Developer: Taito
Publisher: ININ Games
Platform: Switch (2), PS4, PS5, Xbox One,
Tested on: Switch 2
Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III – Review
We recently took a look at TAITO’s Spica Adventure, a retro arcade game that is available as either a standalone release or as part of the so-called Parasol Superstars bundle, alongside Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III. Interestingly enough, Parasol Stars has been available on its own since 2024. It’s also a very different beast from Spica Adventure, with the only link between the two being… parasols. We may have missed that original release of Parasol Stars, but its inclusion in Parasol Superstars provided the perfect opportunity to rectify this.
Story
It’s Bub and Bob, but not as you know them! At the end of the previous game in the Bubble Bobble series, Rainbow Islands, the lovable dragons were transformed into humans, and they were gifted with magical parasols. When our heroic duo receives a distress call from a neighboring planet, they set out to help. It turns out that the evil Chaostikan has unleashed all sorts of monsters on neighbouring worlds, so it falls on Bub and Bob to stop them. It’s probably a good thing that they have those magical parasols, right? We should note that Parasol Stars’ backstory isn’t actually present in-game, but could be found in the original manual. It’s a shame that this manual isn’t included in digital form in this release, if only for posterity.
Graphics
35 years after the game debuted, Parasol Stars manages to prove just how timeless its sprite art is. Even if Bub and Bob don’t appear in their familiar forms in Parasol Stars, the game is instantly recognizable as being part of the Bubble Bobble series. It sticks close to the series’ signature storybook-like aesthetic, with vibrant environments and expressive sprites. The unusual enemy designs, ranging from musical instruments to plesiosaurs, contribute to the light-hearted tone of the game. Given the game’s age, it’s not surprising that Parasol Stars’ performance is flawless on modern platforms too. The icing on the cake is the additional display options included here, including different filters, screen sizes, and borders that let you tweak the presentation to your liking.
Sound
The visuals already firmly place Parasol Stars in the Bubble Bobble universe, and the game’s audio cements that feeling even further. The game’s soundtrack is catchy, upbeat and cheerful, perfectly fitting with the game’s bright tone. The tunes are energetic and playful, helping maintain that light, feel-good atmosphere. Fair warning: they will get stuck in your head after playing. Music forms the core pillar of Parasol Stars’ soundscape, with sound effects playing a secondary role. These are clean and faithful to previous entries in the series, helping with tying everything together.
Gameplay
Although Parasol Stars is officially the third mainline entry in the series, the fact that the words “Bubble Bobble” have been moved to the game’s subtitle already indicates that the core gameplay experience is going to be different from what you might expect. Parasol Stars is a fast-paced, single-screen action platformer, built around clearing each stage of enemies before moving on to the next. Whereas Bubble Bobble’s central mechanic was all about bubbles, the parasol takes center stage here. You use it to stun enemies, pick those up, and throw them at other enemies. This two-step combat forms the backbone of Parasol Stars’ gameplay, but it’s expanded through a wide range of options, including using falling droplets as projectiles or combining them into powerful elemental attacks like fire, water, lightning, or star-based abilities. Chaining different effects together results in combos that boost your score.
Co-op is a major part of the overall experience. Pairing up with a buddy makes clearing stages much more efficient, as you can combine attacks and even use each other as tools, like throwing your partner at an enemy. However, this also introduces a layer of unpredictability, since players can accidentally interfere with each other’s actions in the heat of battle. This contributes to the game’s frantic and chaotic free-for-all feeling of gameplay, and it’s probably the best way to experience Parasol Stars for yourself. Later stages introduce more challenges through tougher enemy patterns, busier screens, and boss fights that require timing and use of special attacks, although despite the chaos, it remains accessible and pick-up-and-play, with simple controls and intuitive goals.
The core gameplay experience has stood the test of time exceptionally well, with Parasol Star’s biggest downside, like so many arcade titles from this era, being just how short it is. A standard playthrough consists of eight worlds, with optional hidden ones, adding up to about an hour’s worth of content. This is not a long experience by modern standards, with score chasing being the main draw to return to the game after the credits roll. Additional features like save states, rewind, cheats, and online leaderboards add to the perceived value, although the lack of extras like a digital manual or an art gallery sticks out like a sore thumb. Still, at €12.99, both the value and the overall appeal of Parasol Stars blow Spica Adventure out of the water. At €24.99 for the Parasol Superstars bundle, you’re looking at a comparatively low discount on Parasol Stars, probably not enough to justify Spica Adventure unless you really happen to be in the niche that wants both of these… but we imagine most retro enthusiasts already having picked up the Parasol Stars re-release when it debuted back in 2024.
Conclusion
We’ve played quite a few of TAITO’s re-releases, but Parasol Stars is the one that stood out, simply because of how well it holds up three decades on. We’re glad that the game isn’t just paywalled behind a bundle with other arcade releases and can be picked up on its own. The absence of a digital manual does sting a bit, and the price point still feels a tad too high for the amount of content, but it’s a matter of quality over quantity here.
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