EAB/Lemon Super League 2018: Round 5 - Rainbow Islands

[john4p]

EAB/Lemon Super League 2018: Round 5 - Rainbow Islands

Starts: 00:01 April 8th Finishes: 23:59 April 28th

Rules

Post a picture of your score here with the score written underneath. Enter as often as you like. Only scores achieved during the round's time frame count.

No cheating of any kind (including score leeching) - this includes save states. No continues/passwords allowed. If you suspect anyone of cheating please let us know in private - anyone found guilty will be banned for the entire season.

Remember, anyone can join in at any time. Have fun and feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Downloads

- ADF
- WHDLoad-installed

Extras

- Full rules and FAQ (incorporating the Hall of Fame)
- Results and Standings
- Lemon thread
- Live League Ladder


Results:



Live League table:

[capehorn]

So I thought I'd have a quick play of this to set the first score of the round...

And I thought I'd be a bit rusty and need some practice...

While I did lose some lives, I got a good end completion on my first attempt!







59,119,700

I must admit my first impression was that the score may have glitched as that is a lot higher than I thought it would be, but the top score possible does seem to be 99,999,990 according to Youtube longplays. I will keep an eye out next time I play it to see what kind of bonuses you get at the end.

[lifeschool]

According to the hint manual on the WDHload version:

"When you clear all 10 secret rooms, you will get 500,000 pts bonus with some
continuations, or 10,000,000 pts bonus without using any continuations. You will get much
more bonus if you never get power-up items (1-9)! You will get 1,000,000 pts in each
secret room. In addition, you will get 50,000,000 pts if you miss all items (1-9)! There
still be another secret bonus, you will get 3,000,000 pts bonus if you clear 40th stage
without any power-up commands nor power-up items."

[capehorn]

I've been looking into this, the Amiga version only has the first seven levels (28 stages) whereas the original has ten levels (40 stages).

There is a 50,000,000 bonus in the arcade version, but it isn't awarded until one of the end levels. I can't find a Youtube video of somebody scoring this on the Amiga, but here is a video of it being awarded on the arcade version (at 1:00:06)

[ Show youtube player ]

My score was about 5m, then suddenly 55m, then a 4m bonus was given for remaining lives, so it must have been a 50m bonus that was suddenly awarded that I didn't see happen. So assuming that the bonus exists in the Amiga version, it wasn't a glitch.

BTW, I just have to post the the original game completiton music. What a great tune!

[ Show youtube player ]

[lifeschool]

I noticed on the longplay, if you get all the gems in all islands, it gives the 50M bonus.

[ Show youtube player ]

[capehorn]

Originally Posted by lifeschool

I noticed on the longplay, if you get all the gems in all islands, it gives the 50M bonus.

Well spotted, and it's added subtly too so I didn't notice at the time. That's what happened, I got all the gems in order on each world and went into each secret room.

[lifeschool]

I just tried this out and got all gems on world 1 without dying, but no secret room appeared in the boss room. Im sure I collected everything. How do you make the door appear?

[capehorn]

Ok, I'll spill the secrets of Rainbow Islands as it's a lot to figure out in three weeks.

If you complete the game but don't get a big gem in each island, you get the bad ending.

You need to get one of each big gem in each island to get the good ending. You do this by getting at least one of each small gem in each island (the words COMPLETE will appear in big letters on the screen when you've done this) then you can collect the big gem at the end of the boss battle.

But to really do well in this game, you want to get all seven small gems IN LEFT TO RIGHT ORDER in each island. That is red first, then orange, then yellow, green, blue, indigo (purple) and violet. If you pick them up on the correct order, then you will get the secret door at the end of the island. This gives you the opportunity to skip the boss altogether (enter the door before the boss appears), and pick up the special bonuses inside.

These special bonuses are important as they give you abilities that help you further in the game. The abilities granted are:

1st Island - Fast Running Shoes
2nd Island - Double Rainbow
3rd Island - Fast Rainbow
4th Island - Flying Wings
5th Island - Use Continues in later levels (useless in the comp but it's worth points when you pick it up) and warp to Island 7
6th Island - Fairy Protection and Coin (the coin means treasure in Island 7 is likely to be worth more points)
7th Island - Treasure Room

All these abilities last the entire game, so you keep them if you lose a life. Having the first three makes the game much easier, wings is very useful in Island 5 in particular, and the fairy will kill any enemy it comes into contact with, turning them into a gem.

So how do you get gems? If you kill an enemy by making a rainbow fall on it, then it is likely, but not certain to drop a gem. If you kill it by making a star come into contact with it, or with the fairy, then you are likely to get a gem. If you kill it by other means, you are much less likely to get a gem, so spend time learning the method to making rainbows fall on the enemies.

The colour of the gems you get depend on where on the screen they fall. Gems that appear on the far left on the screen will be red, a little further to the right will be orange and so on. Enemies will fall in the direction they were moving when you killed it, so think about the timing of when to make the rainbows fall to get the gems you need.

Now the bonus systems on Rainbow Islands are quite complicated, and I don't know all of it, and there are sites out there that tell you about all this stuff, but in general, gems and stars are GOOD, the more gems and stars you collect, the better your future bonuses will be. Rings are also a key to getting a good score, the rings do different things but are all good for scoring points. So get all the stars you can, and once you have got all the gems in order, go round collecting as many gems as you can. Rings will be one of the rewards you get for doing this.

That's pretty much what I know about the game. My target is to always try to collect the gems in order on each island, and get into the secret rooms. The first three are a necessity to gaining the powers required to complete the game IMO, and if you and I are right, that means that getting into all seven rooms gives a 50 million points bonuses.

[lifeschool]

This info will be very valuable for those wanting to find out more about the game. I didnt realise the game was so precise! We played Bubble Bobble and that had some very hard hidden rooms to find, but this is on a whole new level for me. The longplay video makes it look easy, but I take my hat off to anyone who can master this game.

[john4p]

Damn that's a complex scoring system. Thanks for the elaborate explanation capehorn!

Super 7 should really shine this round...

[capehorn]

Here is a link to even more information, although I'm not sure just how useful any of this info really is!

https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Rainbo.../Special_items

Not all of it applies to the Amiga version though. I've never seen a potion or several of the rare items.

[john4p]

If you get the secret door can you still defeat the boss and enter the door afterwards?

[capehorn]

Yes, and you get more points for doing so (not for killing the boss so much but for the treasure chest you get afterwards).

But if you die once during the boss, the door will disappear, so it's a risk.

[john4p]

Alright, thanks for the info.

[el_pasi]

1,464,330

Boss of monster island was too tough...

[Graham Humphrey]

Been off work this week, but used it to take pretty much a total break from Amiga forums. Back today though and managed to find time to squeeze in a quick go of this yesterday afternoon.



297,440

[capehorn]

Wolfadawn has posted a video on Lemon, and I said I would do the same. Maybe there is a lot to learn in this game, like how best to use the rainbows as both a bridge and a weapon. Once you get the hang of it, the game becomes a lot of fun, but there is a definite learning curve.

My method has always been to try as best as I can to get all the gems in order, red first, then orange, yellow etc. up to violet. Once you have a gem, i.e. the red one you can get as many more red ones as you want, you just need to make sure that you don't get the yellow before the orange etc. Once you have the gems in order, you can enter the door at the end of the level to get a powerup that lasts the whole game.

I definitely try to do this on the first three islands as you need these powers to stay with you on the later levels when you lose a life. Entering all seven doors awards a 50,000,000 bonus.

A really important skill to learn is how to use a falling rainbow to kill an enemy. If a rainbow is a few pixels away from an enemy, then making the rainbow fall will kill that enemy, even if the rainbow is below it. You can use this method to both kill enemies above you and turn them into gems (you have to use the falling rainbow method to get gems, otherwise you just get fruit). I do this a bit at around 6:01 in my video below

You can also use rainbows as a shield, so an enemy can't get to you. Jump and make a rainbow, then fall back down and enemies from above can't reach you. Only the flying squares on the fifth island can go through your rainbows.

To hunt down the gems you need, think about how to kill the enemies, look at what direction they are moving in, look at what platforms are around that they might land on and time it so that they die and fall onto the right part of the screen to get the gems you need. On stage one, I always use the exact same method, and it always results in getting the first three gems that I need.

Equally important is avoiding the gems you don't want. If there is a blue gem that you don't need yet, make sure you don't fire at it or collapse a rainbow onto it or you will collect it. Make sure you realise where the gems are, they might be just off above or below the screen and think about how to make sure you don't accidently collect them. They disappear in a couple of seconds so sometimes its best to wait for them to do so before moving forwards.

For bosses, remember that if you have a triple-rainbow, that counts as three hits. If you collapse a triple-rainbow on a boss, that counts as three more. If you stack three triple-rainbows and collapse them all, that counts as nine. You can kill the bosses really fast.

You don't actually get points for killing the bosses (although you do for collecting the treasure afterwards) so you could jump straight into the doors without confronting the bosses to skip them. I did this on a couple of the later levels. Do the gods of gaming reward such cowardice? Watch the video and see:

[ Show youtube player ]

[Amiga68k]

Had a couple of rounds: 323,850

Btw, haven't said this before, but glad to be part of this competition

At first I thought... hmm Rainbow Islands
Then after some tries it was... meh
Normally I would have stopped playing by then, but... competition

And now it starts getting quite fun actually Great little game!

[john4p]

728,440

Great game when you know about its mechanics. Managed to get the gems in order in the first world.

[kgc210]

35,890

Impressive? Hahaha

First ever competition entry.

Couldn't find an Amiga Joystick so tried on WinUAE with the worst Joypad ever, kept jumping up most of the time when I moved left or right.

Need clean my gaming room up and try again with some proper hardware.