by Rainbow Brite: Journey to Rainbow Land for the NES is a strange case. Released in 2019, 35 years after the original animated series first aired, this game is a port of one of those tabletop arcade games made by Coleco (who knew they were still around?). In recent years, these miniaturized arcade cabinets have become more prevalent, and you may have even seen versions of Pac-Man or Galaga at your local Walmart.
What makes Rainbow Brite so bizarre is that it’s not a portable update of some old Colecovision title, but rather a brand-new game. Not only that, but it’s an official release from Rainbow Brite’s creator, Hallmark! Okay, that’s a bit unexpected, but hey, maybe I’m out of the loop. Maybe Rainbow Brite is in the midst of a major nostalgic comeback and demand is at an all-time high! If so, I could kind of see why someone went to the trouble of developing a game that looks like it could’ve been released back in the ’80s. That is, until you press the power button.
Right from the start, the game explains its own format: in each level, Rainbow Brite has to find both a weapon and one of her buddies in order for the boss to appear. The screen reads: “Once you find your first star sprinkle and Twink…Press B to attack!” Well, you’ll probably find both pretty easily, at which point you hit the B button and… nothing happens. Hmmm… could it be that—yep, it’s actually the A button that fires. What’s the B button do? Nothing. We’re off to a great start!
Rainbow Brite can hit enemies with her star sprinkle attack, but it only stuns them for a few seconds. Honestly, though, there’s really no need to attack anything other than the boss. The level enemies are on set paths: they start at one side of the screen and move slowly to the opposite side. This would make it relatively on par with most games of this era, except that the programmers didn’t time these movements to cross paths with your character as she moves. This means that, for the most part, Rainbow can walk straight across EVERY screen without once slowing down or even turning slightly to avoid an enemy.
Each stage follows this same format: navigate a nondescript maze, find a weapon power-up, find your rainbow buddy, and fight a boss. There are two modes of play, Easy and Hard, but both are equally effortless. Without trying, you could probably beat this game on your first try in about 15–20 minutes.
The graphics are pretty awful, and if you put Rainbow Brite in an ancient robe, it’d be easy to confuse this for one of those awful Wisdom Tree titles like Bible Adventures or Spiritual Warfare. Each screen is laid out in an overhead, “choose a direction” format à la the original The Legend of Zelda, but with no real interactive elements to break up the monotony. The backgrounds are often just two colors, which do little to make the already bland stage designs appealing.
The music isn’t the worst thing. It’s a bit generic and repetitive, but at least it changes from stage to stage, and often unexpectedly from screen to screen. However, the tone of it is way less peppy than I was expecting for a Rainbow Brite title. It sounds like it was made for a much spookier game, like an unreleased Count Chocula cereal adventure. The sound effects, however, are those weird, gritty crunch sounds that you hear in every Atari 2600 game. Whether picking up health, taking damage, or hitting an enemy, it all sounds like a clock gear grinding against itself.
One thing I do love is that if you pause the game and then press Select, a Help screen will appear. It’s just the same three boxes from the intro explaining what is already an extremely simple gameplay premise, but it’s still a neat feature that I’ve never seen in an NES game before. So, it’s got that going for it at least!
I would never feel comfortable criticizing homebrew titles (meaning games made recently for old systems by regular folks). If some huge He-Man fan wanted to make a new NES game about their favorite childhood cartoon, I’d have to applaud their effort, even if the product itself was rather primitive and clunky. They had a passion, they put in the time and effort, and that’s more than I can say for most people. I’ve played a million games, but if you tasked me with programming one myself, I think it’d look like the digital equivalent of a stick figure drawing.
But that’s what confuses me so much about this Rainbow Brite game. It looks, sounds, and plays like a title someone made in their garage, but it’s not. Instead, it’s a terrible, throwaway title made recently by a legit company (Coleco) designed to be played on a tiny 3”x2” screen. And then, for some reason, it was ported to the NES? Seriously, someone took the time to not only reprogram it to play on an actual Nintendo Entertainment System, but they actually produced cartridges, manuals, box art, the whole shebang! WHY?!
It’s a legit release! And it’s AWFUL! It would make sense if this came out in 1989, but 30 years later, you’d expect at least some improvement.
