Remembering Toaplan: Successors and Legacy

Toaplan closed down in March of 1994, but the employees split off into a number of studios that kept their spirit, and history of innovation, alive.

Toaplan rose from the ashes of two other short-lived developers, and made a mark on the arcade scene of the 80s and early 90s. They were influential, they were innovative, they made the games they wanted to make, but they couldn’t survive the changing landscape of arcades, and shut down in March of 1994. Still, their influence continued both because of the games they had made and the games the branches of their family tree would go on to make, and Toaplan is now seeing something of a revival in many ways: all of this will be covered throughout the month of March. Previous entries in this series can be found through this link.

March, 1994 signaled the end of Toaplan as a studio and a name, but that was about all the company’s bankruptcy put a stop to. While Toaplan itself formed out of two developers, Orca and Crux, that had folded in the mid-80s, a decade later their employees went in the opposite direction: rather than consolidating further or starting over with another studio with a new name, they branched out. Toaplan had grown considerably since six founders put it together in 1984, and its many employees split up into like-minded teams, to continue on with the vision of Toaplan in their own way.

Toaplan had quite the legacy on its own, as one of the most important studios going in the shoot ‘em up space with plenty of other quality arcade games besides. Their first shoot ‘em up, Tiger-Heli, was massively important and influential, a game that invented screen-clearing bombs in shooting games and laid the foundation for memorizer-style STG/ Their final shooter, Batsugun, was the first bullet hell experience: a massive departure from Tiger-Heli, yes, but much changed in eight year’s time, and Toaplan was still building on the foundation they poured in ‘85, anyway.

Shoot ‘em ups were moving toward a more niche genre at this point in history, thanks to the rise of fighting games in arcades and changing tastes at home. To paint with a pretty broad brush, many STG were working off of the formula Xevious had set forth a decade prior. It’s not that there weren’t any innovations in the space, or that Xevious was the best shooter going for a decade, or anything like that. It’s more that shooters would often iterate on the same basic concepts, and standing out from the field only became more difficult with time. As games grew in size and scope, too, and arcades were less and less the source of new games and ideas, shoot ‘em ups struggled to maintain the same kind of relevance they once had. Developers like Toaplan began to cater more toward a hardcore, established shooter audience, rather than attempting to market toward a broader base that might not even be there, anyway.

Tatsujin was founded by Masahiro Yuge in 2017, and has the rights to every Toaplan release: that’s the source of the present-day Toaplan revival.

This is not to say it was the end of shoot ‘em ups: far from it. In the mid-90s, shooters became more and more complex: the Xevious influence remained, sure, but in the same way Toaplan had built on those concepts for a decade, developers of the day now built on the work of Toaplan, as well as others like Compile, Konami, Taito, and so on. A number of the studios involved in this were full of ex-Toaplan employees.

Gazelle was formed by a group that included Tatsuya Uemura — a key composer, programmer, and designer from Toaplan — and artist Junya Inoue. They weren’t around for all that long, but did put out games long enough to release a brand new shooter in Air Gallet, as well as the completed version of Batsugun that included the previously unreleased improved arrangement that had been used in location tests at the time of Toaplan’s bankruptcy and closure — until 2023, that Japan-only Sega Saturn title was the lone home release of Batsugun, and is also the basis for one of the two existing re-releases. Gazelle was around for less time than expected, however, as the naming convention of Toaplan Shooting Battle 1 — a compilation release with no sequel — tells us. Gazelle didn’t officially shut down until 2002, but their final release, a Sailor Moon-themed quiz game published by Banpresto, launched five years before that.

Takumi Corporation managed to hold on for longer than Gazelle, and with a more significant legacy, too. This is where Masahiro Yuge, the composer and programmer and designer counterpart of Uemura, ended up after Toaplan closed. Takumi was a small operation, with around two dozen employees, that stayed open from May of 1994 (just two months after Toaplan’s closure) until at least 2010. (Details about its exact closure are scare, but it occurred between 2010 and 2015: their final game released in 2009.)

Takumi would pick up where Toaplan left off, in the most literal sense: their first project was the sequel to Twin Cobra that had been in development at the time of the bankruptcy. Twin Cobra II — Kyukyoku Tiger II in Japan — was published by Taito, and developed on their F3 System Board, as well. They’d develop plenty of original properties, as well: unsurprisingly, their best — and best remembered — games are shooters. The Giga Wing trilogy of games and Mars Matrix stand out in their library, with Capcom publishing the first two of the former as well as the latter. The Giga Wing titles were a little absurd — not in a bad way — with just how much stuff was and was happening on-screen at all times, with Takumi more than leaning a little bit into the bullet hell structure, and Mars Matrix tried to do things a little differently by using just one button, but making how you pressed that button, how often, and for how long determine what it is your ship would do.

Capcom was more than “just” the publisher here, too, as these games were actually made in partnership with them. Capcom had developed the CP System II arcade hardware, and knew that shooting games weren’t what they used to be in terms of a market force, but that there was still a player base out there wanting to play them. So, Capcom went to developers they felt had potential, whose strengths would play well with Capcom’s own, and worked as actual development partners on these titles, with Capcom also serving as publisher. (One such game developed this way was Psikyo’s Cannon Spike.) As Capcom Partnership Project Producer Tatsuya Minami explained in a 2000 interview with Arcadia, the choice of Takumi as one of these partners for creating shoot ‘em ups was very intentional, and made because of the association with Toaplan:

There were many reasons, with one being that we were working internally to come up with things to do with the CP System II hardware. Also, there are still a lot of shooting game diehards out there and we felt there was definitely an under-served market there, so we decided, "for the first time in a while, let's make a shooting game". However, we didn't have a production line within the company, so I thought, "come to think of it, I wonder what happened to the people who worked at Toaplan?" and that's how we ended up getting in contact with Takumi.

Takumi would work with Taito for Giga Wing Generations, the third and final release in the series, which is mentioned here mostly as a nod to show that Capcom really did see Takumi et al as partners for these games.

There were other developers Capcom worked with as part of this partner project, besides Takumi and Psikyo, and two of the others were also ex-Toaplan. There was Raizing, which actually formed in March 1993, one year prior to Toaplan’s closure. Raizing, originally, was made up of ex-Compile employees who wanted to keep making shoot ‘em ups after their previous studio had decided to mostly stop doing so in order to focus on their popular puzzle title, Puyo Puyo, as well as games for their digital subscription “magazine,” Disc Station. Toaplan had an existing relationship with Compile — they served as the Japanese publisher for the Mega Drive shoot ‘em up (and classic), MUSHA — and advised on Raizing’s first project, Sorcer Striker, as well. When Toaplan shut down, some of their employees ended up at Raizing — both Uemura and Yuge would eventually end up with Raizing (also known as Eighting), but not until they had left their own post-Toaplan studios, first.

Raizing has a hell of a legacy of its own. Sorcer Striker was the first in a trilogy of classic shooters — Mahō Daisakusen — that included a shoot ‘em up/racing hybrid in Kingdom Grand Prix, as well as Dimahoo. Sorcer Striker has already received the modern M2 ShotTriggers treatment for modern consoles, and it would not be shocking for additional Mahō Daisakusen titles to eventually see the same. Their partner game with Capcom was 1944: The Loop Master, with Capcom trusting them to revive one of their oldest STG franchises. Raizing developed in partnership with Hudson Soft on a few occasions — Bomberman: Panic Bomber for the Neo Geo, as well as a pair of Bloody Roar titles — and they created a couple of games for Namco, as well.

The most significant game in Raizing’s catalog, however, is Battle Garegga: it’s an absolute masterpiece of a shoot ‘em up, one of the true greats, and also revived by M2 for their ShotTriggers line in the present. It’s a true synthesis of what had mattered in shooters made by different developers in the genre’s history, with so much of Toaplan’s identity right there, easy to see, from the militaristic realism of their earlier work to the manic properties of their later titles, only now combined with a “rank” system that Toaplan hadn’t ever devoted all that much time toward cultivating in their own titles beyond the basics of “game is harder the further you get.” It is very much for the hardcore looking for a new kind of challenge: familiar, but different, usually due to the kinds of limits it was attempting to push, and the marrying of key concepts in STG that had previously been, for the most part, more isolated. A game that’s practically impossible to make without what had come before, is the thing, but was necessary to make shoot ‘em ups that truly stood out from their past without discarding it.

The Raizing name would eventually vanish, as would their emphasis on STG: Eighting (or 8ing) would remain, and still does to this day. The Bloody Roar games kept appearing, partnerships with Nintendo would begin. There was more emphasis on fighting games, as well as a return to working with Capcom — Eighting was one of the studios that produced Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, for instance, which then snagged them development of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and the 3DS port of Monster Hunter Generations — and they’ve now branched out genre-wise to the point where it was Eighting that ported Pikmin 3 to the Switch from the Wii U and was responsible for the new content, and were also co-developers of Pikmin 4 alongside Nintendo EPD.

The most significant branch of Toaplan’s family tree, though, at least for shoot ‘em ups fans, is Cave. That’s the company founded by one of Toaplan’s own founders and original six, Kenichi Takano, as well as Naoki Ogiwara, an artist and designer for Toaplan best known for Truxton and Out Zone, and the mind behind the the advent of bullet hell, Tsuneki Ikeda. Because Toaplan didn’t put credits in their games for years, and interviews are the one way we can find out who did what for them, Takano’s exact role during much of Toaplan’s early years is often unknown: he was involved with the Snow Bros. games, and was the designer behind Toaplan’s first non-eroge title, Performan, but much of the rest is just kind of assumed or unknown. His time with Cave is far more detailed: Takano served as not just founder, but president and CEO, and his stamp was put on everything the studio released, and, in the present, re-releases.

As for Ikeda, he continued to build on what he had started with V-V and Batsugun, which resulted in the the many DoDonPachi games, Mushihimesama, ESP Ra.De, and far more than we’ve got time to go over. Cave went all-in with the emphasis on an existing hardcore base of shoot ‘em up fans looking for more and more out of the titles, and it delivered for years: Cave began in June of 1994, and as of 2020, had 97 employees. While they’re not releasing any new games, they’re re-releasing their old ones, or putting them on consoles for the first time, in the present. Many of them remain as brilliant today as they were when they first hit in the 90s and aughts, and are worth grabbing if you’re an enthusiast or interested in what bullet hell is all about. Cave is the pinnacle of that particular subgenre, which should be no surprise given Ikeda, who created the subgenre, was given all the space he could need to develop it further.

Cave was actually the last of the ex-Toaplan studios mentioned above that worked with Capcom as a partner, which is where Progear came from. A horizontal shooter, which was not Cave’s norm, Progear was actually directed by Junya Inoue, who had left Gazelle and was put in a position where he could choose between heading to Raizing or Cave for his next gig. As Inoue put it, he chose Cave because they had a higher salary and a more regular work schedule, but it also ended up working out since he wanted to make shoot ‘em ups, and, Cave continued to do just that. Hell, former Raizing employees also ended up at Cave once shoot ‘em ups were no longer a priority, such as Shinobu Yagawa, who was instrumental in the creation of Battle Garegga.

The DoDonPachi games are the true highlight in the genre, and at the center of what Cave produced. Time Extension went deep on just this series last December, with Blissful Death finally coming to consoles — also courtesy of M2’s ShotTriggers series — and it’s worth reading just to get an understanding of what these games, and Ikeda, did in a post-Toaplan world. While I don’t appreciate the way Ikeda’s masterpiece is sometimes pitted against Treasure’s own shoot ‘em up glories — there should be room in our hearts for both, everyone — it’s undeniable just how incredible and vital this body of work is.

It’s not just more shoot ‘em ups studios that came out of Toaplan’s closure. In addition, you also had, uh, ex-Toaplan join Taito directly to make a Toaplan-inspired shooter, Gekirindan. Seriously, though, shooters weren’t all Toaplan did, and they also aren’t all their ex-developers would do. Tamsoft was founded by former Toaplan developers, and that studio still exists to this day: they’re responsible for Battle Arena Toshinden, the long-running Choro Q series of racing games — known as Penny Racers internationally — and were partners for D3’s Simple series of video games, budget titles that inevitably spawned franchises like Earth Defense Force, and, in the case of Tamsoft, Onechanbara. You know, the one with the cowgirl in a bikini slicing up zombies with swords. Tamsoft is also responsible for the revival of Compile’s pinball series, Alien Crush, on the Wii, has partnered with ex-Compile at Compile Heart for Hyperdimension Neptunia spin-offs, and has a second ladies with swords defeating stuff series in Senran Kagura, which focuses on women samurai, and has been spun off into manga and anime, too. Tamsoft is doing pretty well for themselves, in this age where very specific niches can thrive and even expand, like Senran Kagura has, instead of always being in danger of shuttering a la Toaplan.

Toaplan itself is back, in a way, however, in large part due to this newfound ability for niche studios to persist. Masahiro Yuge, after cycling through founding development studios and joining other ones, formed Tatsujin in 2017. The company is named after the Japanese version of Truxton, and has managed to secure the rights to Toaplan’s entire back catalog, putting them all in one place: Toaplan didn’t even have full access to their own works when they still existed, so that’s quite the feat. It also means Toaplan’s catalog is once again available — or, in quite a few cases, is available for the first time.

Tatsujin’s website makes it clear that a goal here is to license out their old work to developers and publishers who are interested. M2 acquired the rights to release every non-eroge Toaplan title under the Toaplan Arcade Garage banner, which is part of their ShotTriggers series. They’ve released three compilations there already, with two related shoot ‘em ups and all of their ports included in a package, along with an unrelated, non-shoot ‘em up arcade game, as well. Bitwave Games has released multiple compilations of Toaplan’s shoot ‘em up library for Windows, with the next on the way soon: these releases have made it so that titles like Out Zone, FixEight, and Vimana, as well as the upcoming Dogyuun and Truxton II, will see home releases for the first time ever. A number of Toaplan’s shooters have also been re-released on mini arcade cabinets in the years since Tatsujin emerged, such as Taito’s Egret II Mini and Sega’s Astros City V, as well.

Snow Bros. was licensed out individually, and re-released in an updated form as Snow Bros. Nick & Tom Special. Its sequel, which to this point has not seen a home release before given it was Toaplan’s final game prior to their closure, is coming soon. Pipi & Bibi’s was an Elevator Action-style action-platformer with eroge elements: it’s been re-released in the present as Spy Bros., sans the congratulatory nudity but plus an unlockable secondary mode called Spy Sis. that plays in a very different manner from the original, but still feels extremely Toaplan in its execution. Developers are taking advantage of Toaplan’s library being available once again, and it’s given them something of a second life: Tatsujin isn’t Toaplan, not exactly, but it’s an excellent alternative to a resurrection, at least.

And that being said, Tatsujin is involved in the revival of a couple of Toaplan properties. As in, new entries: a third Truxton title, Truxton Extreme, is slated for release on the Playstation 5 in 2024, and a multiplatform — and new — Snow Bros. game is also in development. It’s not difficult to envision sequels to other Toaplan properties emerging in their wake, either, given the emphasis on retro out there these days, and the fact that developers who have a relationship to Toaplan’s work, and an understanding of it, are out there to handle duties even if the likes of Yuge or Uemura don’t want to handle it designing or programming duties themselves three decades after the fact. Though, that’s certainly a possibility, too, given the overall revival we’ve seen of the developers of decades ago going back to their roots in the present, in an ever-changing market that now makes room for and embraces Toaplan’s whole deal.

Toaplan closed three decades ago, but the spirit of innovation and pursuit of creating excellent arcade games lived on in their various successor studios. And now, in the present, Toaplan is essentially back, thanks to Tatsujin’s emergence and plan to both reintroduce the old and then revive it. It’s a bit odd, in some ways, that Toaplan’s work is now more accessible than it’s ever been, but odd isn’t necessarily a negative. This is an opportunity for fans of the studio to revisit their memories and find that these games still hold up, or were even better than you recall. It’s a time to go back and play some of them for the first time ever, since they hadn’t previously had home releases, and arcades were beginning to focus more on non-shooters. And it’s the perfect time for someone with no real experience with Toaplan to give their games a shot, as well, and see the works that laid the foundation for the decades to come.

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