Conversion Kings: Rainbow Island
Conversions of Bubble Bobble proved a huge hit for the home micros, and it was somewhat inevitable Rainbow Islands would follow suit with ports of its own. Retro Gamer spoke to Gary Foreman about his excellent Commodore 64 conversion
Gary Foreman discusses his incredible Commodore 64 port with us
In late 1986 and Gary had just taken on the job of porting Graftgold’s Ranarama to the Commodore 64, which started his affiliation with the developer. Later he joined the team full-time in 1988, with Graftgold taking on the licence for Rainbow Islands not long after. With the company now in charge of creating all ports to 8-bit and 16-bit home computers, it assembled a team of programmers to take on each version. Working collectively on the project, each member was given their own specific home computer versions to work on.
“The Rainbow Islands team consisted of most of the company at the time. Andrew Braybrook was working on the Amiga and Atari ST versions, David O’connor took on the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad, and I was tasked with the Commodore 64 version,” says Gary. “I recall we also had additional support from John Cumming, who was responsible for the art and Jason Page did most of the audio.”
Given a six-month turnaround to complete the project, the team set to work, and, as is the case with most conversions, Graftgold was given an original arcade machine to help with development. But this time it was given something a little extra to help in its quest. Gary explains, “I remember we received a binder from
the publisher, which had a lot of gameplay-related references and diagrams which explained the enemy movements and their progression etc. Though the majority of material was diagrams, there were also elements of text included, but quite a bit of it was in Japanese, given that Taito was the original developer – though there was nothing that we couldn’t understand.” Gary continues, “We also received a few floppy disks containing the original graphics – this coupled with the arcade machine, is how we put the pieces together, if you will.”
According to Gary, the best way to “fully understand the game” was to “play the hell out of it”, so who would be given this pain-staking, though essential, job for the development? “Andrew [Braybrook] and David [O’connor] were very good at the game so they were given that job,” he says. “I have to say that it’s only because they were so good at it, that we found out that there were three secret islands.” Unfortunately for all 8-bit versions, these could not be included due to memory limitations, though Gary explains he did manage to include everything else in his Commodore 64 incarnation. This included the game’s rendition of Somewhere Over
The Rainbow which may or may not have been good news, depending on where you stand on that element of the game. It definitely divided opinion but what mattered was that Gary was happy with his take on the tune, stating that even though it was criticised in reviews, he thought it was a faithful tribute. That said, there was a rumour that the speaker of the original arcade cabinet had to be disconnected after a while during development.
Challenges are inevitable during conversions of this type, so what was the main issue that he encountered in completing his version of this arcade classic? With the secret islands already
having to be omitted, Gary set about working out how to fit the rest of the game into the memory. Having a team working together on all of the home versions had its benefits, with each member bringing their own skills and tricks to the table, having a hand in resolving problems each version may have come across. Gary recalls, “The biggest problem was how to fit all of the backgrounds in; this is where Andrew and David devised a compression algorithm which made the background maps significantly smaller. I don’t recall what percentage or actual sizes, but do remember that it was impressive.” Talking of dealing with his own Commodore 64 version, “My problems were how to display the gems at the bottom of the screen and how to do the water that crept up at the end of each level, though the biggest challenge of all was the rainbows: especially when you get the special pickup where you’re firing three at a time!” Gary elaborates, “Because of the hardware sprite limit and how they could be multiplexed, the rainbows had to be made out of characters, and that meant the colours would have to change from level to level. I was fairly pleased with how the rainbows worked out. It’s not ideal, and far from perfect, but given the hardware limitations I feel that it works well.”
Without Taito supplying its folder of diagrams, the conversion would have been a bigger task than it ultimately turned out
to be. Gary believes that the additional help from Taito was the stepping stone the team needed to set the home versions on their way. He explains, “I’m not sure how we would have approached it otherwise [without the binder], though having the same team work on all versions was a big plus. Working alongside Andrew and David was definitely a benefit and meant that when some of the problems were solved, they were solved for all versions of the game.”
The final product is one of the fondest games remembered for the Commodore 64, especially in terms of platformers, gaining high scores in magazines at the time and becoming a fan favourite – something which Gary is proud of. Rainbow
Islands is a near perfect conversion, the same could be said for many of the other home computer versions of the game, but the Commodore 64 port is what a lot of fans state to be best. With the game achieving high accolades, it may be a trivial question to task, but is there anything Gary would have changed if the hands of time could be turned back? “In terms of doing things differently, I’m not sure that I would,” he says. “If I could go back to the code, I could probably make some improvements here and there but nothing major. I personally see it as my best C64 work and, pound for pound, I believe that it’s one of the better arcade ports out there.”
Well Gary, who are we to disagree?