Flying Shark

STORY / GAMEPLAY:
The story here is pretty simple; fly your plane and destroy everything that moves (or shoots at you). You control a bi-winged plane (that looks like a WWI plane) through five vertically scrolling levels swarmed by enemy forces like planes, tanks, gun emplacements and even battleships! You take off from your military base and fly over a variety of environments like forests, oceans or even cities. When the going gets a little tough, you can launch one of your limited (up to 3) supply bombs to explode every enemy craft around in pieces. Occasionally, a squadron of red planes appears and you must shoot them all down, to gain essential extra firepower! If you let just one of those planes to fly away, you won't get the bonus (shown as a big S). You can boost your firepower with a spread fire comprising of a maximum of nine projectiles a shot. While flying, you will also find some extra bombs (shown as a huge red B) by destroying ground or airborne enemies. In terms of gameplay, the game is very tough, especially when too many enemies occupy the screen and shooting at you in frenzy. And its toughness doesn't end there since the enemy planes move in "confusing" and frustratingly fast patterns that provide an infuriatingly addictive challenge! The truth is, it's hard to avoid enemy fire and, every time you lose a life, your firepower goes back to default (two projectiles per shot), which means that soon you'll be history. So, your best bet is to find a joystick with an auto-fire function, build up your firepower enough and then, virtually, nothing will stand in your way! Given its sharp graphics and addictive gameplay, Flying Shark is a great shoot 'em up game, though (as already said) it's among the most difficult of its time.

GRAPHICS / SOUND:
Τhe Flying Shark conversion to the PC features some detailed, colorful backdrops and sprites, though it only runs in EGA graphics (16 colors), which apparently loads a rather bad color palette compared to the arcades (original) and the Amiga/ST ports. The sprites move fast though, without any occasional slowdowns. Sonically, your battles are accompanied by some rather basic and occasionally strange sound effects (e.g. instead of standard boom noises, there is a "ding" noise heard here whenever you destroy a plane or a tank) plus a music score that sounds like the original.