I was recently thinking about writing a feature on favourite game series, and put together a top-of-my-head shortlist of what might be included. Cotton was the fourth name that sprang to mind, behind Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Mega Man. I’m not sure yet where it would end up in this theoretical top ten but I reckon it’s more or less in the right place… I love it! That said, if I was making a top ten Cotton games instead (watch this space!) then the original Rainbow Cotton, released on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000, would probably struggle a bit, although not as much as that PlayStation 2 Pachinko game would, so there is hope, especially now it’s got this fancy new HD remake!  Rainbow Cotton was the fifth in the series, which started out as a 2D cute ‘em up in the early nineties, and would remain so until Panorama Cotton came along on the Sega Mega Drive or Genesis in 1994, playing out in pseudo-3D along the lines of Space Harrier. But cuter. And with a candy-obsessed witch and her bikini-clad fairy friend Silk! 

That worked out really well too, and while the series did return to 2D for the next couple of outings both in the arcades and on the Sega Saturn, Rainbow Cotton (pictured above) would be a direct follow-up to that one, also mixing-up the more or less on-rails shooting with some very light RPG mechanics, but this time going full 3D along a pre-set route. And like its predecessor, it was quite the showpiece for its host machine too, with big, bold and often beautifully lit visuals that were full of energy and moved super-smoothly, as well as extending the series’ reputation for a fantastic soundtrack! However, it really didn’t play great, and as you can imagine, the passage of time hasn’t been any kinder on it either! The problem was the controls, which played fast and very loose, and combined with all the shooting happening on the other side of your big witchy sprite, as well as lack of feedback from any enemies that indicated they were actually taking damage (which were also often lost behind your sprite), there was no precision and no sense of actually shooting stuff. Which is a bit of a problem for a shoot ‘em up! Oh yeah, Japan only, so no idea what was going on either, which is actually par for the course with Cotton whatever language it’s in, so don’t hold your breath on that front…

Right, we’re as good as up to date now, and bonkers narrative aside, both original developers Success and also ININ Games, who have teamed-up for this release, have recent form for some very decent Cotton reboots, remasters and remixes between them, including the likes of Cotton Reboot! and Cotton Fantasy, so hopefully there’s more to Rainbow Cotton HD Remake than just a few more pixels! Before we get into finding out, I should say I’ve been very kindly provided with a review code from the publisher, I’m playing on Nintendo Switch, and the game is also available on PlayStation, Xbox and PC via Steam from 9th May 2024 for £17.99 or your preferred equivalent. And with that, we can get into the game, which I’m pleased to report that at the very least has had some localisation treatment, including the always unmissable (but thankfully not unskippable!), madcap and very lengthy pre-game and between-level anime cutscenes you expect from any good Cotton game, although as said, your mileage may vary with what they’re actually going on about!

Let me really quickly try and recap though, without getting too bogged down in too much of Cotton’s nonsense lore… There’s an evil demon called Tweed who has turned up in Cotton’s homeland and stolen its powerful, magical Legendary Willow candy, plunging the land into eternal darkness and misery, blah, blah, blah. The queen of the Fairy Country has once again entrusted her aforementioned, always prepared for a bit of sunbathing, tiny, winged subject Silk to try go and get it back and return things to normal, and she in turn has once again tricked her broomstick-flying, lethal magic-wielding witch companion Nata de Cotton into helping out… Despite her own well-documented addiction to Willow candy! I think that’s more or less the short version but it’s exactly the same story in every Cotton game, and while that’s never helped to make it any more fathomable, it’s a shoot ‘em up and not Macbeth, so who cares! The animated cutscenes that gradually reveal the tale look like they’ve had a resolution boost but still seem to be in the original screen ratio and have had some no-frills subtitles (including no-frills translations) stuck on top. The thing is, the Dreamcast was perfectly capable of rendering these things nicely in the first place, so going from memory it’s hard to tell. I’m sure it’s loads better though!

That reminds me, while you’re in the title screen menu looking for the option to invert the controls because some maniac thought it was a good idea to un-invert them by default, you’ll also find a couple of other game modes available. The first is Retro Mode, and – philistine that I am with such things – I’m honestly not sure if this is the original game jazzed up with some of the new gameplay conveniences I’ll cover in a sec, or the new game scaled back the other way somehow… You get the picture! And if not, you can compare the picture just above with the original Dreamcast version a few paragraphs back and decide for yourself! Either way though, it’s presented inside an old TV overlay thing with scanlines, and I can’t see any way to change that if such things offend you. It’s all harmless enough though, and it’s nice they went to the effort. The other mode on offer of Co-Op Mode, where you and a friend can play through the game together as Cotton and Silk, and from what I can tell with only a second controller but no actual friend, it seems like a really neat add-on. While we’re messing around in the title screen, let me quickly cover a couple of other options of note. Default difficulty is normal, and from the second of the five stages onwards, that feels about right, with a decent learning curve – particularly for the bosses – and enough of a compulsion to use another of your five credits when you eventually die because you always know you could do better next time, but that can depend on where you are in a level, and there’s more on that to come! There’s also easy and two levels of hard, though I’m not sure I’ll ever need either of the latter… And that’s where the other option I want to mention comes in! There’s one called “Fairies Talk” and you just want to turn it to off. Trust me!

I’ll come back to that when I cover sound in a bit but it’s time we jumped into a regular game to find out if you’ll still be around to care! And the short answer is, I’m not really sure. You see, I have the advantage of bias towards the series and having played the Dreamcast version way more than it deserves as a result, so the total lack of instructions of any kind isn’t as much a problem to me as it might be. Let me try and take you through some of the first stage to explain what I mean. Once the camera has done its fancy thing and found its way behind you, you’re suddenly hurtling through this moonlit, medieval-style village, also illuminated by Christmas trees, and there’s bridges and rivers and little choke points to auto-negotiate, as well as loads of wild and wacky and always colourful enemies to shoot, but apart from enemies, you’ll soon work out you can also shoot the crates and barrels littering the streets, which produce two types of stars to collect. There’s no indication anywhere about what either does though, and nothing obvious seems to happen in-game or on the couple of meters at the top either, one of which is clearly health, and when you come across a health icon you’ll also know what that is. The multi-coloured one on the other side though? Well, when you were also just trying to work out what all the buttons do, you’ll have fired off your only magic “bomb” by mistake and seen it leaving that meter empty! Which brings us to the big jars with faces you sometimes see coming at you from the distance then probably disappearing behind you! It’s not easy at the start but shoot them enough times before that happens and they might drop a jewel, and if you shoot the jewel it will change colour. Manage to collect it and it will be stacked onto that magic meter, although at this stage you’ll still have no idea what any of it does let alone how it works! Then sometimes these jar-faces have a cage with a fairy in it attached to them that take even more shooting but will eventually add a new fairy to your little posse, which you can also use to do something. Maybe?

I was just thinking an archived copy of the Dreamcast original’s manual might be useful at this point, which I did find, but of course it’s all in Japanese so not much use at all! Absolutely stinks I even had to try though. I’m still not sure what collecting stars does – don’t think it powers-up your regular shot because the default yellow jewel usually does that in these games, but maybe your magic or your fairy attacks and / or how much damage they can shield you from? Or maybe it’s just bonus score! No idea why the game indicates you should shoot certain signs on buildings either. The coloured jewels, however, represent different types of magic you can unleash, and shooting them to change the colour will decide what you get, if you have time before they fly by. There is also a chance that second star type powers this attack up. Or it could even just boost your regular shot more than the other one. Who knows! Just for reference, previous “modern” Cotton games did explain this stuff. On a more positive note, I want to mention what they’ve done with shooting in particular, which was the main issue with the original, and where we now have an extended targeting cone placed well ahead of the front of your broomstick, which makes all the difference. A sensitivity control for your overall movement would have been nice on top but I think that’s partly down to the Switch analog stick too, and you soon get used to it, and once you do, there’s a new-found precision in the controls, enhanced by some subtle snapping and locking, and that simple change has made the game twice as enjoyable. But by no means perfect – it’s still a nightmare trying to keep your weedy starting shot on a specific enemy long enough to kill them, and there’s also no explanation of the targetting indicators that sometimes appear on enemies. Which makes me all the more adamant I’m not forgiving no instructions whatsoever, and if there are some somewhere and I’m just missing them, I’m not forgiving that either, however much I might learn to enjoy the game through my own efforts and experimentation.

You have very little agency over your general direction, although there are occasional mid-boss route choices that more often than not seem to also be made for you – or at least unintentional – but apart from that, just minor, more immediate choices to be made that usually result in slightly different rewards for slightly easier or harder paths. None of its exactly adding to the game experience though, unless you count mischievously trying to force your way where you shouldn’t be, which will often just result in some janky sprite bouncing while it tries to correct itself, or tearing right into a building or something and disappearing for a split-second (or longer if you try really hard to break it)! While all of that is perfectly avoidable though, the concession that’s obviously been made for that new cone crosshair thing is that because it’s out in front of you, it will disappear into objects you haven’t had a chance to try and dodge yet. On a related note, for all the ducking and diving and avoiding you have to do, apart from occasional graphical jank and a vibration on the controller, smashing into stuff doesn’t seem to do your health meter any harm! And speaking of mischievous, did you ever notice on old racing games how it was the road moving and not your car? Similar here with the crosshair and your character! Enough!!! There’s only so long I can bash Cotton for so let’s talk about some good stuff again because, despite everything, once you’ve collected enough of whatever to get a bit of firepower behind you, and worked out it’s hold down fire for that short-time-limited fairy attack, and got a handle on what colour is lightning, what colour is fireball, what colour is wonderful falling star attack and so on, and you’ve got a handle on your movement on top, then this thing is finally a blast! And sometimes even an exhilarating one, as you see impossible waves of the jolliest enemies ever coming relentlessly one after the other from out of the far distance, or are surrounded by these huge psychedelic fireballs and spot a health pickup right in the middle of them that’s worth the risk of going after because if you don’t you’re dead anyway!

The game’s five stages consist of four Willow-producing towns (although they’re way more varied than that suggests) that you need to clear of all the monsters, and the mid-bosses, and the end of level bosses, before you can finally have a go at the castle where the worst of the bad stuff has taken up residence. That might not sound like a lot but each stage is big, and whatever the boss type, they take some taking down too. And then, of course, there’s the traditional Cotton tea-time bonus game at the end of each level, where you need to collect the flying teabags for big points, although as always, there’s an argument for not collecting any at all… Anyway, with all of this, combined with the on-rails nature of the game, I don’t think you really want it any longer – I didn’t time it but we’re talking well over an hour, and even more if you’re still watching the cutscenes by the time you’re getting that far! And if you’re not getting that far, just whack it down to easy and plough through the five credits it’s giving you, and enjoy the spectacle and the variety across the different levels, as well as some truly creative, big-scale bosses! Whether cuddly mutant, giant fish or possessed steam train, they’re pretty fair in the main too, once you know what they’re about, with well telegraphed attacks and phases, both of which can trigger some lovely special effects, where that titular rainbow can really come into its own! Away from bosses though, there are a couple of difficulty spikes that feel unfair – areas where you’re taking damage you can’t see coming, or where you’re taking repeated damage at a faster rate than you can get out of the way of. Stage three, which seems very stingy with health pickups too, is especially guilty of this in more than one section. And worst of all, should your (single life) health meter run down deep into a level, or worse at an end of level boss, you’re going right back to the start with a continue. And as said earlier, that can be a very long way back!

I’ve mostly focussed on the gameplay bit of the remake because that was what needed the most attention but we should also have a bit more of a look at the graphical updates, which definitely deliver a modern sheen but can also be a bit of a mixed bag. The opening level was always gorgeous and it still is, just in a different, almost Pixar (though I’m no expert on that!) way, and perfectly captures the very essence of the early 2D Cotton games – cartoon-gothic, with very solid blocks of bold and contrasting colours, all thoughtfully placed and subtly detailed and lit. The sprites especially really pop, and are so full of character – even the simple cannon fodder types you’ll barely ever get to see up close. It’s all always in motion too, right down to inanimate objects like broomsticks blowing around in the wind, and then there’s all sorts of explosions of light and colour and exaggerated bits of life. That’s mostly the case throughout but there are odd times, such as further into the second stage, where the environment sometimes becomes so sparse and jagged-polygonal that you might think it’s a Nintendo 64 game with a new texture pack chucked at it! Some environments definitely try to hold your interest harder than others, however much variety there is moving from village to sky-island to desert to underwater temple to sunken forest to (a truly magical) castle and so on… And while that’s a bit of a hangover from the original, as one of the pre-release trailers explained, there’s a difference between remaster and remake, so not really any excuse. Which brings me to one more thing I want to mention – missed opportunities to add some real spectacle and turn this rollercoaster ride into a real thrill ride. For example, there’s a bit in the aforementioned stage three where you’re literally bringing the level down around you but without any visual impact or spectacle at all – if you ever played Split/Second: Velocity all the way back in 2010 on PS3 or Xbox 360 then you know exactly what I’m talking about being missing.

There’s certainly nothing missing on the sound front though! The Dreamcast was perfectly capable of studio quality music, and the Cotton series has been very strong in this department from the outset, so no surprise that the soundtrack ticks all the boxes here. It’s like high-energy lounge music, all synths with jazzy piano interludes, or an evolving, multi-instrument sea shanty, or some stabby brass melodies, laid back sax, electro-woodwind, a bit of calypso or some lovely, soulful harmonica in one area too. Okay, none of the above is my cup of tea but it’s a right old melting pot that’s been very well composed and created, and it’s totally inoffensive. It’s also possibly just a remaster of the original soundtrack too but I didn’t compare every track to be sure. Sound effects take a bit of a backseat, and while there’s one for every occasion, in general level play they’re functional at best… And at worst they’re relentless fairy chatter, all in Japanese, with some strange vocal choices, and it will drive you mad! Just remember that advice I gave you in the options menu earlier and you’ll be alright. Some of the bosses do have some wonderful moans and groans though! My favourite is the stage two boss, which is a kind of DIY mecha-turkey, and the awful squawk coming out of that thing’s beak is nothing short of terrifying!

Which I think is a good place to draw proceedings here to a close. And what a weird time it’s been! As you’ve probably noticed, I was jumping back and forth a lot there because it unintentionally turned out being totally unplanned – just me shooting from the hip as I played, which is generally a sign I’m enjoying a game, and for all the gripes I’ve come out with here, I think that’s exactly what I did, and will continue to do. Even if the lack of any direction or instruction whatsoever is still unforgivable! However, if the purpose of this HD remake was to spruce up both the gameplay and how it looks, then that’s what we’ve got, albeit with some persistent jank in both departments, as well as what I think is a general lack of ambition. They’ve stuck a new crosshair in front of your broomstick so you can see what you’re shooting at, and what’s shooting back, and it works, and it definitely fixes the problems of the original, but little more than that. And likewise with the visuals, they shine like crazy but without ever going the extra mile. Overall though, it rights a wrong, so as a Cotton fan, I’d buy it. As a rail-shooter fan, probably not. There have been better ones in the last twenty-four years, and effectively that’s all you’re getting – a rail shooter from the year 2000 that’s not so broken anymore! If you’ve never played Panorama Cotton though…

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