Slap Fight, Flying Shark, and Twin Cobra are being ported to the Atari 2600+, 7800, and 7800+.
The news was shared in a forum post by Plaion’s Ben Jones, who elsewhere stated that he “still got to make them!!!” and observed:
So that will be four 7800 shoot em up ports from Toaplan. These new three will be all released in solus form like Tiger Heli. I am thinking about a boxed set of all four together with some neat artwork and additional trinkets, similar to what Atari did with the Billy Butcher and Namco High Score Collection box sets.
My thinking is that this will be a complete work of a genre, bookend my 7800 shooter work and I will be happy to move onto something new.
Emulation or porting?
The key thing to note aout these games is that were designed for proprietary, dedicated arcade boards. Toaplan’s games ran on custom chips and handled sprite counts and scroll rates that Atari’s hardware simply wasn’t built for.
The fact that publishers like Plaion and Atari are investing in this, following the successful Tiger-Heli conversion, suggests they see the Atari 7800+ is now a serious platform for new, technically demanding software.
As Jones notes, this isn’t emulation, the games will be coded for the Atari 7800+, 7800, and 2600+, aiming to compress the scale and speed of $1,000+ arcade cabinets into a cartridge for a 1980s-era console.
A technical compromise?
The fundamental paradox is that Toaplan’s vertical shooters are defined by relentless, multi-directional scrolling action and large numbers of simultaneous projectiles. The Atari 7800’s M.A.R.I.A. chip (which handles the display) is capable, but demanding ports like these will push every available byte.
As they are based on modern hardware, the 2600+ and 7800+ shouldn’t have any trouble running the games. But bringing the Atari 7800 into the mix means ensuring a quality port to an old system.
Here are some potential challenges for porting these games:
| Toaplan Original | Atari Port Challenge | Core Technical Feat to Maintain |
| Slap Fight (1986) | Dynamic Power-Ups: Adapting the complex gauge system to the 7800’s limited RAM. | Preserving the risk-reward strategy over pure firepower. |
| Flying Shark (1987) | Visual Density: Reducing sprite flicker while maintaining a believable screen full of enemies and projectiles. | Sustaining the arcade game’s sense of speed and scale. |
| Twin Cobra (1987) | Multi-Player Logic: Ensuring stable, frame-rate-compliant parallel processing for two simultaneous ships. | Flawless co-op execution, a signature feature of the original. |
It’s still early days, so release details for this trio of Toaplan classics are some way from being confirmed. However, it seems likely they will be released on a single cartridge.
If you want to play these games sooner, they’ve been re-issued on various currently platforms, including iPhone and Android and Evercade.
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Christian Cawley is a writer and editor who covers consumer electronics, IT, and entertainment media. He has written for publications such as Computer Weekly, Linux Format, MakeUseOf.com, and Tech Radar.
He also produces podcasts, has a cigar box guitar, and of course, loves retro gaming.
