A respectable modernization of four iconic arcade shooters from a dominant player in the genre captures the essence of the genre’s ascent into bullet hell.
The 10 years that Toaplan spent creating games left a huge legacy. After a string of seminal 2D shooters, the team’s victorious 1993 title Batsugun helped to usher in the bullet hell period. Following Toaplan’s final closure, its former employees founded or assumed prominent roles in other shooting game studios, including Takumi, Gazelle, Raizing/Eighting, and the formidable Cave.
Even with those contributions, Toaplan would probably not be too proud of their most well-known work. Within the European Mega Drive version of their game Zero Wing, the notorious mistranslation ‘all your base are belong to us’ has become a touchstone of popular culture, beyond the boundaries of studio, genre, and even video game medium.
However, several of the studio’s titles have made a comeback in recent years. Developer-publisher M2 has already ported a few Toaplan shooters as part of their ‘ShotTriggers’ series, which has shown to be a consistently strong series. With the addition of vintage gaming expert Bitwave Games, PC gamers may now enjoy Toaplan Arcade Shoot ‘Em Up Collection Vol. 1.
This collection takes you back to a period of four years in the midst of the Japanese studio’s existence, when Toaplan’s team was still figuring out the basics of what would eventually become bullet hell. This implies that there won’t be a lot of bullet clouds or really intricate scoring schemes here. Rather, you get to see how Toaplan’s creators began to push the genre into more exciting new directions and break away from the norm of more conventional shooters between 1987 and 1990.
Delivered as a Steam bundle, and playable individually without needing to save the entire collection, Bitwave’s first Toaplan volume includes the relentless military shooter Twin Cobra, the never-before-ported run ‘n’ gun hybrid Out Zone, the stunningly realized Truxton, and the horizontal scroller Zero Wing, which creates memes.
Fundamentally speaking, the ports are robust and can compete with the pace and functionality of the original arcade games. You’d have to be quite discerning to find a significant difference between Bitwave’s digital version and my beloved arcade PCB version of Running Out Zone. that are the top players that can execute various strategic plays in under one second? They could be more sensitive to little changes than other gamers. With a few oddities in the arrangement of various audio and sprite elements, they are fun ports based on the hardware that is available.
And how are games spreading? Every one has plenty to love.
Truxton’s sci-fi vertical is really well-made, with the original developers obviously investing a great deal of time and effort into it. It has a vibrant, dramatic score, and each credit feels like a unique trip. Here, the pixel graphics is particularly magnificent, given to life by captivating vehicle and environment designs, a wealth of tonal individuality, and an astounding demonstration of what could be achieved with then-current visual methods like parallax scrolling. Truxton’s production quality is so exquisite that it’s difficult to realize it was released in 1988. Although Truxton isn’t extremely difficult, playing it makes you realize how much of an impact it had on the style and presentation of following genre works by Cave and its peers. It’s also a really difficult creature, but it’s so much fun to play that you’ll probably be grinning even if it keeps bringing you back to the game screen.
On the other hand, Zero Wing was probably influenced by the popularity of the arcade icons Gradius and R-Type. It is undoubtedly influenced by the precedent established by earlier “horis,” with its horizontal scrolling and somewhat cramped level design, yet it manages to seem far more original and lively. While Zero Wing moves and plays with an intensity more akin to subsequent vertically scrolling 2D shooters, it is perhaps the closest to R-Type. Originally, the goal of the game was to stay an internal project wherein new employees could get experience and become familiar with the Toaplan approach. It’s a tad lengthy—eight levels may get tedious in this genre—but it’s so entertaining and dynamic to play that you can easily overlook its little drawbacks.
And then there’s Twin Cobra from 1987. It’s the most traditional game in this collection and the oldest as well. Twin Cobra capitalizes on the intense military fetishism popularized in the genre by Capcom’s massively successful 1942, albeit with a little increase in pace and bullet count. To be honest, it’s still really harsh and hasn’t aged as well as its collection companions. It’s not like Twin Cobra is a terrible game or something. It just seems more familiar in tone, style, and attitude. If you’re nostalgic for the military shooters of the 1980s, Twin Cobra at least adds a bit more vigor. During this time period, there were dozens of shooters that concentrated on tanks, jet fighters, and heavy bombers.
Out Zone, though, has to be the standout feature. This creative work achieves something truly unique by defying a few of the stringent guidelines that comprise the shmup design pattern. With its immersive cyborg soldier experience, Out Zone is equal parts run ‘n’ gun and two-dimensional shooter. It scrolls vertically, but if you move the cursor, it stops scrolling. Multidirectional shooting is possible with some weapons, and there are several ground-based hazards, such trenches to fall into. The key to the play strategy is to align the optimal weapon behavior with the surrounding environment. When adversaries approach from behind in portions that resemble mazes, you might want a multidirectional shooter or a fixed forward spread shot to maneuver around obstructions while maintaining the arsenal facing up screen. Additionally, a mechanism for energy conservation keeps you alert and moving forward out of concern that you won’t have enough power to continue.
In addition to having a presentation that is comparable to much of what Truxton offers, Out Zone has a wealth of personality and vitality. Furthermore, the package’s attraction is further enhanced by the fact that it has never previously been formally published outside of arcades.
Now, the release of most of these old collections naturally prompts a chorus of voices praising emulation and alternatives such as a Raspberry Pi. Finally, we have the extra features that Toaplan Arcade Shoot ‘Em Up Collection Vol. 1 adds on top of the games. Every shooter receives customizable game and display settings, internet leaderboards, and other ‘assists’ including highlight and hitbox reduction. For those who are free of the self-imposed constraints that come with staying too long at arcades, there is even a rewind button.
The Toaplan Arcade Shoot ‘Em Up Collection Vol. 1 eventually offers four fantastic, unique shooters with all the necessary modernization and quality of life elements that are now required, despite the menus being a touch confusing at times and the reassigning of buttons for sticks being a little confusing. or three really talented shooters plus one who lags somewhat due to aging.
The problem is that shooting game gamers now have quite high expectations because of the bar that M2 set. Bitwave’s effort does feature ‘normal’ and ‘hard’ variations in addition to the difficulty options found in each game. However, unlike M2’s ShotTriggers series, there are no completely redesigned “arranges,” and the scanline, data display, and associated features are a touch simplistic. Put another way, in terms of modernization, it’s not quite up to the remarkable caliber of M2’s work.
Nevertheless, Bitwave has skillfully delivered four significant, occasionally disregarded jewels that are essential to the history of arcade games to Western gamers. There is an enormous amount of fun and excitement packed into these games, and just one of them gets a little monotonous after a while. The four games do function well as a coherent whole, but a single release that included all the games plus part of the background and history that links them would have been far more alluring than a package.
Are all of these games yours? Try Truxton and Out Zone, everyone. Furthermore, this bundle does a great job of capturing the evolution of the 2D shooter genre from its minimalist beginnings to the maximalist excess of real bullet hell—a part of game design that is all too frequently ignored if you have any interest in the history of arcade games or 2D shooters.