Category Archives: Rainbow Arts

The Great Giana Sisters, Amiga

Developed by Time Warp Productions and published by Rainbow Arts in 1988, the Amiga version of The Great Giana Sisters is maybe the best-looking and most playable version of this infamous and arguably overrated platform game, but it isn’t anything special.

Continue reading The Great Giana Sisters, Amiga

Turrican, Amstrad CPC

Rainbow Artsclassic C64 shoot ’em up, Turrican, was converted to the Amstrad by Probe Software, and it demonstrates how to do this kind of side-scrolling run-and-gun shooter on the CPC. Compared to something like Gryzor, Turrican is streets ahead in terms of presentation and playability.

Continue reading Turrican, Amstrad CPC

Turrican II: The Final Fight, Commodore 64

Turrican II: The Final Fight is the outstanding sequel to the excellent Turrican – a classic run-and-gun platform shooter created by German coder Manfred Trenz. It was originally published by Rainbow Arts for the Commodore 64 in 1991.

Continue reading Turrican II: The Final Fight, Commodore 64

Turrican, Commodore 64

Turrican was written by German coder Manfred Trenz and was first published for the Commodore 64 by Rainbow Arts in 1990. It is a scrolling platform shooter that has similarities to Nintendo‘s Metroid series of games, and also owes a lot to the obscure Data East arcade game Psycho-Nics Oscar.

Continue reading Turrican, Commodore 64

Masterblazer, Amiga

Masterblazer is a 1990 conversion of the classic LucasFilm Games game, Ballblazer, but with faster, smoother graphics than the 8-bit versions, and a couple of extra play modes.

That said: the 8-bit versions were all pretty much fast and smooth enough, so is this Amiga update good enough?

Continue reading Masterblazer, Amiga

Hard ‘N’ Heavy, Atari ST

Hard ‘N’ Heavy was created either as a sequel to The Great Giana Sisters, or was originally a Giana Sisters game itself, such is the similarity between it and the aforementioned game.

Continue reading Hard ‘N’ Heavy, Atari ST

The Great Giana Sisters, Atari ST

The Atari ST version of the infamous The Great Giana Sisters is as good-looking as the original Mario game it is ‘satirising’. It is chunky and colourful and characterful, although gameplay wise it is not a patch on the Mario Bros. games.

Continue reading The Great Giana Sisters, Atari ST

Rendering Ranger: R2, Super Nintendo

Rendering Ranger: R2 is a rare run-and-gun game from the end of the life of the Super Nintendo. It was published by Virgin Interactive in Japan only in 1995. Which is strange for a German game…

Continue reading Rendering Ranger: R2, Super Nintendo

The Great Giana Sisters, Commodore 64

The Great Giana Sisters is infamous for being the game that Nintendo went after*, because it copied the formula of their Mario games a little too closely for their liking.

Continue reading The Great Giana Sisters, Commodore 64