Fire Shark (Arcade)

The Flying Shark(s) are back! And now they really want to fire!

To do: Find unused graphics and music. Continue with regional differences.

Regional Differences#

Like Twin Cobra, the original Japanese version is infamous for being an example of "Toaplan Hell" (a batshit insane difficult shump), but there's a reason behind this: 1989 had a time when arcade operators were putting pressure on developers to make games mercilessly hard as possible to make the most revenue, and this is one of them. The game's difficulty was not the original vision of the developers, but they were able to balance the game like they wanted with the later Genesis port.

When the game was brought overseas, they MASSIVELY toned down the difficulty into a sane and playable state. Toaplan, again, regretted to make the Japanese version insanely difficult, so they released a second version based on the first western release (Version A).

Title Screen#

Japan (Original)	Japan (Re-release)	Europe (Version A)	US
Europe (Version B)	Korea (Version A)	Korea (Version B)	China

General Differences#

The original Japanese release has a number of unique elements that were changed for its second Japanese release, which served as the basis for all the other regional releases.

Respawn System#

In the original release, when a life is lost, the player is sent back to the last checkpoint he reached. In the other releases, the player instantly respawns where he died.

Death Animation#

In the original release, after colliding with an enemy the plane goes up in flames (but it's still controllable for a couple of seconds), then it self-destructs. In the other releases, the plane explodes instantly.

Horizontal Scrolling#

In the original release, the scrolling follows the player. This feature was removed in the other releases.

Continue Screen#

In the original release, there's a unique continue screen with a countdown after getting a Game Over. In the other releases, the option to continue appears during gameplay and there's no countdown. If you take too long to decide, then the game over screen will appear.

Continue Screen Music#

In the original release, there's a unique continue theme.

Maximum Shot Limit#

In the original release, the player can shoot four bullets at a time. In the other releases, it was reduced to three.

Name Entry Limit#

In the original release, names have a six-character limit. In the other releases, it's three.

Collision Detection#

In the original release, the player collision detection is about every 2 frames and the weapon-enemy is about every frame. In the other versions, the player collision detection is increased to 4 frames and the weapon-enemy is increased to 2 frames.