Overview
Formed in 1984 from the ashes of Orca, Toaplan achieved their fame through developing scrolling shooters. While they primarily focused on the arcades, several of their games would make the trek to consoles. The most famous (well, infamous) of these is Zero Wing, which introduced some wonderfully-translated story sequences at the start and end of the game...
Internally, Toaplan were allegedly pretty madcap - an internal newsletter called A Tolanp (Japanese pronounciation of "A Trump") was published for employees to check in on the development efforts of other teams, employees were hired in large groups to effectively form new development teams in one shot, and company-wide meetings were high-energy affairs where bad ideas were potentially punished with food fights or shouting matches.
Toaplan shut its doors in 1994, declaring bankruptcy. Many reasons have been suggested, ranging from the intense difficulty of their later output, an exodus of senior staff to form Tamsoft in 1992, the release of Street Fighter II and subsequent fighting game boom... whatever the reasons, the staff formed many of their own studios, keeping the company's spirit at least partially alive:
Log in to comment