Fire Shark[a] is a 1989 vertically scrolling shooter arcade video game developed and published by Toaplan in Japan and Europe, and by Romstar in North America.

The game was well received in arcades across Western regions where reviewers commended its graphics, sound and gameplay, but it proved to be less popular in Japan due to the high difficulty level.

Fire Shark is a military-themed vertically scrolling shoot 'em up game reminiscent of 1942, where players take control of the titular biplane through ten increasingly difficult levels in order to defeat an assortment of enemy forces like tanks, battleships, kamikaze monoplanes and artillery from the mysterious Strange Fleet armada.

[1][2][3][4] The game plays similarly like its predecessor, as players control their craft over a constantly scrolling background and the scenery never stops moving until an airport is reached.

Players have two weapons at their disposal: the standard shot that travels a max distance of half the screen's height and bombs capable of obliterating any enemy caught within its blast radius.

[3] Getting hit by enemy fire will result in losing a life, as well as a penalty of decreasing the ship's firepower and speed to his original state and once all lives are lost, the game is over unless the players insert more credits into the arcade machine to continue playing.

[5][6] In the Sega Genesis port, the game takes place in the year 19X9 on an alternate Earth instead, where a global superpower known as the S Corps, which specializes in a heavy industrial army begins invading various countries, with all seemingly lost when a phantom pilot flying a super-powered biplane called the Fire Shark flies in to save the world from domination.

[2] Fire Shark's development process and history was recounted between 1989 and 2012 through Japanese publications such as Shooting Gameside by former Toaplan composer Masahiro Yuge.

[7][8][9][10][11] The team wanted to convey "the same strengths" as its predecessor, Flying Shark, by adding elements like the flamethrower as a way to promote the game, with Yuge stating that the weapon acted as a successor to the blue laser in 1989's Truxton.

[12] The development team settled on using the word "same" when coming up for the project's title, which translates to "shark" in Japanese to convey a strong animal sound.

[58] According to Masahiro Yuge, Fire Shark was well received in Western arcades but proved to be less popular in Japan due to its high difficulty.