Toki (Arcade)
Toki: Classic The Run-and-Gun Platformer
Toki is a run-and-gun platform game about an enchanted ape who fires energy balls from his mouth to fight off jungle monsters and rescue a kidnapped princess. TAD Corporation first released it in Japanese arcades in December 1989, with design credited to Akira Sakuma, pairing fast, punishing platforming with a premise that’s gleefully absurd.
The Story Behind Toki
The hero is Toki — called JuJu in Japan and in a few of the ports — a muscular, loincloth-wearing tribesman living a quiet life in the jungles of a wild South Seas island. That peace doesn’t last.
Miho, the princess of his tribe and a possible love interest, gets snatched by a treacherous witch doctor named Vookimedlo. He drags her up to a golden palace he conjured at the island’s summit, then casts a spell that warps every human on the island into animals before they can fight back. Toki gets turned into an ape-like creature — closer to a gorilla, really — but here’s the twist: his mind stays intact. And the curse hands him an odd gift. He can breathe fire and spit projectiles.
So he sets out to hunt down Vookimedlo, break the curse, and get Miho back. Easier said than done. The path to that palace runs through murky lakes, steep canyons, frozen mountain ranges, and lava-spewing volcanoes, all of it crawling with wild animals and Vookimedlo’s mutant creations.
How Toki Plays
Players guide Toki through a string of levels, each capped by a miniboss. On paper he’s at a real disadvantage — slow in ape form, and almost any hit kills him outright. His one edge is that spit, the powerful shots that clear enemies and obstacles in his path. A timer counts down on every stage, so there’s no time to waste.
Scattered through the levels are items worth grabbing. Power-ups upgrade his spit. Lucky rabbit feet give him short bursts of superhuman speed and jumping. Clocks pad out the countdown, fruit racks up bonus points, and keys open hidden areas. There’s also a helmet that shields him from attacks coming down on his head — and it looks suspiciously like an American football helmet. Collect enough magic coins, swapped for food in the Genesis version, and you’ll earn an extra life.
Ports and Different Versions
Within two years of the arcade debut, Toki landed on home systems. Ocean Software handled the Amiga, Atari ST, and Commodore 64 releases. Versions for the ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC were advertised, and the Spectrum one even got previewed in a magazine. But neither ever shipped.
Taito brought the game to the Atari Lynx and the NES. The NES version got tweaked, giving Toki a health bar so a single hit no longer ends the run. Sega built its own spin for the Mega Drive and Genesis called Toki: Going Ape Spit. It drops the non-spit power-ups but makes up for it with extra levels and sharper graphics than the NES port.
Names shift around depending on the version. In some ports Toki becomes “JuJu,” Miho becomes “Wanda,” and Vookimedlo goes by “Dr. Stark.” A few even change who does the kidnapping — instead of Vookimedlo, it’s his half-invisible giant henchman Bashtar, who sometimes ends up as the final boss.
Re-Releases and a Game That Never Was
Ocean Software started building a similar platformer with ape-like characters for the Atari Jaguar, first titled Apeshit and later Toki Goes Apespit. It was pencilled in for Winter 1994. It never came out.
The original kept resurfacing, though. Magic Team ported it to iOS in 2009. Then in 2018, Microids put out a full remake on Nintendo Switch, followed by Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Amazon Luna — so the spitting ape is still reachable on modern hardware.
Reception and Legacy
Toki did solid business in arcades. A Japanese trade magazine ranked it the sixteenth most successful table arcade unit for its month in early 1990, and the game later picked up a Golden Joystick Award in 1992.
Reviews leaned positive. The One scored the Amiga version 88%, calling the core gameplay fairly standard but singling out the variety — Toki can swim, climb, and ride trolleys — as what set it apart from the usual arcade conversions. The magazine liked how the difficulty ramped up gradually and praised the music and animation for matching the action. Destructoid was warmer on the nostalgia than the game itself, admitting it leaned on fond memories and stopping short of calling it great.
As always, remember to have fun!
