Flying Shark
Flying Shark, known as Sky Shark in North America, is a 1987 vertically scrolling shooter arcade video game originally developed by Toaplan and published by Taito in Japan, Romstar in North America and Electrocoin in Europe. Controlling the titular biplane, the players must fight endless waves of military vehicles while avoiding collision with their projectiles and other obstacles. The plane has a powerful bomb at its disposal that can clear the screen of enemies when fired. It was the third shoot 'em up game from Toaplan, and their eighth video game overall.
| Flying Shark | |
|---|---|
Japanese arcade flyer | |
| Developer(s) | Toaplan |
| Publisher(s) | |
| Composer(s) | Masahiro Yuge Tatsuya Uemura |
| Series | Shark |
| Platform(s) | Arcade, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, FM Towns, MS-DOS, Nintendo Entertainment System, X68000, ZX Spectrum |
| Release |
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| Genre(s) | Scrolling shooter |
| Mode(s) |
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Flying Shark was ported to multiple systems, each version created by different third-party developers. The game proved to be a success for Toaplan among players in Japanese arcades and garnered mostly positive reception from western critics, but the game was met with mixed response from magazines, specifically the home conversions. In 1989, a sequel titled Fire Shark was released. The rights to the title are owned by Tatsujin, a Japanese company formed by Masahiro Yuge.