The Bubble Bobble lore is hard to follow. Bub and Bob keep going from bubble-spewing dinosaurs to rotund children and back again, but maybe it’s also their kids, or maybe it’s their girlfriends. Sometimes they’re dragons, and sometimes they aren’t. To make it more confusing, there are two “The Story of Bubble Bobble IIIs.” There’s 1991’s Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III and 1996’s Bubble Memories: The Story of Bubble Bobble III. Which is canon? I’m sure you’re as frustrated as I am. 

Bubble Memories maybe has a bit more claim to the title, if only because it actually landed in arcades and, after Bubble Symphony, is the third game to actually involve blowing bubbles. However, Parasol Stars is, technically, the actual third game in the series. It first hit the PC-Engine/Turbografx 16 before being ported to other systems.

ININ has now ported it to modern consoles as sort of one half of the Parasol Superstars compilation. Well, honestly, the port of Parasol Stars came out last year, but if you missed that, you can get it packaged with Spica Adventure.

ELLA-ELLA-ELLA-EH-EH-EH

Parasol Stars isn’t Bubble Bobble, but it follows Rainbow Islands in sort of taking the same design philosophy forward, which I think was technically first established in The FairyLand Story. They’re games about turning enemies into food. And I don’t mean you just grind them into minced meat or slice them so they’ll fit into a sandwich. In Bubble Bobble, you trap them in bubbles, while in Rainbow Islands, you piss rainbows all over them, and in Parasol Stars, you throw them around with your umbrella. And that transforms them into snacks for some reason.

I mentioned in my review of Spica Adventure that it and Parasol Stars don’t really have much in common beyond parasols. While Nico can whip ass with hers, Bub and Bob simply stun enemies, pick them up, and throw them. They can also shield themselves or use their parasol as a parachute, which I think is law. The biggest connection to its mother series, however, are bubbles that you can collect on your parasol. If you get five of them, you can use their element (lightening, fire, water, stars) in much the same way they’d work in Bubble Bobble.

However, it’s still that very specific flavour of Taito platformer. It’s very mechanic centric, and you’re largely just slapped into small arenas. The verticality of Rainbow Islands is dropped, but some levels scroll left and right, so it’s not the strict single-screen affair that Bubble Bobble was.

LOOKS LIKE RAIN

I’ve been speaking as if you have intimate familiarity with Bubble Bobble, which you should, but is, for some reason, not taught in schools. The idea is simply that you wipe out all the enemies on each level. When you knock one out, it usually becomes food. If you’re unspectacular, it will become an orange or something. If you knock out multiple enemies at once, however, you might be treated to some ice cream or tonkatsu don. Rule of thumb is that the worse it is for your health, the more points it worth. Candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker. For example: a crown is worth a lot of points. You shouldn’t eat it, but it might be worth picking up.

In the original PC-Engine/Turbografx version, you start with one continue. You can, however, pick up more credits in the form of tokens as you go. It’s relatively easy to get far into the game, even to the initial ending. However, there’s a secret ending that’s a lot trickier to get through within the limited allotment.

You can instead play the “Arcade” version in the port, which is strangely named. It sounds like it’s just the most straightforward way of playing, as it doesn’t allow cheats, save states, or rewind. However, it gives you 99 credits, which I don’t understand. I picked this mode without knowing that it would encumber me without so many credits. So, it was a little unsatisfying to make it to the end.

DIET WRECKAGE

It was a lot more fun when I had the strict limit on credits in the standard mode. It wasn’t all that difficult either, but I wasn’t able to unlock the last couple of chapters. Still, that’s kind of neat.

For clarity, you get elemental tiles whenever you create two “big drops” in a level, which is to say, when you stack five bubbles to get one of the elemental attacks. If you do this and collect three star tiles (without collecting another element), you’ll be allowed to progress past the last world.

Typical Taito secrets. At least it doesn’t tell you to go out and make friends if you want the real ending, like Bubble Bobble does.

Like Spica Adventure, Parasol Stars grew on me on repeated playthroughs. However, the first time through, I didn’t like Parasol Stars at all. The fact that you have to get in the face of enemies to attack them felt clumsy, so I wasn’t digging it. I tripped my way through to the end.

On my second playthrough, when I didn’t have infinite continues, something clicked. In contrast to the first time through, I didn’t want to stop playing. It’s hard to say what really changed, but I’d guess that my change in attitude is simply because I was forced to be more careful and read more into enemy movements and environmental tricks. It was a lot more satisfying. I’m just not sure why they’d call the 99 credit version “Arcade” mode. Strange.

IN A BIND

There are a few strange things going on with this port. The one that vexed me the most was entering my name on the scoreboard. It’s a bit hard to describe, but the attack button on my arcade stick would confirm the letters up until the last one, at which point it would become stuck. Switching to the A button made it erase previously entered letters, but the B button would then re-enter the characters and confirm at the end. My guess is the fact that I re-bound the controls to my arcade stick screwed with things. But, what the fuck? If I bound the “I” button function to “X” and “II” to “Y,” why the fuck am I even forced to switch back to using “A” and “B” to confirm things in menu. I ran into a similar issue in Spica Adventure. It’s a really obtuse way of handling control binding. I don’t want to fight with the controls every time I get a high score.

It’s also unfortunate that only the PC-Engine/Turbografx version of Parasol Stars is included. It would be fair to say that it’s the best version, and that all other versions are just weak facsimiles, but I like my re-releases to be definitive. Who’s going to port the Amiga version now?

So, I wound up enjoying Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III, it just didn’t click right away. I got into it more than I ever did with Rainbow Islands. And I think I’ll probably find myself returning to it one day. However, I can’t say it really tickled my toes. I don’t feel the same affinity I felt with Bubble Bobble or even The FairyLand Story. In fact, at the end of the day, I didn’t love it that much more than Spica Adventure, which I guess makes them good partners in the Parasol Superstars compilation. Two above-average but not spectacular arcade titles is a pretty good way to spend a weekend.

6/10

This review was conducted using a digital Switch version of the game. It was provided by the publisher’s PR.