Day 114: Flying Shark (ZX Spectrum)

A classic Vertical shooter is today's title from my 528 game backlog - I'm playing one every day while furloughed from work...

Flying Shark for the ZX Spectrum
Previous days' entries can be read HERE.

If someone asks me, at some point in the future, at what point it started to feel like the coronavirus pandemic was starting to pass, and things were getting back to normal, I’d say it was about day 110, when I started to struggle to find time to play and write about a game every day.

I’m still loving picking my way through the vast cornucopia of (mostly) treasures in my backlog, but over the last week or two, all of a sudden, it feels like there’s just more going on in my life (whether I like it or not) that’s getting between me and the game time.

So I’m quite grateful that today, when I’ve pressure washed the patio, re-grouted the shower, fixed a 100 year old sewing machine, and written and posted 36 'thank you' cards, I have a fairly simple old ZX Spectrum shooter to have a go at.

Flying Shark is what we used to call a ‘Coin-op Conversion’, the fallacy being that these were rarely conversions and usually made from scratch - often with only a consumer's access to the original software. In this case, however, publishers Ocean had a relationship with Taito that probably meant the decent resources were provided - and it shows.

In case you’re unaware, Flying Shark was pretty much another take on the 1942 formula of vertical scrolling shooter. The arcade version was released 3 years later than the Capcom classic, and this version on the Spectrum followed the same year.

What really stands out is how accurately the developers have re-created the attack patterns; the slight side-to-side scrolling effect has been lost in translation but, by-and-large, enemies appear in the same places, and move in the same ways as they did in the arcade original.

Power-ups, too, appear in the exact fashion as they did in the source and still take the form of another line added to your spread of bullets, a screen smart-bomb, or a thousand-point bonus (useful when an extra 1up is added every 50,000)

These elements are integral to how well this game plays as almost everything else has been lost to the Spectrum’s minimal processing power; There are a grand total of three sound effects, two colours, and one fire button.

Somehow though, despite these limitations, Flying Shark is still a really enjoyable v-shmup. Despite being idiosyncratically ‘Spectrum’, the yellow and black visuals give it the appearance of a something on the Game Boy, and by using a panel at each side for score and life information, the developers have recreated the ‘tate’ aspect ratio brilliantly.

In my previous attempt at a regular blog I hunted down hidden arcade gems, and so I know from experience how hard it is to find much to say about ‘pretty good’ vertical shooters.

The genre almost says enough all by itself when the game doesn’t really mix things up - even if it does what it does very well, and that’s very much the case here. Furthermore, every compliment you can make about the game comes with a caveat: The game looks really nice (for the Spectrum), the scrolling is very smooth (considering the hardware), the power-ups are effective (if not very varied).

So it’s a good example of a good vertical shooter on hardware that didn’t have many of them. It plays pretty well and, even if bullets can get lost occasionally, it copes well with the monochrome format. But it’s hard to get any more excited than “It’s good for what it is.”

Flying Shark - It’s good for what it is..