Some games get a second life on modern consoles with fancier graphics and a speedrun mode. Toki is taking a much weirder — and honestly much cooler — route: back in time.
French classic-gaming outfit New Old Pixels has signed a licensing deal with Microids to bring the 1989 TAD Corporation arcade platformer to classic computers and consoles that never got an official conversion. As founder Benjamin Yoris put it: “Toki is exactly the kind of project we created New Old Pixels for: giving retro machines the conversions of great arcade games they never got back in the day.”
Here’s why that’s exciting for those of us with aging collections of rubber-keyed keyboards: Toki got around in the early ’90s. It was ported to the C64, Amiga, Atari ST, NES and Atari Lynx, and Sega even built its own tweaked Mega Drive/Genesis version. But the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum versions — which Ocean had actually announced, and which reportedly got shown to the British press back in 1991 — never materialized. If New Old Pixels targets the systems that never got a home release, as the announcement suggests, a ZX Spectrum Toki would be a conversion roughly 35 years overdue.
That’s the detail that has me grinning. New Old Pixels isn’t remaking the game with modern shine — Microids already did that with its 2018 remake — it’s recreating the arcade original for genuine retro hardware, quirks and limitations included. The plan also includes physical editions built to run on original hardware, which is exactly how a project like this should be treated.
For the uninitiated, the premise is delightfully daft: Tarzan-esque hero Toki gets turned into an ape by the evil witch doctor Vookimedlo, who also swipes his princess, Miho. Toki then hacks his way through the jungle toward the golden palace, fighting monsters by spitting at them. Yes — spitting. Look, 1989 was a different time, and the arcade original remains one of the great forgotten gems of the era. Check out a full playthrough of the arcade original below:
Neither outlet reporting the deal mentions generative AI in connection with the project.
New Old Pixels hasn’t named specific platforms yet, with more details promised in the coming months. But if you’re anything like me, you’ll be watching this one closely — because a Spectrum getting its first Toki port in 2026 would be one of the loveliest retro stories of the year. Which system are you hoping gets the nod?
Sources: Time Extension and Console Classics.