Hishouzame



Hishouzame (飛翔鮫, Flying Shark or Sky Shark in North America and Europe) is a vertically scrolling shoot-em up developed by Toaplan in 1987. It was published by Taito in Japan, Romstar in North America and Electocoin in Europe.

It was the third shoot 'em up developed by Toaplan but the first to use the new Motorola 68000 microprocessor. This new processor allowed for more onscreen sprites which allowed the designers at Toaplan to become more creative with enemy patterns and graphical touches. It was also the first Toaplan game to allow players to scroll the screen left or right.

Many ports of Hishouzame were released to many different consoles and often named Flying Shark or Sky Shark in North America and Europe. M2's ShotTriggers division released a port of the game for PS4 and Switch in 2022.

Gameplay Overview
Hishouzame is a prototypical Toaplan shoot 'em up with 8-way joystick movement, a shot button, and a bomb button.

Weapons

 * A (Press): Fires a shot. Tapping A fires many more shots than holding A.
 * A (Hold): Auto fires but the shots do not repeat very fast.
 * B: Launches a bomb. The bombs in this game generate circular fire that only affects that area of the screen. The bombs are not screen clearing and repeatedly damage enemy until the fire disappears. The bombed area also cancels all bullets that enter that area.

Power Item Locations
The red plane formations that drop a power item replace the yellow formations in specifically designated areas depending on the player's current power level:       * Although this area is designated eligible for power item drops at this power level, no such plane formations actually appear here.

Rank
Hishouzame has a simple rank system with a maximum value of 15, and is determined by the formula (area+loop*50)/8 + difficulty with area referring to the player's progress through the game. Rank primarily affects enemy bullet speed and the frequency of enemy attacks. Enemy bullet speed has a maximum value of 21 and follows the formula 13 + rank/2 + loop + power Large enemies also undergo HP scaling: HP = base + rank * 2 + (loop & 15) * 4 + power * 2 This means that enemy HP continues to increase by a small amount (4) with each loop, peaking every 16 loops before suddenly dropping by 60 again to repeat the cycle.

Loops
Hishouzame loops indefinitely but from the second loop on, stage 1 is skipped as it was designed as an easy introductory stage for beginners. The enemy bullet speed increases by 1 each loop until the maximum value of 21 is reached. Eventually an overflow is reached at which point bullets will be given a calculated speed of 0 and become completely stationary. Using the formula above this can be calculated to occur at loop 65512 while at maximum power and rank.

Scoring
Points are awarded by shooting down enemies and blowing up destructible environments like bunkers and mountains. Like most Toaplan games, Hishouzame loops infinitely, and scoring is essentially done by clearing several loops. There are, however, a few details that can improve the player's score on a given loop.

Power Ups and Bombs: Collecting power ups and bombs yields 150 pts each.

End Stage Bonus: 3000 points are awarded for each bomb left over at the end of the stage.



Yellow Planes: Shooting down all yellow planes in a pattern yields 1000 pts. Once fully powered up, the red planes are replaced with yellow planes, providing the player with the ability to increase their score even more.



Stage 3 Boss: While the boat boss in Stage 3 is still motionless, the central area can only be partially damaged but not destroyed. However, the player will still be awarded tick points each time they shoot at the boss, and can improve their score by shooting at it repeatedly. If using a high autofire frequency and staying really close, it is possible to get around 10,000 points from this trick.

Bombs
Since the game takes away all of your bombs at the end of the stage to make you restart with 3 bombs in the following one, and because the game drops many bomb items through the course of the game, the player is greatly encouraged to use them to get rid of the harder enemy formations, especially in the last two stages in higher loops.

While each remaining bomb at the end of a stage is worth 3,000 pts, it is fairly low compared to points earned by sheer survival and clearing multiple loops.

Story and Setting
The arcade version of Hishouzame does not have any type of clear story. The UK version of the arcade game mentions a war that is being lost by "your" side and so they send in the "Flying Shark" to reclaim the lost bases.

The planes in the game are biplanes which would set the game in around World War I. However, the tanks and bomber plane would set the game closer to World War II.

In an interview, Masahiro Yuge states that the Vietnam war movie Apocalypse Now was the inspiration for the setting. A company trip to Thailand also helped form the scenery in the game.

The North American NES version instruction manual tells the story via a comic. It mentions World War II and how the Sky Shark is the last pilot in the battle. He must break through the enemy forces and save the American POW's.

Development History
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Version Differences

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Trivia

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Gallery
See (Template Page)/Gallery for our collection of images and scans for the game.

References & Contributors

 * 1) Primary info provided by Coreo