in off tape (or disk) one by one but short loading times make the action seems to never stop. The front end of the game follows the arcade game closely, even down to a very close copy of the Taito character set which adores each arcade game. 
The arcade game sprouted more sequels included the third "official" home sequel, Parasol Stars and the mighty Puzzle Bobble range (Using Bub and Bob back in dino form).

Thud! Thud! Thud! 
Those chilling sound effect that came with the original arcade classic, Space Invaders as they moved slowly across the screen send chills across any child that played it in the 70's. It was a total phenomenon and even mad Japan have a yen shortage for those addicted to the game.
Classic games came and went, but we always remember the first time we play Space Invaders. It took a while for some kind of game to rekindly the magic of blowing up simple designed ships but that's what Taito did in 1990 with "Super" Space Invaders. This update makes use of the new processing power with such nice things as new backdrops and soundtracks.

The Commodore version was converted from the arcade game lock,stock and barrel.
The player has again to save the world from unfriendly alien scum as he did back in the 70s. The screen displays the same as it did in the original. The player can move his base left to right at the bottom of the screen using his fire button to dispatch a missile. The aliens are in rows that start at the top of the screen and slowly march downwards. When the Invaders reach each side of the screen, they lower a row downwards. If the Invaders reach the bottom of the screen and touch earth, it's not game over as in the original game but you lose one of your three lives. The game also introduces to the new rules shields instead of instant death hits so simple mistakes are not so deadly.

The base can fire only one missile at a time to defend Earth so it better hit true. Earth's boundries are protected by three bunkers that can take direct hits but only so many. These can also help the player but firing them up into a path of marching invaders killing them on impact.
Another updated feature is the powerups that feature in just about every update of an old game. Super Space Invaders makes no difference to this rule. Some great addons can be collected by the passing motherships that when shot, drop such goodies as Fire Flower and the Buster Laser, handy for multiple dispatches.

The first waves are very like the original Space Invaders in gameplay but as the game advances varied invaders appear such as ones that split into two when shot or expand. The game does'nt limit itself to the original sprites too as major bosses appear to defeat earth this time.
Possibly the best new feature of the game is the Cattle Mutilation bonus waves where the player must stop the Invaders stealing our cows from fields.
The Commodore version uses multiload to load in the various sets of waves, these are long but the gameplay between each load is well enough time to distract the gameplay.

C64

PRESENTATION 80% Good arcade style attract modes, slow loading levels but these do not effect much due to good loading structure.

GRAPHICS 71% Great backgrounds with nice sprites but missiles sometimes get lost in all the fuss.

SOUND 62% Thud type token Space Invaders fx but a fantastic loading tune.

HOOKABILITY 79% It's Space Invaders with bangs and whistles so it's very addicitive.

LASTABILITY 66% The simple gameplay overtones will bore some players.

O V E R A L L 72% A fun and challenging version of an all-time classic.