Parasol Stars - Taito Classic on Super GameBoy - Advent Countdown - Day 14
0I hope you are all healthy and safe wherever you are in the World right now and whatever challenges you are facing.
I thought I'd do a countdown to Christmas 2022 with a GameBoy Cartridge themed advent calendar. I'd hoped to make the videos a little more slick but this is a rough and ready proof of concept really to see if anyone wants to countdown to Xmas with 24 different GameBoy games - one each day!
The footage is genuine cartridges running on a SNES via the Super GameBoy. As a Xmas gift feel free to use the footage in your own videos (just give credit or link to my channel)
This is Parasol Stars from Taito. It gets complicated but essentially was originally for the PC Engine (Ocean handled the ports to other platforms) and was the third game in the Bubble Bobble Series - effectively the series was Bubble Bobble, this was then followed by Rainbow Islands: Bubble Bobble II and then this was Parasol Stars: Rainbow Islands II: The story of Bubble Bobble III. Basically the main characters of all the games are Bub & Bob but the gameplay mechanics are different between all the games.
Like Rainbow Islands the game appears simple but has a lot of depth to the gameplay mechanics - although here I keep it simple and just dispatch enemies using the basics. you can use your Parasol as a weapon, to hold stunned enemies use it as a shield or to decrease your rate of descent and more besides. Also - just as Rainbow Islands had that awesome remix of "Somewhere over the Rainbow" see if you recognise the awesomely catchy remix used for the boss music!
The Super GameBoy has always fascinated me and fans of my channel will know I love it when portable games can be played on the big screen! It still has the limitation of the GameBoy in that 4 shades can be used as the games need to be compatible and playable on the console - however some clever palette switching and game design means you can show more colours on screen by defining different palettes for different areas of the screen.
I play it here through the Super GameBoy in order to show the game a little clearer. For some reason my capture card always seems to struggle with the SNES (and therefore the Super GameBoy) not sure why as everything else pretty much works fine through it.
I'm also thinking of doing a series of videos on specially enhanced Super GameBoy compatible games - including the very clever game and programming designed to maximise the use of colour while remaining compatible with the original monochrome handheld, multiplayer modes, enhanced sound and even a hidden game. Let me know if you'd like to see this sort of thing.
As always if you enjoy this video let me know. As always this is running on original hardware in this case a SNES & Super GameBoy peripheral (one day I'll get a GBA Consoliser or Analogue Pocket!!!!) Also let me know if there are particular games or systems you'd like to see.
As always this is uploaded under the Fair Use Policy - no money is being made from this video.
Stay strong, stay safe and stay healthy - Grey Fox