The story
Toaplan was established in April 1979 but its gaming division was established by former Orca and Crux members. Performan was created by most of the same team that previously worked on several projects at Orca and Crux before both companies declared bankruptcy, after which a group of employees from the two gaming divisions would go on to form Toaplan and among them were composers Masahiro Yuge and Tatsuya Uemura.
In 1992, Yoshiyuki Kiyomoto stepped down from his position as CEO at Toaplan, with Taizo Hayashi now serving as the company's president. Toaplan provided consultance and advising to Raizing (now Eighting) during the development of Sorcer Striker, as well as licensing their arcade board to the company, since the president of the latter company previously served as an employee of the former. Snow Bros. 2: With New Elves served as one of the final projects to be developed by Toaplan, as the company ceased development of shoot 'em up games before their closure.
The company declared bankruptcy on March 31, 1994. Its closure led to the formation of several offshoot companies. Prior to Toaplan's closure in 1994, several former employees formed or were involved with multiple companies, many of which were dedicated to arcade shooters: Eighting, Tamsoft, CAVE, Gazelle, and Takumi (who continued development of Twin Cobra II after Toaplan's closure).
The rights to nearly every Toaplan IP are currently owned by Tatsujin, a Japanese company formed by Yuge. In 2019, Japanese company M2 announced its plan to release every game by Toaplan (excluding Mahjong Sisters and Enma Daiō) for consoles in Japan, starting in 2020. In August 2022, Tatsujin was acquired by Embracer Group for a retro gaming focused operative group. In 2023, Tatsujin announced several new projects, such as Truxton Extreme, Snow Bros. Wonderland (both games being sequels to their respective series) and Amusement Arcade TOAPLAN, a compilation of 25 arcade games for smartphones. One of the titles from Tatsujin, Snow Bros. Wonderland, was released in 2024.
From Wikipedia’s article on Toaplan, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4