Flying Fire Shark brings classic shoot ’em ups to Switch and PS4

Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark is now available in the West for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, bringing together Flying Shark, Fire Shark and a slightly bewildering number of regional versions of both. That might sound like a niche distinction. In practice, though, this is a fairly substantial collection. Developed by M2, Flying Fire Shark includes six arcade versions across its two headline games, plus extra console ports, additional Toaplan titles and the sort of practice tools that have become a familiar part of M2’s retro releases. So, what exactly is in it?

Flying Shark comes in three flavours

Flying Shark first appeared in arcades in 1987. It’s a vertically scrolling shooter built around a simple setup. You control a biplane, the screen keeps moving, and increasingly unpleasant groups of tanks, aircraft, ships and gun emplacements try to remove you from it.

The controls are equally direct. You’ve got your main weapon and a limited supply of bombs. That’s about it. The difficulty comes from learning where enemies appear, when to use those bombs and how to avoid getting boxed in once the screen starts filling with bullets.

The game had different names depending on where you played it. Japan got Hisho Same. Much of the rest of the world knew it as Flying Shark. In North America, it appeared as Sky Shark. Flying Fire Shark includes all three arcade versions.

That matters because regional arcade releases weren’t always identical. Difficulty settings, player behaviour and other small details could change between territories, so having multiple versions gives the collection a little more depth than simply bundling one ROM and calling it done. Flying Shark also travelled widely outside arcades. It appeared on the NES and a long list of home computers, including the Commodore 64, Amiga, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST and Amstrad CPC.

Fire Shark turns up the pressure

Fire Shark followed in 1989. In Japan, it’s known as Same! Same! Same!, and it keeps the same basic structure as Flying Shark while leaning harder into weapon upgrades and heavier screen-filling attacks. It’s still a vertically scrolling shooter. You’re still piloting an aircraft. And you’re still spending a lot of time trying to work out which incoming threat is about to ruin your run. But Fire Shark feels busier.

Weapons become more important, enemy formations get denser and the game pushes you to keep moving while maintaining enough firepower to deal with what’s coming next. Flying Fire Shark includes the worldwide Fire Shark arcade release, the Japanese Same! Same! Same! version and a separate Japanese two-player arcade version. That brings the headline arcade line-up to six versions in total.

There’s more than just the two shooters

Teki-Paki is also included as free downloadable content. It’s a Toaplan puzzle game from 1991, so it sits slightly outside the collection’s main shoot ’em up focus. Still, it’s another piece of the company’s arcade catalogue and gives the package something completely different to play between runs.

The physical edition goes further. It includes extra downloadable games covering both console conversions and several versions of Wardner. Among them are Sky Shark for NES, the Japanese Mega Drive version of Same! Same! Same! and Fire Shark for Genesis.

Wardner gets an even broader showing, with the Japanese Wardner no Mori arcade release, the worldwide Wardner version and the US release Pyros. The Famicom Disk System version of Wardner no Mori is also included, although that one remains in Japanese. It’s worth paying attention to the edition you’re buying, then. The main arcade collection is the same attraction, but the physical version folds in those seven additional DLC titles.

M2 has added plenty of ways to practise

This isn’t just a case of putting old arcade games inside a menu. M2 has added several options designed to make the shooters easier to learn without changing what the original Arcade Mode is trying to do. Super Easy Mode does exactly what the name suggests. It lowers the pressure and gives players more room to understand enemy placement, weapons and stage layouts.

Then there’s Arcade Challenge. This splits stages into smaller sections, so you can practise specific parts instead of replaying the entire game just to reach the bit that’s giving you trouble. There’s also a rewind function, which makes it much quicker to retry a mistake.

M2’s usual on-screen gadgets are here too. These can show information about incoming enemies, hidden elements and items that are about to appear. You don’t have to use them, but they’re useful if you’re trying to understand why a particular section keeps going wrong. Purists can simply stick to Arcade Mode.

Two very different Toaplan shooters in one package

Flying Shark and Fire Shark come from a period when Toaplan was becoming closely associated with fast, demanding vertical shooters. Flying Shark is the earlier and more restrained game. Its patterns are comparatively readable, its weapons are straightforward and much of the challenge comes from positioning. Fire Shark is louder.

It adds bigger weapons, denser enemy formations and a faster sense of escalation. You can see the connection between the two immediately, but they don’t feel interchangeable. That’s what makes this particular pairing work. Rather than presenting one game and its sequel as near-identical curiosities, Flying Fire Shark shows how quickly Toaplan’s arcade design changed between 1987 and 1989.

Flying Fire Shark is out now

Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark is available now for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. Depending on the game, it supports one or two players, and the collection includes English in-game text alongside the original arcade releases.

It’s a fairly dense package. You get Flying Shark, Fire Shark, their regional variants, a puzzle game, several console ports and a sizeable group of M2 practice features. If you mainly want the two arcade shooters, they’re both here in several forms.