Toki

Toki is the game about a man who has been turned into an ape and fights back by spitting fireballs, and it is better than that description suggests. Tad Corporation's 1989 arcade original is a tightly designed run-and-gun platformer with some of the most characterful sprites of its year.

Toki was a warrior whose beloved has been kidnapped, and the sorcerer who took her turned him into an ape. Rather than a curse, the transformation is the power: Toki throws fireballs from his mouth, charged by holding the button, and the charged shot is the whole offensive game. Enemies arrive in set patterns and the levels are built around jumping and timing rather than twitch reflexes, which puts it closer to a platformer with shooting than a run-and-gun proper. The art direction is unusually expressive for the hardware - Toki's animation, the enemies' reactions and the backgrounds are all characterful in a way that made the game memorable long after its arcades closed. It was known as Juju Densetsu in Japan and simply Toki in the West, and a 2018 remake introduced it to a new audience.

• ▸Chargeable fireballs as the whole offensive system
• ▸Set enemy patterns built for learning rather than reflex
• ▸Unusually expressive sprite animation for 1989
• ▸Known as Juju Densetsu in Japan