Rainbow Islands on the Game Boy Color was ported by Dreams Co., Ltd. and published by TDK Mediactive in 2001. From what I can tell it was only released in Europe, which – considering it was created by a Japanese developer – is a little strange.

The game has two play modes: ‘Story’ or ‘Challenge’. In Story Mode there are cut scenes that flesh out the story of Bubby and Bobby, and you can also choose to play any of the six islands (Insect Island, Combat Island, Monster Island, Toy Island, Doh’s Island, and Robot Island) in any order you like. In Challenge Mode there are Time Attack and Score Attack play options.

The game looks good and plays well enough. The levels scroll left and right, as well as vertically. It also seems to have the same kind of vertical waypoints – like in the NES version – where you can’t fall downward once you pass them.

One unfortunate feature of Rainbow Isalnds on the GBC is the fact that the rainbows you lay down flash on and off very quickly – in order to give a transparency effect, I think – and the downside to that is that the rainbows look ‘broken’ in the screenshots here. Which I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do about, other than try to minimise showing them. I wish there were some way I could fix that, but it would take a hacker to modify the game to do that…

Overall, though, Rainbow Islands on the Game Boy Color is a good port and is playable and fun enough to warrant playing nowadays.

More: Rainbow Islands on Wikipedia