The Commodore 64 port of Taito‘s classic Rainbow Islands was developed by Graftgold and first released by Ocean Software in 1990, and – gosh-darn it – it is a fantastic port of the arcade game!

Like all of Graftgold‘s Rainbow Islands ports, it almost didn’t see the light of day, because original publisher, Firebird Software, was bought-out by MicroProse, who didn’t want to publish the game, forcing Graftgold to seek a new publisher. After almost a year of searching and negotiations Ocean Software stepped-in to publish it, much to everyone involved’s relief…

Considering the high quality of Graftgold‘s Rainbow Islands ports it would have been a great shame if they had never seen release. That said: the stress of having to find another publisher did take its toll on Graftgold, hastening its eventual demise.

The C64 conversion of Rainbow Islands is arguably the best 8-bit port of the game available. The graphics are great; the sound is simple but perfect, and the gameplay is responsive and addictive. The presentation overall is beautiful, and Commodore 64 fans and owners are rightly proud of this game on their system.

The only thing missing from this version are the intermission screens showing the different worlds between stages, but that is a minor omission in the grand scheme of things.

Rainbow Islands fans will enjoy playing this game, and curious retro game fans will find one of the very best arcade ports on the C64 if they boot it up now. It’s a jolly good masterpiece!

More: Rainbow Islands on Wikipedia
More: Rainbow Islands on CSDb