How to play Rainbow Islands Extra on Mac
Game summary
Rainbow Islands Extra (レインボーアイランド エキストラ) is a strange update to Rainbow Islands: The Story of Bubble Bobble 2, released by Taito for arcades in 1988 before being ported to the Sega Mega Drive in 1990 exclusively in Japan.
Although it offers a port of the original Rainbow Islands, the default option is the "extra" mode, in which all the cute and colourful enemies found in the original game are replaced with enemies found in Taito's shoot-'em-up series, Darius. The music in extra mode has also been replaced with tunes from that game. The rules are otherwise the same as in the original - create rainbows to defeat enemies and reach the top of the screen.
The story for both modes is the same: Bubby's friends have been captured and turned into Bubble Dragons by Super Skull Monsta [sic], and Bubby needs to save them by destroying the Super Skull Monsta's minions with rainbows and collecting Little Diamonds to get Magical Mirrors needed to break the spell.
Rainbow Islands Extra was only released in Japan.
First released: Nov 1990
Play Rainbow Islands Extra on Mac with Parallels (virtualized)
The easiest way to play Rainbow Islands Extra on a Mac is through Parallels, which allows you to virtualize a Windows machine on Macs. The setup is very easy and it works for Apple Silicon Macs as well as for older Intel-based Macs.
Parallels supports the latest version of DirectX and OpenGL, allowing you to play the latest PC games on any Mac. The latest version of DirectX is up to 20% faster.
Our favorite feature of Parallels Desktop is that when you turn off your virtual machine, all the unused disk space gets returned to your main OS, thus minimizing resource waste (which used to be a problem with virtualization).
Rainbow Islands Extra installation steps for Mac
Step 1
Go to Parallels.com and download the latest version of the software.
Step 2
Follow the installation process and make sure you allow Parallels in your Mac’s security preferences (it will prompt you to do so).
Step 3
When prompted, download and install Windows 10. The download is around 5.7GB. Make sure you give it all the permissions that it asks for.
Step 4
Once Windows is done installing, you are ready to go. All that’s left to do is install Rainbow Islands Extra like you would on any PC.
Did it work?
Help us improve our guide by letting us know if it worked for you.
👎👍
