Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark review

One recurring detail in Toaplan’s shooters is military hardware. Tiger-Heli established this trend in 1985, pitting your lone copter against an army of tanks, warships, and gunboats. Two years later, Flying Shark sent an incredibly mobile biplane into a similar setting, while 1989’s Fire Shark intensified the action with bigger weapons and an even more merciless opposition. Yes, some things never change, with Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark celebrating different versions of the last two titles in the series (Tiger-Heli can be found on both Toaplan Arcade Collection Vol. 1 and Toaplan Arcade Garage: Kyukyoku Tiger-Heli).

Undoubtedly, Flying Shark deserves a special place in gaming history. It was Toaplan’s first shooter built around the Motorola 68000 processor, allowing for elaborate enemy formations and a busier battlefield. Meanwhile, the YM3812-powered FM soundtrack provided an punchy accompaniment for all the projectile-dodging action. Visually, details like tanks left tread marks in the sand and destroyed aircraft emitting smoke before falling toward the ground made an impression. Most interesting was the decision to have a wide playfield for the vertically scrolling title, that could shift a bit to the left and right.

Fly the Deadly Skies

Of course, this flourishes would be meaningless without taut play. Nearly four decades on, Flying Shark still understands how to generation tension with some realtively simple components. Your biplane has one progressively widened shot, while destroying complete formations can release power-ups, score bonuses, bombs, and extra lives.

Your bombs are expectedly powerful, but they take a second or two before erupting into a destructive region. They aren’t instant invincibility buttons, and enemies or projectiles just outside the explosion can still ruin your day. Across five stages that continually loop, survival depends on anticipating enemy shots, neutralizing ground units before they can eotate their turrets, and learning when to deploy those mighty payloads.

An Even Deadlier Shark

Fire Shark feels like Toaplan iterating on Flying Shark’s sturdy foundations. Its ten stages are faster, longer, and much more varied, eventually sending your biplane over railways, industrial centers, oceans, and even snowy battlefields. One of the bigger changes is that the sequel supplies three interchangeable weapons. The blue spread shot offers reliable coverage, the green beam delivers some concentrated but dangerously narrow firepower, while the red flamethrower can become a know of burning tendrils that can reach around yoru craft. And yes, watching the red weapon engulf most of the screen is one of the more gratifying sights in Toaplan’s catalog, rivaling Truxton’s skull-bombs.

Pleasingly, there are a few addiitonal details among the pyrotechnic spectacle. “P” icons gradually strengthen your current weapon, “S” pickups increase movement speed, and lightning-shaped Targets combine with your remaining bomb stock when calculating end-of-stage bonuses. Bombs can also be launched and detonated at a chosen distance, rewarding deliberate placement. But powering up raises the dynamic difficulty in the original Japanese version, affecting details like projectile velocity, enemy firing frequency, and how quickly those turrets can track your position. Here, offensive might produces its own danger, which is an fascinating design philosophy.

Leniency If You Need It, Masochism As Well

Given their age, its not surprising that neither game resembles a modern bullet hell. While enemy shots are fast, there are fewer projectiles, a design that goads you into constant movement. That said, Flying Shark is probably the the more manageable game, with a concise loop that encourages improvement with each attempt. Fire Shark is more ambitious, but it’s later stages can feel merciless, with a single error stripping away your offensive power.

But pleasingly, Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark doesn’t demand perfection. Super Easy mode reduces amount of antagonist while automatically dropping a bomb when you are hit. Custom mode provides granular control over your starting equipment, ship speed, and even hit box size. Meanwhile, Arcade Challenge divides stages into smaller sections, allowing for rewinds to learn from your mistakes.

Online leaderboards support downloadable replays, letting you study how expert pilots handle things. There are also multiple scaling modes, screen rotation for vertical monitors, and appropriately nostalgic wallpapers. The only notable blemish is a fixed 10Hz rapid-fire option that can produce an uneven firing cadence. But beyond turbo-fire cycling rates, I could find any missing amenities. Toaplan Arcade Garage pampers you like a five-star hotel.

Variations Aren’t Exactly the Same! Same! Same!

The collections’ six arcade selections can probably be better understood as two games accompanied by different revisions. Flying Shark is the worldwide version, Sky Shark has Romstar’s American title and territory settings, and Hisho Same preserves the Japanese presentation. Their stages and fundamental systems are nearly identical, although nuances like branding, coinage, continue behavior, and some difficulty tuning vary minimally.

The sequel gets more substantial differences. The original Japanese Same! Same! Same! is a one-player variant that returns the player to a checkpoint after death. The two-player revision revision permits simultaneous cooperative play while removing the horizontal shifting. Here, checkpoints are replaced with an immediate respawn, and the level of aggression is slightly lower. Much like how audiophiles catalog and converse over different mixes, the differences are rather small. But it’s difficult not to appreciate M2’s devotion for historical documentation.

Inspecting Gadgets

Naturally, the team does much more than provide a comprehensive compilation. M2 Gadgets fill up the unused space around the playfield with a staggering amount of live information. Panels track score, the next extend, remaining aircraft, bombs, weapon strength, movement speed, enemy-bullet velocity, and the game’s current difficulty. Other instruments preview upcoming items, calculate potential clear bonuses, record controller inputs, identify the music playing, and summarize performance across individual portions of a stage.

A second set of Gadgets turns information into a form of instruction. A scrolling map shows your position, stage segment, checkpoints, hidden items, and recent death locations. Blind-spot warnings announce enemies entering from beyond the visible playfield, while bosses receive health gauges that reveal whether a particular weapon is actually effective. These gadgets bring out the facets hidden deep in the programming and seeing them in action will be a treat for any STG fans.

“How Hardcore Are You?”, asks the DLC

The game’s Wardner DLC is included with the physical edition but sold separately alongside the $34.99 digital release. It adds 1989’s NES version of Sky Shark, which compensates for any technical compromises with creative effects and truly energetic soundtrack. The Japanese Mega Drive edition of Same! Same! Same! and English-language Genesis version of Fire Shark represent the same basic 1990 home adaptation, offering the option for reduced difficulty.

The other four additions in the DLC revolve around Wardner, Toaplan’s 1987 fantasy platformer. There;s the original Japanese arcade release, Wardner no Mori, the North American revision Pyros, and the Japan-only,Famicom Disk System conversion. The three arcade editions are basically similar, although Pyros as a shorter, (and I’d argue overly strict) time limit.

Grab These Hot Wings

Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark’s museum-like dedication is the collections second-best quality. The first is two essential shooters. Flying Shark remains an elegant exercise in shooting and dodging, while Fire Shark turns that undertaking into a ferocious spectacle. Best of all, M2 doesn’t merely reissue both games but it lets players understand why these sharks still have so much bit left in them.

Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark was with review code provided by the publisher
Flying Fire Shark Console versions + Wardner DLC was purchased separately