Parasol Stars

Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III
Japanese PC Engine boxart
Developer(s)	Taito (PC-Engine) Ocean (Other Formats)
Publisher(s)	Taito (PC-Engine) Working Designs (Turbografx 16) Ocean (All other Formats)
Composer(s)	Noriyuki Iwadare
Series	Bubble Bobble
Platform(s)	PC Engine, Amiga, Atari ST, Game Boy, Nintendo Entertainment System
Release	1991
Genre(s)	Platform
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer

Parasol Stars (パラソルスター^?) is a video game by Taito released in 1991. It is a sequel to Rainbow Islands (see below paragraph). It is technically the third game in the Bubble Bobble series.

Unlike many other games in the series, Parasol Stars was never released to arcades - it was originally developed for the NEC PC Engine, and later converted to a number of other home systems. Parasol Stars was misreported as being the third coin-op in the Bubble Bobble series by many magazines at the time, and there are rumours about prototypes for an arcade version. Taito has officially stated that an arcade game was never produced. Mick West (who was the programmer of the Amiga and Atari ST versions) stated that they ported the game directly from the PC Engine by playing it and that he did not know anything about an arcade version.

The game was released in limited quantities in North America for the TurboGrafx-16 by Working Designs. The Game Boy and NES version were published by Ocean Software in 1991, who also published the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST versions in 1992. A ZX Spectrum port was planned, but later cancelled. The game was also planned for the Commodore 64, but it was cancelled as well. Ocean initially explained that the developer's computer was stolen in a burglary, but it was later revealed that the game was scrapped after the freelance developer's wife destroyed said computer in a drunken rage, along with the backups of the work. The compilation release Bubble Bobble featuring Rainbow Islands for the Sega Saturn, Sony PlayStation, and PC was originally going to include Parasol Stars as well, but it was dropped from the lineup mid-development.