There is something wonderfully uncompromising about an old-school arcade shoot ’em up. No sprawling tutorials, no character customisation screen, no forty-minute opening cinematic explaining why you are the chosen one. You get a plane, a button, a sky full of enemies, and the sinking realisation that somebody at Toaplan really did not want you to have an easy afternoon. Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark understands that appeal perfectly, preserving two hugely influential vertical shooters while surrounding them with an impressive collection of modern tools designed to make these arcade relics considerably more approachable.
For anyone unfamiliar with the Shark series, this collection brings together Flying Shark from 1987 and Fire Shark from 1989, two games that helped establish Toaplan as one of the most important names in the golden age of Japanese arcade shooting games. These are games built around simplicity, precision and repetition. You fly upwards, shoot absolutely everything that moves, collect power-ups, dodge increasingly vicious attacks, and try desperately to stay alive long enough to see the next boss.
What makes Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark special is that it does not attempt to disguise the age of these games. Instead, M2 treats them as important pieces of arcade history while giving modern players the tools they need to understand why they mattered. The result is a collection that feels both wonderfully authentic and surprisingly welcoming.
Back to the Arcade
Flying Shark is the more restrained of the two games, although calling anything Toaplan-related restrained probably needs a little context. The basic premise is deliciously straightforward. Take control of your aircraft and blast your way through vertically scrolling battlefields packed with enemy planes, tanks, boats and increasingly intimidating military installations.
The brilliance lies in how carefully everything has been balanced. Enemy formations are placed with purpose, power-ups arrive at carefully judged moments, and the screen constantly asks you to think about where you are going rather than simply where you are shooting. The action might initially look basic, but spend some time with it and the craftsmanship becomes obvious.
Then there is Fire Shark, which takes the foundation of its predecessor and gleefully turns the volume up. Weapons become more spectacular, enemy formations more aggressive, and the screen can quickly resemble a fireworks display with none of the comforting knowledge that fireworks are supposed to be harmless. There is an exhilarating brutality to the experience, particularly when your upgraded weapon tears through multiple enemies at once.
Neither game needs a complicated story to keep you moving forward. The attraction is the immediate feedback of destroying an enemy, collecting a power-up, surviving a difficult formation and pushing further into the stage. It is arcade design stripped down to its most addictive ingredients.
Easy to Learn, Brutal to Master
The difficulty is where Flying Fire Shark reveals its heritage. These games were created for arcades, where difficulty was part of the business model and learning enemy patterns was something players were expected to master through repeated attempts. The Arcade Modes retain that wonderfully ruthless character, and newcomers may initially wonder whether the game has a personal objection to their continued existence.
Thankfully, M2 has not simply dumped these classics onto modern hardware and walked away. The inclusion of Super Easy Mode makes an enormous difference. It allows inexperienced players to learn the rhythm of the games without being immediately crushed beneath an avalanche of bullets, enemy aircraft and bad decisions.
That is important because there is an enormous difference between making a game easier and making it more accessible. Flying Fire Shark does not fundamentally compromise what makes these games interesting. Instead, the easier setting provides a bridge into the experience. Once you become comfortable with enemy behaviour, power-up management and movement, you can gradually increase the challenge and begin chasing those increasingly satisfying high scores.
The games also demonstrate why memorisation has always been such an important part of the shmup genre. You eventually begin to remember where enemies appear, where dangerous formations arrive, and when to resist the temptation to grab that power-up. What initially feels chaotic slowly becomes a sequence of recognisable patterns, and there is something deeply satisfying about that transformation.
M2 Gadgets Are the Real Treasure
The real star of this collection might not be either game. It might be everything M2 has built around them.
The M2 Gadgets provide a wealth of information alongside the action, offering useful intelligence on enemies, items, scoring and other aspects of the games. For veterans, these features add an extra layer of analysis. For newcomers, they help explain what is happening when the screen becomes a spectacular mess of bullets and explosions.
This is exactly the sort of preservation work M2 has become famous for. The company clearly understands that preserving an arcade game is about more than ensuring the original software runs correctly. It is also about preserving the knowledge and context surrounding that software.
The Arcade Challenge mode is another excellent addition. Stages can be broken down into smaller sections, allowing you to practise particularly troublesome encounters rather than repeatedly playing an entire game just to reach the part that keeps destroying you. The rewind function is equally valuable, especially when learning difficult patterns.
There is a wonderful sense of progression here. Instead of simply throwing yourself at a game and hoping you eventually become better, you can isolate problems, practise them and gradually build the skills required for a one-credit clear. That is a much more rewarding way to approach a famously demanding genre.
The Beauty of Simplicity
Visually, these games are a fascinating reminder that graphical complexity is not the same as visual effectiveness. The pixel art may look primitive compared with modern shooters, but the clarity of the presentation remains excellent. Enemy aircraft are immediately recognisable, explosions provide satisfying visual feedback, and the stages are designed so that important information rarely gets lost.
M2’s presentation options also let you decide exactly how authentic you want the experience to feel. There is something undeniably satisfying about recreating the atmosphere of an old arcade cabinet, complete with display options that mimic the characteristics of classic screens.
The ability to use TATE orientation is particularly welcome for a vertically scrolling shooter. When the screen is arranged properly, the additional vertical space feels natural and gives the games the presentation they were always designed to have. It is one of those features that might sound insignificant on paper but makes a considerable difference when you actually start playing.
The sound has aged remarkably well too. The crack of gunfire, explosions and power-up effects still possess that wonderfully immediate arcade character. The music sits perfectly beneath the action, providing momentum without distracting from the constant stream of visual information.
A History Lesson You Can Play
What I particularly appreciate about Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark is that it does not treat its games like dusty museum exhibits. These are pieces of gaming history, certainly, but they remain enjoyable in their own right.
Flying Shark demonstrates the elegance of early vertical shmup design, while Fire Shark shows how that formula could be pushed towards something considerably more aggressive. Playing them together makes the evolution between the two immediately apparent and gives the collection an educational quality without ever becoming dry or academic.
There is also a beautiful sense of honesty to the design. These games do not pretend that you will master them immediately. They ask you to learn, fail, remember and try again. In an era when many games are terrified of letting players experience genuine failure, there is something refreshing about a title that simply shrugs, blows up your aircraft and effectively says, “Better luck next time.” Strangely enough, that is where much of the fun comes from.
Still Flying After All These Years
There are certainly elements of the experience that may frustrate modern players. The difficulty can be severe, particularly once you move beyond the gentler settings, and the core gameplay loop has changed little over time. Players seeking elaborate progression systems, narrative campaigns, or constantly changing mechanics will find very little here.
But that misses the point. Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark is not trying to compete with contemporary bullet hell shooters on their own terms. It presents two foundational arcade games exactly as they were intended, while providing an impressive toolkit that makes them easier to appreciate today.
The result is a collection that feels lovingly assembled rather than simply packaged. M2’s attention to detail shines throughout, from the presentation options and helpful gadgets to the training tools and multiple versions of the games. Whether you are an experienced shmup player chasing a one-credit clear or somebody who has never managed to survive more than thirty seconds in a vertical shooter, there is a way in. More importantly, there is a reason to keep coming back.
Verdict
Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark is a superb celebration of two hugely influential shoot ’em ups and an excellent example of how classic arcade games should be preserved. Flying Shark and Fire Shark remain tight, demanding and remarkably addictive, while M2’s extensive collection of gadgets, practice options and accessibility features gives them relevance far beyond simple nostalgia.
This is arcade gaming distilled into something wonderfully pure. You shoot, dodge, learn, explode, swear, laugh, press start and do it all again. There is no unnecessary padding and no attempt to hide the fact that mastery takes patience. For fans of the genre, that is precisely why it remains so compelling.
Whether you approach it as a piece of arcade history or simply as a damn good shoot ’em up, Toaplan Arcade Garage: Flying Fire Shark deserves a place in any serious shmup collection. It is fast, unforgiving, beautifully preserved and, above all, enormous fun.
