Controlling the titular biplane, the players must fight endless waves of military vehicles while avoiding collision with their projectiles and other obstacles.

Flying Shark is a military-themed vertically scrolling shoot 'em up game in which players take control of the titular biplane through five increasingly difficult levels in order to defeat an assortment of military enemy forces like tanks, battleships, airplanes and artillery as the main objective.

[1][2][3] The title initially appears to be very standard, as players control their plane over a constantly scrolling background and the scenery never stops moving until a runway is reached.

[2] Flying Shark's creation process and history was recounted through various Japanese publications by composers Masahiro Yuge and Tatsuya Uemura, both of which collaborated with the soundtrack and marked the first time Toaplan made use of FM synthesis.

[8] Flying Shark was also the first project by Toaplan to make use of the Motorola 68000 microprocessor and due to the improved hardware, it allowed the team with displaying more sprites on-screen, but the increased hardware also brought issues such as difficulties with making FM sounds and enemy planes aiming their shots at players more accurately.

[12] It was then released across arcades worldwide the same month, by Romstar in North America under the name Sky Shark and by Electrocoin in Europe.

[9] 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).

[18][19] 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.

[25] According to Tatsuya Uemura, Flying Shark proved to be more popular than Twin Cobra and was "the biggest" hit for Toaplan.

[41] Sinclair User's Tim Rolf stated that "it is difficult, but Taito has made it so awesomely playable that the difficulty is a real joy".

[74] 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.