Western shmup scrubs, your free-to-play gacha hell just got interrupted by some real arcade fire. Clear River Games is finally unleashing Flying Fire Shark!!!: Toaplan Arcade Garage on PS4 and Switch August 29—digital everywhere, physical pre-orders live now. This M2 masterpiece bundles arcade classics like Hishou Same, Flying Shark, Sky Shark, Same! Same! Same!, and Fire Shark, all the shark-flavored bullet hell that made Toaplan legends back in the 80s and 90s. Japan had this since 2022; us whales knew to stock up early.

No pity pulls here—no MTX, just pure skill issue annihilation in Arcade Mode, or Super Easy Mode for you casuals who can't handle the barrage. M2 gadgets ping blind-spot enemies and hidden goodies, plus Arcade Challenge with rewind for no-cred farming. Physical edition whales get extra DLC bait: NES Sky Shark, Mega Drive ports, Wardner no Mori variants, and that free Teki-Paki puzzle DLC with leaderboards to climb over F2P tears. Trailer from Clear River shows the carnage; shmups Twitter is already buzzing pre-orders at VGP for $50 USD imports.

Toaplan's Shark series scorched arcades—Flying Shark's tuned difficulty, Fire Shark's screen-filling doom. M2 preserves it pixel-perfect, no dev greed watering down the grind. After years of import hunting on Reddit's r/shmups, West gets the hookup. Time to whale on something that doesn't nickel-and-dime your soul.