Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III (PC Engine, 1991)

This is one of those games for me that gets close to your heart because you knew someone else who owned it.

Back in first grade, I had a friend named Jeff, and I used to stay at his house after school until my parents got off work, it was one of those deals where a  housewife makes some extra scratch watching a few kids for a few hours a day. Anyway, Jeff was my first friend with an NES. There's a few games I'll probably post that I was first/exclusively exposed to at his house. But this isn't one of those.

A friend of his, who lived next door, had a TurboGrafix16, and I guess his dad took a lot of business trips across the world, and would bring back games from other countries for him. This was the first and only time I ever played Parasol Stars on a real TG16. And unlike other games that I was exposed to in similar circumstances, this was the only one I remembered the name of, instead of just stumbling into it while going through a complete ROM collection torrent and going "OH YEAH I REMEMBER THIS!"

So, Parasol Stars features the human versions of Bubblun and Bobblun from Bubble Bobble (just like in Rainbow Islands), equipped with umbrellas as their only weapon. You use them to pick up enemies and toss them at other enemies, which sounds pretty boring, but there's a lot more to it than that. There's the randomly appearing power ups, like in Bubble Bobble. Water drops that fall from the ceiling that eventually build up into power projectiles, score bonuses that appear just by throwing an object at the right spot, several different worlds and bosses. And you know, it's in the Bubble Bobble series, so it's awesome. Also included are the European NES and Game Boy ports, which are ported from the PCE/TG16 version (there was no arcade version), and of course, aren't nearly as good as the original. Download here.