name Sky Shark and by Electrocoin in Europe. On 21 November 1988, an album containing music from the title was co-published exclusively in Japan by Scitron and Pony Canyon. Flying Shark was converted to multiple platforms by various third-party developers including the Commodore 64 (1987), ZX Spectrum (1987), Amiga (1988), Amstrad CPC (1988), Atari ST (1988), Nintendo Entertainment System (1989), MS-DOS (1989), X68000 (1991) and the FM Towns (1993). Most of the microcomputer ports were only released in Europe or North America. Two version were developed for the Commodore 64; one for Europe and another for North America. The NES version, which was a North American exclusive, is notable for being one of the earliest soundtracks composed by Tim Follin on the system. In April 2020, M2 announced a new version of Flying Shark as part of their M2 ShotTriggers publishing label. In 2022, the arcade version will be included in the Hishou Same! Same! Same! compilation for Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 as part of M2's Toaplan Arcade Garage label. Flying Shark is planned to be included as part of the Toaplan Arcade 1 compilation for Evercade. Reception According to Tatsuya Uemura, Flying Shark proved to be more popular than Twin Cobra and was "the biggest" hit for Toaplan. In Japan, Game Machine listed it on their April 15, 1987 issue as being the fourth most-popular arcade game of the month. It went on to become Japans's second highest-grossing table arcade game of 1987 (below Arkanoid) and fourth highest-grossing arcade conversion kit of 1988. Commodore Users Nick Kelly gave the coin-op a 9 out of 10 score. Computer and Video Gamess Clare Edgeley gave an overall positive outlook to the arcade original. Sinclair Users Tim Rolf stated that "it is difficult, but Taito has made it so awesomely playable that the difficulty is a real joy". In contrast, however, Teresa Maughan gave a more mixed outlook to the arcade version. Edge magazine praised the gameplay, visuals and music, claiming that "Toaplan arguably perfected the vertical shoot 'em up with this early effort", though the publication lamented it never received a proper conversion. In a 2010 interview, composer Manabu Namiki regarded Flying Shark as one of the shoot 'em up games he enjoys the most. Yaegaki Nachi of Japanese magazine Oh!X gave the X68000 conversion a positive review. German magazine MAN!AC gave the FM Towns Marty port a 47% score.