Rainbow Cotton review

Why remake a game if you don’t fix the fundamental issues of the original?

Success Corporation’s 1991 arcade title Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams might not have been the first cute ‘em up, but it undoubtedly helped popularize the sub-genre. Adorability was found in the game’s eponymous, candy-craving lead and her bikini-clad companion fairy, Silk. Across six stages, the pair took on an assortment of curious creatures like flying eyeballs and mischievous imps. While the spritework was thoroughly charming, it was the tough-but-fair difficulty that truly elevated the experience.

Unsurprisingly, this combination of visual charm and playability proved to be a hit, fueling a succession of follow-ups. While the majority of these continued the game’s horizontally scrolling format, 1994’s Panorama Cotton transformed the game into a rail shooter, much like SEGA’s Space Harrier. Success revisited the third dimension for the Dreamcast version of Rainbow Cotton, resulting in decidedly mixed critical reviews and such an unenthusiastic response from players that designer Yusuke Nemoto later apologized for the game. As such, Rainbow Cotton seems like a dubious candidate for a remake.

Context as Scarce as Willow Candy

Just as questionable was the executive decision to hand over development duties to KRITZELKRATZ 3000, a studio whose previous experience consists primarily of licensed Game Boy Advance and DS titles. For better or worse, the 2024 remake of Rainbow Cotton provides a visual upgrade, but mends few of the issues that plagued the Dreamcast original. And that’s a shame, as it would be thrilling to steer the bratty broomstick-rising witch through a fully-realized 3D world.

Rainbow Cotton’s first misstep is the lack of a tutorial. Sure, you can make your way through the game’s five levels, learning as move the game’s crosshairs around the screen and plink away at on-screen enemies. But a more inviting approach would have explained the power-up system, where shooting gold pots releases gems.

Grab a yellow-colored jewel, and you’ll enhance Cotton and Silk’s offensive output. But if you accidentally shoot the golden gem (all too easy with turbo-fire), it will cycle through a range of colors. These amplify the power of your corresponding-colored magic bomb attack. But early on, it’s far more important to strengthen your default weapon. Sure, the color-coded system is Cotton canon, but offering even a single-screen splash page that explains the approach would have benefited newcomers.

Blocked by Broomstick

Nearly a quarter-century on, Rainbow Cotton’s missteps even more irritating. Since you’re playing from a third-person perspective, Cotton and Silk can inadvertently cover incoming projectiles as well as targets. This is especially annoying when aiming at distant targets in the center of the screen. And if you’re playing on smaller screens like the Steam Deck or ROG Ally, seeing just where you are shooting is even more difficult. Ideally, the developers would have allowed players to quickly shift to a first-person perspective by pressing a controller trigger.

Tea Time!

Rainbow Cotton’s play still feels like a chore, making the game’s ancillary elements convey the charm. Years on, the game’s five stages might run on too long. But they are aesthetically charming, whether it’s the Christmastime flight through a sleepy European village or exploring a subaquatic city. Pleasingly, the on-rails shooting isn’t linear and sporadically you’ll encounter forks that let you explore different zones.

Meanwhile, Kenichi Hirata’s compositions feel timeless, offering buoyant melodies for the game’s stages and final boss battle. And of course, there are the original game’s full-motion anime sequences that do the storytelling. These are still visually rough, revealing the kind of jaggies that were evident during the TurboGrafx-CD / PC Engine CD-ROM² era. There appears to be a bit of visual cleanup, but fundamentally the developers’ same hands-off approach is seen here.

Conclusion

KRITZELKRATZ 3000’s remake plays like the original game, albeit with greater fidelity, a smoother framerate on most systems (we experienced hiccups on Steam Deck, though), and the inclusion of autofire. But save for these minor modifications, this is essentially the same game that disappointed Dreamcast owners. Recreations offer the ability for improvement. Perplexingly, those opportunities weren’t taken with Rainbow Cotton.

Rainbow Cotton was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher.