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Julia Somerville once said in a candid interview, "Hey, that Rainbow Islands is pretty good, isn't it?" And, of course, she was right. Rainbow Islands was good. So good in fact, that before Parasol Stars appeared in the ST Format office, the team was chewing its nails, fretting its nerves, fraying its tempers and making cups of coffee with two spoonfuls of granules and no milk or sugar.

Then it came. And it came complete with a manual explaining the plot. What seems to have happened is that Chaostikahn - a violent habitual offender - has unleashed some baddies over the seven planets that Bub and Bob call home. Our heroes must fight once more, but this time armed with colourful parasols. But enough of this insulting plot nonsense.

The seven worlds are divided into levels, each being one or two screens in width, and one in height. A mildly amusing theme has been attached to each world, and this is echoed in the levels, for example World One is the music kingdom, World Two the woodland domain and so on.

Bub - and Bob, if two-player mode has been selected - wanders around the platforms on each level, poking the baddies with their umbrellas (not parasols, *please*). This cripples the enemy. Another poke and they disappear, inexplicably leaving some edible item behind for the player to collect. But there are better ways of dealing with the baddies. Water droplets, fire drops, lightning bolts and stars fall from the top of many of the screens. These can be collected on the umbrellas, and can be fired across the screen at the nasties, which kills them.

These two methods of wiping out the baddies and clearing the screens doesn't sound very inspiring, but surprisingly it provides an enormous number of ways of playing the game. You can work out various strategies and make use of different effects to beat each level. Sometimes it's possible to umbrella your way through, though at other times you've got to fire the objects. A combination of both works best, of course.

As you might hope, there are loads of collectables with varying effects, and tons of bonuses for doing weird and clever things. Every level has got something new to work out, and you tend to stumble across most of the features by accident - unless you just happen to be Edward de Bono.

Oh dear. This description doesn't really seem to do the game justice. You see, Parasol Stars is brilliant. It's reminiscent of Bubble Bobble, but fortunately has much more going on. The graphics are well up to Rainbow Islands' standard and there are plenty of catchy Bubble Bobble-ish tunes, too.

The beautifully-drawn and animated nasties follow you around smoothly, and there's never a hint of poor collision detection or sub-standard movement routines. Each screen is packed with - er, things and it looks and feels absolutely great.

So the graphics are excellent, the sound effects are good and the programming is very high quality. It's also immensely addictive. The difficulty level is set just right, and, once you start playing, you can't stop.

Any gripes? No, except that codes for the different worlds would have been helpful. Overall, though, it's a marvellous arcade game, so go and get Parasolled, then wave bye-bye to those going-to-bed-at-night blues.

1. Like an updated, uprated Bubble Bobble, with tons more detail, depth and something that means playability beginning with d.
2. Certainly as good as Rainbow Islands, with similar graphics and style. And very, dare it be said, cutesy.
3. Can't wait to see Julia's face when she sees this.