GOTD 6/12/2016: Sky Shark (NES)

[celerystalker]

Sky Shark on the NES is a vertically scrolling shooter ported from Toaplan's arcade game, Flying Shark, which is the predecessor to the arcade/Sega Genesis shooter, Fire Shark (http://forum.digitpress.com/forum/sh...016-Fire-Shark). In a style similar to Capcom's 194X series, you fly a World War II-style fighter plane against myriad enemy planes, tanks, and battleships. Armed only with your plane's gun and a stock of bombs, only a true flying ace will take down the five stages and their bosses to end the conflict and bring peace.

Sky Shark is by most standards a very direct, bare-bones shooter. Default controls require mashing the fire button to keep shooting, so a turbo controller can save you a ton of strain. The B button drops bombs, which do major damage with the added bonus of clearing any enemy bullets on screen, so they can be used defensively as well. Your guns are powered up by grabbing "S" icons, which are earned by blowing up entire formations of red/orange planes before they exit the screen, and you can collect up to six for maximum firepower. Extra bombs come from "B" icons, which are usually dropped by large planes or ground artillery. That's pretty much all there is to it control-wise, but that doesn't mean it's easy.

As a matter of fact, Sky Shark is tough. It doesn't use bullet hell patterns and giant bosses to overwhelm you, but instead exercises some insidious trickery to take you down. Where the game is its most devious is in that it likes to goad you into position by throwing tanks and boats toward the edge of the screen, then sending a plane up your ass or swooping in a formation of speedy blue plane fire, leaving you no time to react. You're often better off staying toward the center of the screen, but playing it too safe will keep you from reaping power-ups. It can be a tricky little bastard, and your hit box is a tad bigger than you might think if you're accustomed to more modern shooters, so if you're rusty, be ready for an ass-kicking.

Graphically, Sky Shark is pretty average. While it doesn't really push the hardware with complex sprites or elaborate backgrounds, it does play and scroll quickly and smoothly. There can be a touch of flicker when a lot of bullets appear at once, but I never found it to be a game breaker. With five stages, it's a short game, but it does continue looping afterward to play for high score, and you do score a free life every 50,000 points. Altogether, it's a quality shooter that offers up a nice challenge and solid music.

Played this one?

[Emperor Megas]

I've never played the NES version, but the original arcade game was a huge part of my arcade rotation in Jr. High School. There was an upright cab near my school and a sit down cabinet with a flight stick in the arcade downtown, but I preferred the upright cab because it had better controls.

Sky Shark was the game that introduced me to the 'ramped up difficulty when you power up' trope in shooters. The larger your spread shot, the faster the enemy bullets travel and the stronger the multi-hit enemies become. You sacrifice damage-power for range of fire every time you power up. Sky Shark (along with 1942) is responsible for my habit of almost never using bombs, even when I should, because of the bonus you receive for remaining bomb stock. The only thing I ever use the bombs for in shooters is to remove bullets from the playfield.

Two of my favorite things about Sky Shark were the way they'd randomly change a formations of red or yellow bonus planes to a formation of blue planes that would reward you with a 1UP if you destroyed them all. This could happen twice if your game lasted long enough, but I think that was the per game limit. I loved the randomness of it. The other thing I really loved about Sky Shark was the way enemy fighters would go crashing to Earth if you destroyed them from a distance, but would explode into a cloud of smoke if you destroyed them at close range. Also, planes downed from a distance could destroy ground enemies if they crashed into them. Most people probably didn't even notice, but back then this was a lot more attention to detail than other games of the sort offered.

I wonder if the NES version retains this stuff? Right off top it seems there are major aesthetic differences. I had no idea that the NES version changed the WWI era biplanes of the arcade game to WWII era fighter planes. I used to really hate NES ports of arcade games that changed things up. It actually kept me from playing a lot of (probably great) ports, because I was such an arcade purest then. Now I actually appreciate ports that offer a varied experience.

[celerystalker]

Most of what you mentioned was not retained in the NES version. The crashing animation is completely absent for both the player and enemy planes, none of which appear to be bi-planes. I did not encounter the formation swap in my replay, and don't recall seeing it in earlier plays. It's pretty stripped down from the sound of it, though I've never had the chance to play the arcade game unfortunately. That cockpit cabinet sounds really great!

[Niku-Sama]

I have this on nes and i have to say it's OK but very average in my mind. It kind of almost seems like it was a "ww2 is hot note in video games" cash grab on nes

[celerystalker]

I have this on nes and i have to say it's OK but very average in my mind. It kind of almost seems like it was a "ww2 is hot note in video games" cash grab on nes

It's no Gun*Nac or Gradius, but as a Fire Shark fan, it's fun to see the related gameplay. It's not one of the top flight shooters on the system, but it scrolls better and plays faster than many of its contemporaries. I'd recommend it to shooter enthusiasts and to people who like exploring the library, but if you completely missed it, you're not missing out on something to be upset about.

[Emperor Megas]

You can probably see a lot of the stuff I'm talking about in this vid. I don't think there were any differences between Flying Shark and Sky Shark besides the region they were released in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80R0eyAiJZY

I forgot to mention how awesome it was to literally blow the roof off of buildings and destroy the ground forces inside. This was all cutting edge stuff back then. The music was AMAZING, too, IMO.