Creator / Toaplan

Toaplan Co., Ltd. (aka Toa Plan) 『東亜プラン』 was a Japanese company which developed arcade games, mostly Shoot Em Ups, from 1984 to 1994.

Most of Toaplan's earlier games were distributed by Taito. Their later shoot-em-ups put more and more bullets on the screen, culminating in Batsugun, the Trope Maker for Bullet Hell shooters.

After Toaplan's demise, many of its employees went to CAVE, 8ing/Raizing, Takumi and Gazelle. The rights to Toaplan's games are now property of TATSUJIN (a company named after the Japanese version of Truxton), so stay tuned for modern ports of them. TATSUJIN itself would later be acquired by Embracer as part of a mass buyout of existing game companies.

In 2021, M2 began porting Toaplan games to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch under the Toaplan Arcade Garage series, a sub-series of the M2 ShotTriggers lineup. M2 have stated that they plan to port almost every arcade Toaplan release.

Bitwave is additionally porting some of the Toaplan games to PC; the first batch of games was released on February 14, 2023, and includes OutZone, Truxton, Twin Cobra, and Zero Wing. Tatsuya Uemura (who founded TATSUJIN), Naoki Horii (president of M2), and Martin Lindell (senior advisor for Embracer) have reassured fans that the Embracer buyout will not affect the existing Toaplan Arcade Garage pipeline, and that M2 is still in charge of it.

In 2022, Blaze Entertainment started releasing Toaplan Arcade Compilation Re-release cartridges for their Evercade line of retro game consoles and handheld systems. The first volume was released on December 14, 2022, while the second volume was released on April 28, 2023.

The Taito Egret II Mini microconsole features ports of some of Toaplan's games, in particular Twin Cobra and Truxton. The Astro City V microconsole by Sega also features modern ports of many of Toaplan's games^{Which ones} Truxton, Fire Shark, OutZone, Truxton II, Dogyuun, V-V, Batsugun. It was released in July 2022.

In December 2021, a Kickstarter campaign for the documentary ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO TOAPLAN^note named after the "All your base are belong to us" meme from Zero Wing was launched, with Joseph Pierce as director, Ilya Kay (known for his YouTube channel Shmup Junkie) as co-director, Mark Bussler (of Classic Game Room fame) as the narrator for the English-language version, and former Toaplan staff member Tatsuya Uemura as advisor. The campaign raised ¥12,993,485 out of its ¥8,500,000 goal and is projected for a 2024 release.

In September 2023, 20 years after the release of Batsugun, TATSUJIN announced a new game in the form of Truxton Extreme (Tatsujin Extreme in Japan), a sequel to Truxton II for the PlayStation 5.

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Games developed by Toaplan:

Shoot 'em ups

• Batsugun
• Dogyuun
• Final Star Force
• Fire Shark (also known as Shark! Shark! Shark!)
• Sky Shark (also known as Flying Shark)
• Fixeight
• Hellfire (1989)
• Out Zone
• Performan
• Slap Fight (known in North America as ALCON)
• Tiger Heli
• Truxton (known in Japan as TATSUJIN)
  • Truxton II (known in Japan as Tatsujin-ou)
• Twin Cobra (known in Japan as Kyuukyoku Tiger)
• Twin Hawk
• V-V (pronounced "Vee Five", known outside Japan as Grind Stormer)
• Vimana
• Zero Wing

Other games

• Demon's World
• Guardian (known in Japan as Get Star)
• Knuckle Bash
• Rally Bike
• Snow Bros
• Teki Paki
• Wardner

Toaplan Arcade Garage rereleases:

1. Kyukyoku Tiger Heli (October 28, 2021)
   • Tiger Heli (Arcade, Famicom, and NES versions)
   • Twin Cobra (1P arcade Kyukyoku Tiger, 2P arcade Kyukyoku Tiger, arcade Twin Cobra, PC Engine, Famicom, NES, JP Mega Drive, and Genesis versions)
   • Guardian (Arcade Guardian and arcade Get Star versions)
2. Hishou Same! Same! Same! (April 28, 2022)
   • Sky Shark (Arcade Hishouzame, arcade Sky Shark, arcade Flying Shark, and NES versions)
   • Fire Shark (1P arcade Same! Same! Same!, 2P arcade Same!, arcade Fire Shark, JP Mega Drive Same!, and Genesis versions)
   • Wardner (Arcade Wardner no Mori, arcade Wardner, arcade Pyros, and FDS versions)
3. Zero Fire (July 20, 2023)
   • Zero Wing (1P & 2P arcade, PC Engine CD-ROM², JP & EU Mega Drive versions)
   • Hellfire (1P & 2P arcade, PC Engine CD-ROM², JP Mega Drive, and Genesis versions)
   • Demon's World / Horror Story (Arcade 'A' and 'B and PC Engine CD-ROM² versions)

• Teki Paki (October 28, 2021) - A free download comes with every purchase of a Toaplan Arcade Garage title.

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