Reviews

Great game, lots of action. Not very colourful but a great shoot em up with some superb long levels. Recommended !

Surely one of the best vertical shoot'em up for the Spectrum - challenging and full of tension.

Its only real flaw are the yellow monochrome graphics, which can be a little confusing at times.

A magnificent shoot em up, Flying Shark packs in eveything bar full colour. The graphics are so well defined that it gets over this. There are multiple challenges and constant action with no slow down.
It is hard to believe that Graftgold did all this, single load, 48K.

One of the best shmups on the Spectrum, a lot of people will tell you THE best shmup on the Spectrum. Stunning graphics and awesome gameplay which plays at the perfect speed. The only problem is the monochrome graphics which makes it difficult to see the bullets but that problem exist in most Speccy shumps.

But if you are a shmup fan, you have to play Flying Shark, its probably the genre's crowing jewel.

A very similar game to '1942'. Was Taito inspired in cloning the Capcom game or was it a coincidence?
Nevertheless the game pushes the bar higher and ends up being even better. In my view, though, it's spoiled by the background colors. The enemy fire is hard to see in too many parts of the game.
Other than that, the game is pretty good, but I still prefer the Capcom game.

I'm sorry to disagree with most reviews about Flying Shark.

But I have to say that the "invisible bullet" is a pain in the places the sun don't shine - especially in this game!
All too often you die and there is no way you could have seen - let alone avoid - the deadly bullet.
If only bullets were bigger and/or flashed so they could be seen properly.

Also I deem the difficulty level too bloody hard. I am no fan of games that require you to remember how to tackle the attack waves. And this is an example of such a game.
To make matters worse, your reaction time to incoming stuff (especially bullets) is very often way too short.
One of these problems may be acceptable, both add up to quite a mess.

So sorry again, folks!
But I had too little fun trying to get real far in this game.

Technically brilliant but the fun factor is in my humble opinion too low and frustration prevails.

Flying Shark from Firebird is one of the finest arcade conversions on the Spectrum. It has very responsive keys and an excellent difficulty curve - you always feel you can get just one bit further!

It's monochrome but has nice big bullets so there's no invisible bullet syndrome!

The best vertical shoot'em up for Spectrum.

Fabulous conversion which retains all the best action and sensations from the coin-op.

Graphically very well designed.. I've never had an issue with visibility, bullets are big enough to be visible, with a velocity which lets to player react . I find the graphics from John Cummings has got a nice balance between details and sharpness.

Enemy waves are perfect, background graphics very evocative.. ( sea waves are cool, and the aircraft carrier stages and the seaport are pure arcade adrenaline. )

10/10 Best of the best.

The graphics hurt my eyes. They also obscure incoming bullets. Two pretty major flaws for a supposed classic. A simple black background would've solved both these problems if only they'd bothered to playtest it.

A very smooth and enjoyable shoot em up though let down a bit by the colours and the difficulty, in particular the "invisible bullets" people talk about, and sadly I agree it's a pain. But Flying Shark is still a sound game and certainly a lot better than most games of the same genre.

Would also like to take the time to join the others in congratulating The Dean of Games on 1000 reviews.

One of the best arcade conversions for the Spectrum ever, Flying Shark is a smooth, taxing and addictive shoot-em-up where you must negotiate four levels of pure mayhem controlling a biplane flying over jungles, beaches and sea against tanks, ships, gun turrets etc.

Sounds similar to 1942 and 1943, and in fact, it was the same with the original Taito coin-op - but this is better than the two Capcom titles put together. A truly excellent game.