Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2 (NES, USA, Japan)

Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2
Developer: Disco Publisher: Taito Platform: NES Released in JP: July 26, 1988 Released in US: June 1991 This game has hidden development-related text. This game has a hidden sound test. This game has a hidden level select. This game has regional differences.

A severely cut down port of the original, although with alternate level designs, cutscenes, and "KiKi KaiKai Island", which replaces Magical Island in whole.

Unused Text

The Japanese version of this game contains leftovers from an early development stage. The string "SAMPLE VERSION" still exists among other strings in the game.

0001DAF0: 1B 18 10 1B 0A 16 16 0E 0D 26 0B 22 26 0D 12 1C ROGRAMMED]BY]DIS
0001DB00: 0C 18 1C 0A 16 19 15 0E 26 1F 0E 1B 1C 12 18 17 COSAMPLE]VERSION
0001DB10: A5 20 29 18 AA A0 00 BD 2A DB 99 E4 07 E8 C8 C0 .W`O..7.a...>...

Sound Select

Press Up, Left, Right, Down, A, B, A, Up when the word "START" begins flashing on the title screen. Press A or B to select a melody, then press Start to play it.

World Select

Press Left, B, Right, Up, Down, Left, Right, B when the word "START" begins flashing on the title screen. Press A or B to select a world, then press Start to play it.

Regional Differences

Title Screen

Japan	USA

The US version added a trademark symbol to the title screen and changed some copyright information. The US title screen continues to animate after the sound test or stage select codes are entered, while the Japanese version stops animating instead.

Japan	USA

The title screen theme was also changed.

Islands 1-4

Japan	USA

The first four islands have all had their music changed from a very "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"-ish motif to something a bit less infringing. Only the parts of the music that could have gotten Taito in legal trouble were changed; the bridges and bass line remain unaltered.

Bubble Island

Japan	USA

Due to an oversight in the sound code, the music for this stage was broken! The triangle channel in the US version breaks and starts playing garbage shortly after the song begins.

When loading song pointers, a value of 00 is treated as "end of data", which means that no part of a song may start at address $xx00. In the US version, the broken part of this track starts at $8E00, which causes the game to lose its place in the song data and play garbage.