Toaplan Shooters

[Discoalucard]

This has been a long while in the works, and it's still not QUITE done, but this is an expansive article covering all 18 of Toaplan's shooters:

www.hardcoregaming101.net/toaplan/toaplan.htm

I still need to add more screenshots, some music files and some links, which will be done before the site updates sometime this weekend.

[ReyVGM]

Some guy emailed me a while ago telling me that the Genesis Truxton had like 5 endings, each of them given after beating the game up to five times. It's either that or that you get the real ending after beating the game 5 times in a row.

I haven't tried it yet though.

[salahmander]

Flying Shark DID get a console port, it's called Sky Shark and it's on the NES

[salahmander]

Feb 5, 2011 16:17:13 GMT -5 ReyVGM said:

Some guy emailed me a while ago telling me that the Genesis Truxton had like 5 endings, each of them given after beating the game up to five times. It's either that or that you get the real ending after beating the game 5 times in a row.

I haven't tried it yet though.

Truxton indeed has 5 endings, the game ends at the 5th loop,

[Discoalucard]

Alright, added those bits in and fixed an extremely silly typo.

This article covers so much stuff that there's bound to be a few things missing here or there, so if there's anything else feel free to post.

[justjustin]

Great article! A very thorough introduction to some of the best and most influential shooters ever made.

There are just a couple things I want to clarify. For Truxton, the 2up does not come from one of those levers, but a regular power-up container. You still get the 1ups from the levers. Also, the five different endings are for the Genesis release only. The way its written seems like it applies to the arcade, too. The arcade version loops infinitely, gradually increasing the difficulty (usually just bullet speed and rate of enemy fire) starting from level 1 each time. I think all Toaplan shooters do this except for Batsugun, although some loops start from level 2. I can't specify which games off the top of my head though... If I find out for sure I'll let you know. I think that's a trademark quality of Toaplan worth mentioning in some way.

It's not necessary for the article, but Taito released a "Super Shooting" laserdisc in Japan. It shows high-level play of Kyukyoku Tiger, Hishozame and Tatsujin (1cc runs, basically). The Tatsujin one is especially interesting because it's being played on loop 6! It takes about 3 hours and 45 minutes of straight playing to get that far. An absolute treat for any fan. You can add a link if you want.

Here's part 1 (of 9) of a rip on YouTube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dnAYQqFTFw
Not the greatest quality, but glad it's there.

[KeeperBvK]

Slap Fight or ALCON (Allied League of Cosmic Nations) is a very influential game, and is credited with having inspired bullet dodging in many modern manic shooters.

This makes two questions arise to me:
- Where does the name ALCON come in? Is it the name of the Western computer ports? Is it also the name of an eventual Western arcade release (if there even is one)?
- Could you please go into detail a bit about how exactly SLap Fight influented modern shooters? I can only deduce that enemies attack in a somewhat choreographed way, but it'd be nice to hear a bit more.

[Gendo Ikari]

Very complete, and I like how it illustrates the growth of Toaplan from the first modest games (although I have good memories of Twin Cobra) to some pearls of the genre, paving the way for Cave, Raizing and the likes (pity that now only Cave among them is still here making shmups). Out of curiosity, I checked the emulation status of some games and saw that it hasn't progressed since a few years ago: Fixeight is emulated only through a bootleg and Batsugun is still badly emulated. At least it has the Saturn port; Dogyuun has none and is still silent, Sadly.

Toaplan has a special place in me thanks to a non-shooting game: Snow Bros. A Bubble Bobble ripoff, surely, but IMO much better than the many ones by Data East!

[KeeperBvK]

The Flying Shark system list is missing the NES.

[ReyVGM]

Feb 7, 2011 5:55:16 GMT -5 Gendo Ikari said:

Out of curiosity, I checked the emulation status of some games and saw that it hasn't progressed since a few years ago: Fixeight is emulated only through a bootleg and Batsugun is still badly emulated. At least it has the Saturn port; Dogyuun has none and is still silent, Sadly.

I think you have a very old mameinfo.dat because all of those games have had lots of fixes in the last 5 or 8 MAME versions. Problems with sprites and sound have already been fixed for Toaplan games.

[susanismyalias]

Feb 7, 2011 9:49:26 GMT -5 KeeperBvK said:

The Flying Shark system list is missing the NES.

Should the article list DOS as well? That's what I recall playing it on as a child.

[vetus]

Feb 7, 2011 12:52:49 GMT -5 ReyVGM said:

I think you have a very old mameinfo.dat because all of those games have had lots of fixes in the last 5 or 8 MAME versions. Problems with sprites and sound have already been fixed for Toaplan games.

Since I had the same problem when I asked for help from another forum they advised me to try ThunderMAME32+. Apart from one game (don't remeber which one, I'll check out another time) the other games I tried run with sound fine (Batsugun included).

[Discoalucard]

I'll have to give them another go. I couldn't get Dogyuun working at all because apparently it was downgraded several releases back, and even older versions didn't seem to want to work with it anymore. I found a post on the Shmups forum mentioning the same problem but they didn't have a solution.

[justjustin]

I was in the process of typing a post about which Toaplan games still didn't have sound and came across this: mamedev.emulab.it/haze/2011/01/20/who-let-the-dogyuun-out/

So I guess Batsugun, Dogyuun, V-V, FixEight and Knuckle Bash have full sound now. That just leaves Fire Shark, Ghox, and Teki Paki, right? Pretty badass, been waiting like 3 years for this to happen.

[splatter]

The A History of Toaplan page linked to at the end of the article is actually an altered form of incognoscente's post in this thread at shmupsforum. I'm not sure if it appears on insomnia with incog's consent, or if (like EOJ's Cave reviews) it was pirated and reworded by that site's owner. I know it looks nicer to link to an "article" instead of a message board, but unless incog says otherwise, I think it would be better to link to the content that we know is original.

I also think HG101 linking to insomnia is like BBC linking to Stormfront, but the company this site chooses to associate itself with doesn't really have anything to do with this article.