Toki's physical arcade ports are coming to Mega Drive, Neo Geo and Amiga

Retro developer New Old Pixels has confirmed the target platforms for its upcoming physical arcade conversions of the 1989 platformer Toki. According to an update from the studio, dedicated ports are currently in development for the Sega Mega Drive, SNK Neo Geo, and Commodore Amiga AGA.

The studio plans to release all three versions on physical media for original hardware. That means actual cartridges for the Sega and SNK consoles, and disks for the Amiga.

The arcade architecture

TAD Corporation released Toki in arcades in 1989. The premise involves a muscular warrior transformed into a chimpanzee who shoots energy balls out of his mouth to rescue his kidnapped bride. The studio was formed in 1988 by former Data East employees, and they built a reputation for intense, slightly bizarre action games like Cabal and Blood Bros. Toki fits perfectly into that catalog.

The original arcade board ran on a Motorola 68000 CPU alongside a Zilog Z80 for audio. That is the exact same processor pairing found inside both the Sega Mega Drive and the Neo Geo. That shared architecture makes these specific platforms ideal targets for a one-to-one arcade conversion, which is something the game lacked during its original commercial run.

No more Ape Spit

Sega actually published a version of the game for the Genesis and Mega Drive in 1991, titled Toki: Going Ape Spit. It wasn't an arcade conversion. Sega redesigned the level layouts, altered the mechanics, and built a different game around the same IP. The Genesis version is playable, but it is a completely different experience from the coin-op original.

The Neo Geo didn't get a port at all. SNK's hardware launched in 1990, right in the middle of the game's peak popularity, and the system's massive sprite capabilities would have handled TAD Corporation's arcade board output without breaking a sweat. A direct conversion for the AES and MVS fills a 36-year gap in the system's library.

Upgrading the Amiga

The Amiga situation is slightly different. Ocean Software published a well-regarded port for the original Amiga OCS and ECS chipsets in 1990. New Old Pixels is specifically targeting the Advanced Graphics Architecture (AGA) chipset introduced with the Amiga 1200 and 4000 in 1992. The AGA hardware supports 256 on-screen colors from a palette of 16.7 million, which provides enough overhead to match the arcade original's visual fidelity rather than compromising for the older Commodore hardware.

New Old Pixels was founded in 2024 by Benjamin Yoris with a focus on authentic, licensed retro hardware conversions. The studio secured the rights from Microids, the French publisher that currently holds the IP and previously released a hand-drawn remake of the game in 2018.

While the 2018 remake updated the visuals for widescreen displays, it kept the original game's brutal difficulty intact. The New Old Pixels project takes the opposite approach, ignoring modern displays entirely to build software that runs on original cathode-ray tube televisions and vintage silicon. Pricing and release windows aren't available yet, though the studio noted that the first screenshots and video footage are coming soon.

Toki is available on Humble Bundle for $1.99 (90% off).

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