Rainbow Islands — stories left

The arcade version took No. 6 in the Best Ending Award in the "Gamest Awards" No. 2 (1988), a feature of the game magazine Gamest.

Rainbow Islands CS is an omnibus game for the Nintendo Switch scheduled for distribution by Taito on 2026-10-8, containing 6 home console ports of Rainbow Islands and Rainbow Islands EXTRA.

In the "Gamest Awards" No. 2 (1988), a feature of the game magazine Gamest, it took No. 6 in the Best Ending Award and No. 10 in the Hit Games of the Year.

In the "Cross Review" feature of the magazine Famitsu,the game scored a total of 25 out of 40. In the "Game Report Card" reader poll run by Family Computer Magazine,it scored 20.98 out of 30, as shown below.

In the "Cross Review" feature of the magazine Famitsu,the game scored a total of 25 out of 40. In the "Game Report Card" reader poll run by Mega Drive FAN,it scored 19.80 out of 30, as shown below.

This score also placed it 243rd among all PC Engine titles (485 titles in total, as of 1993).

It was awarded 94% in the April 1990 issue of Your Sinclair and was placed at number 8 in the "Your Sinclair official top 100".

The game was released outside Japan for the first time for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988; the main theme was replaced with an original track, due to its similarity to "Over the Rainbow" from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, which would have attracted legal troubles from Turner Entertainment Co. if the arcade version was ever released outside Japan.

It was awarded 94% in the April 1990 issue of Your Sinclair and was placed at number 8 in the "Your Sinclair official top 100".

MegaTech magazine said it was "virtually arcade perfect, with only flickery sprites letting the side down".

Edge wrote in 1994 that "Taito's Rainbow Islands has all the ingredients for a superb videogame – incentives, copious rewards and bonuses, and intelligent bosses".

Despite these accomplishments, in his review of the Bubble Bobble Featuring Rainbow Islands pack, Rich Leadbetter of Sega Saturn Magazine said Rainbow Islands was "vastly underrated and over-looked".

In 1992, Mega magazine ranked the Mega Drive version ninth on its "Mega Top 100 Carts" list.

In 1996, GamesMaster ranked the game 79th on its list of the "Top 100 Games of All Time".

The Genesis version had originally been scheduled for release in North America in 1994 but never came out, so the data from that time was restored and included here.

In both games the main background music is replaced with a track based on the NES version (see Music). For the Genesis version in North American specification the staff of the time had already programmed the replacement version, while for the Mega Drive version in Japanese specification the staff of M2 programmed it anew, so the tracks themselves are the same but the arrangements differ between the two.

At first other works in the Bubble Bobble series and the arcade version of Rainbow Islands were also candidates for the set, but since most of them had already been ported to current platforms, it was decided to port together the home console versions of Rainbow Islands, which had had few chances of being ported.

This main background music was used in ports for home hardware in Japan only up to the PC Engine version released in 1993. In the NES and Master System ports for overseas markets, a version with the main phrase of the arcade "MAIN THEME" replaced was used, and later reissues such as Arcade Archives follow the latter.

In Taito Memories, a reissue released in 2000 and later, the main background music is replaced wholesale with a different track.

The game was released outside Japan for the first time for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988; the main theme was replaced with an original track, due to its similarity to "Over the Rainbow" from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, which would have attracted legal troubles from Turner Entertainment Co. if the arcade version was ever released outside Japan.

The game was released outside Japan for the first time for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988; the main theme was replaced with an original track, due to its similarity to "Over the Rainbow" from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, which would have attracted legal troubles from Turner Entertainment Co. if the arcade version was ever released outside Japan.

Hamster Corporation released the original arcade version outside Japan for the first time as part of their Arcade Archives series for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in January 2024.

MegaTech magazine said it was "virtually arcade perfect, with only flickery sprites letting the side down".

The Amiga version of Rainbow Islands was the first game to reach number one on Amiga Powers annual All Time Top 100 list in 1991, and again in 1992.

The Genesis version had originally been scheduled for release in North America in 1994 but never came out, so the data from that time was restored and included here.

This omnibus contains the Family Computer version, the Nintendo Entertainment System (Europe) version, the Master System (Europe) version and the PC Engine CD-ROM2 version of Rainbow Islands, and the Mega Drive version and the Genesis (North America, unreleased) version of Rainbow Islands EXTRA.

It was released in Europe in 2001; in Japan, Altron planned to release it, but it went unreleased.

In this way, when the game balance is discussed the game is said to be very poorly balanced, and in the 1986-11 issue of Micom BASIC Magazine, Koji Kenjo condemned it, saying "it is a pity that the hero becomes far too strong and the game becomes less interesting the further one advances into the later stages".

It was awarded 94% in the April 1990 issue of Your Sinclair and was placed at number 8 in the "Your Sinclair official top 100".