Towering Adventures retains the basics of the original Rainbow Islands. It’s still a vertical platformer, except instead of fleeing the rising tide, you’re outrunning a succession of ultra-cheap bosses. To help your ascent, you can vomit rainbows, which can be used as platforms or to kill local wildlife.

Just about everything else has been put through the crap-o-rizer. Bub and Bob have been redesigned into lanky mutants – it’s hard to drum up the enthusiasm to help these freaks. The rainbow platforms are now more forgiving, allowing you to stand still on the curves and jump on and off, transforming it from a game of precision to one of procession. The enemies resemble those of the original but lack the same terrifying presence. They’re merely moving obstacles that you bumble into occasionally.

Ignore the fact that it’s taking a rainbow-colored dump all over one of the greatest gaming legacies of all time and this is a decent time-trial platformer. But veterans of the series will be unable to find more than a moment’s pleasure in this limp retread.

Jul 13, 2009