Of all the games in Taito's Bubble Bobble lineage, Parasol Stars is among the least known. While Rainbow Islands has been ported to almost every computer, console and mobile phone imaginable, and like Bubble Bobble, been subjected to some iffy 'updates' and remakes over the years (WiiWare's pointless Bubble Bobble Plus being the latest), Parasol Stars appears to have been largely forgotten.
Originally programmed for the PC Engine, Parasol Stars was ported to several other machines in the early nineties including the Gameboy, NES and Amiga. Versions were even rumoured for 8-bit computers like the ZX Spectrum and C64, though these never appeared (the C64 version was destroyed by a programmer's angry ex-wife, so the legend goes).
Parasol Stars is best described as a mixture of its predecessors; the two-player coop mode makes a welcome return from Bubble Bobble, while the characters themselves are almost pixel-perfect copies of the human Bub and Bob from Rainbow Islands. Like its forebears, Parasol Stars contains its own unique weapon system in the unlikely form of an umbrella. A seemingly prosaic choice when compared to the whimsical charms of the previous games' bubbles and escalator rainbows, the umbrella is actually the most complex and versatile play mechanic of the three: it can be used as a parachute, allowing the player to steer a course as it falls through the air; it doubles as a shield, opened up overhead or in front of the player; and of course it's also a deadly weapon. Enemies can be caught and flung across the screen, or rain drops can be caught on the tip of the umbrella and fired like bullets - collect five rain drops and a waterfall will be created, with a precipitous effect that will bring a smile of recognition to Bubble Bobble stalwarts.
And while Parasol Stars' reversion to largely static levels may seem like a retrograde step, its new roster of enemies increases the challenge with each successive world; as well as the traditional menagerie of dumb drones, levels typically contain at least one spawn point which will continue to churn out enemies until it's destroyed.
Taito's sprite designers have been as imaginative as ever with Parasol Stars, making full use of the PC Engine's vibrant colour palette to create monsters and levels as imaginative and memorable as anything seen in Rainbow Islands or New Zealand story. Enemies range from gigantic pink electric pianos to strange duck/pot plant hybrids, and if the area bosses are rarely as threatening or tough to beat as their size implies, they are at least a sight to behold.
Taito's apparent uninterest in Parasol Stars is something of a mystery; successive games imply that it never existed, and it wasn't included on either Taito Memories compilation, despite the presence of other, inferior games from around the same period.
There is an upside to Parasol Stars' neglect, however: unlike Taito's other IP, its name hasn't been sullied by cynical, half-arsed attempts to remake it for a 'new generation' - while New Zealand Story, Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands have all appeared on the Nintendo DS in versions fit for the bin, Parasol Stars sits in quiet obscurity, largely unpopular but as glittering and pristine as the day it was made.
