In a gaming landscape where remasters and remakes are selling like hotcakes, it’s somewhat of a curveball to go and remaster a Japanese-only Dreamcast rail shooter in 2024. However, that’s what the team at Kritzelkratz 3000 and ININ Games did, as Rainbow Cotton has received a full “reconjure” almost 25 years after its initial release by SUCCESS Corporation. I have immense nostalgia for games in the sixth generation of consoles, and a certain fondness for Star Fox, so Rainbow Cotton looks like a no-brainer for anyone into the rail shooter genre, who missed out on a worldwide release due to its original state only being in Japanese. So, is Rainbow Cotton a worthy remaster?

Rainbow Cotton tells its story through cutscenes with an anime presentation. These aren’t particularly well-animated or entertaining, but it’s a cute alternative and a profound stylistic choice. Once you’re thrust into the game itself, it’s a crapshoot to determine what buttons do which if you’re on a controller, or what keys to press to even navigate the main menu since the Enter key isn’t bound to progress the screen and there’s no mouse support to click through. Call these a limitation of the original title’s hardware, but these quality-of-life improvements are absolutely vital for the bare necessities of PC gaming now.

Once you’ve figured out how to simply play the game, Rainbow Cotton throws so many different enemies and pickups at you that it can be overwhelming. Thankfully, it’s one of those games where once you get into the groove, it gets easier to manage in minutes. Unfortunately, the game audio is a convoluted mess, with the fairies you save using their voice lines that overlap each other on a near-endless basis. This is all on top of the projectiles you shoot the entire time, the enemies exploding, and the music getting lost in the mix, which is a shame because it’s the best part of the game.

The bosses in Rainbow Cotton are also a joy to fight, even if they are particularly easy. Their quirky voice acting is good for several laughs, and even the mini-bosses are enjoyable enough to tackle. The moment-to-moment gameplay, however, isn’t particularly captivating, as you’re fighting the same few enemy types ad nauseam for the extent of your playthrough. Seeing as Rainbow Cotton has an arcade presentation, those who can power through the huge difficulty spikes will complete the game in roughly two hours if they can stomach retrying entire levels after death.

Rainbow Cotton is certainly an outlier in the modern scheme of gaming. Taking an antiquated genre and throwing it to the wolves with minimal marketing has resulted in the game only having eight reviews on Steam two months after release, and it’s hard to recommend the iffy remaster to most gamers, but there’s definitely a market for those that grew up with on-rails shooters and shmups. At $19.99 for a two-hour experience, Rainbow Cotton might not gain a lot of traction, so the gamers looking for hidden gems can take a gander, but this title should remain in the proverbial bargain bin as it fades into obscurity once more.

A PC review copy of Rainbow Cotton was provided by ININ for the purposes of this review.

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Rainbow Cotton

$19.99

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• Great Music
• Cute Character Design

Cons

• Atrocious Sound Mixing
• Unreal Difficulty Spike
• Poor Controls
• Minimal Options