Thanks to ININ Games for the review code
Title: Spica Adventure
System: Nintendo Switch (eShop)
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 04/14/2026
Story
In this port of one of Taito’s mid 2000s Arcade games, you take control of Nico, who crash lands on the Spica planet and must travel through some wacky stages in order to find a path home! There are multiple endings here depending on which route you take, but none of them lead to a detail-rich story, so the very brief intro and ending you reach are all you get here.
Presentation
Spica Adventure came from a weird time and place. Arcades were still a thing in the 2000s, but the games within were increasingly becoming less pixel-based, more trying unique visual styles, and Spica Adventure goes for a stylized perspective, looking more cartoony. Very colorful worlds and cool visual gimmicks abound in this one, with my favorite touch being the boss fight where you fight Space Invaders represented by their 1978 Key Art.
Originally this was a 4:3 game, and that option is still here as its own classic mode, but ININ have added the option for a full 16:9 view, which looks good here, adding more visibility and making the game far easier as a result. The only big gripe I had with the visuals were the game’s weird, stylistic choice to have every enemy and a lot of the character art in this game sport a soft filter of some kind over it. I don’t think this is a quirk unique to the port, and it seems to be a thing I also notice looking at footage of the actual Arcade version, but with how some of the enemies get scaled up to have bigger variants that look like a blurry mess, it does come off pretty darn awkward even when playing in the TV mode. I don’t know if there was any reasonable way to deblur or sharpen the characters, but it would have made for a nicer visual experience.
The music is just fine. You have a very catchy main theme you’ll hear for some levels, but otherwise I can’t say I remembered most of the songs here. It sounds more like modern Taito music, so if you like the stuff in their newer titles and prefer that to their older FM-sounding soundtracks, Spica should be fine. Can’t say I don’t miss the FM sound late 90s Taito was known for, though.
Gameplay
In Spica Adventure, you must take control of Nico as she traverses several areas with her parasol, split into branching pathways Darius style. The original Arcade version uses a two button setup that’s your typical jump/attack combo, and for the most part you’ll be beating up enemies in your way with your parasol using a pretty typical combo. Holding both buttons together will cause Nico to shoot out her parasol and uses it to pull her to whatever surface it touches, while also damaging enemies in the process, which can help getting to trickier areas or piercing through troublesome enemies. Likewise, holding the attack button and getting long enough combos while holding down will lead to Nico launching enemies up into the air, using her parasol as a gun and dealing extra damage to them, but the enemies are all pretty simple to take out so this only really comes into play during boss fights.
In the newer, enhanced mode, you can have these commands assigned to their own buttons, which especially helps when it comes to the parasol launch. Placing it on a shoulder button was enough to get me comfortable enough to use it almost anytime I had a chance, and made for a pretty fun control simplification. Otherwise you can adjust DIP Switch settings to make the game even easier than it already is, since Spica Adventure starts off so darn easy I was a little concerned the entire game would be pretty effortless to 1CC; on the hardest difficulty I made it to the final world on a harder branch before I got a Game Over.
Ah, but that was because I was just trying to get to the end of the stages. See, Spica Adventure is a really easy game if you just rush for the exit, especially if you keep choosing the easier, higher paths each and every time. The only thing that’ll trip you up if you do this are the boss fights, where some of them can be trivialized, especially by the control shortcuts, while others like the aforementioned Space Invaders boss feel like boring enemy sponges that take forever to kill.
However, the key to having fun in Spica is getting a high score, and that’s better accomplished by gathering every last gem you see throughout a stage, defeating every last enemy you can, and walking in every single tile on the map, as that will lead Nico to planting flowers everywhere she goes. Completely max out a stage in the enhanced mode, and you’ll even unlock a secret Taito character for the gallery! …And realize they’re pretty much useless, since the whole point of unlocking them is to collect them in said gallery and read fun facts about them, but someone forgot to hit the return key in these bios so all of them get cut off and become unreadable. Fun.
Either way, despite the pointless unlocks, this does get you a huge point bonus, and helps add extra depth and challenge to each of the stages. Playing in the online ranking mode, trying to get every last score bonus and see how far I can get on a single credit was far more enjoyable once I played with this scoring mindset than just trying to beat the game. It’s a good thing you have a solid online leaderboard mode too, since despite the game recording and saving your local high scores in both of the offline modes, I couldn’t find any way to get the game to display said local scores, either because I’m an idiot or the game just never displays them.
Still, Spica Adventure is really short, being an Arcade game, and even 2000s arcade games don’t take too much time to clear. Pretty decent fun for scoring, but outside of the useless Taito Gallery unlocks there isn’t much here; you’ll pick a route, go through it, and be done in not much time at all. Even clearing all routes won’t take you more than maybe two hours at the most, unless you 1CC challenge yourself.
Conclusion
I tried having fun with Spica Adventure, and after a decent bit of time I was at least able to get the scoring down enough to have some fun playing in the online challenge mode. Alas, the game itself is short and way too easy, and while the fun factor gets amplified when going for all the hidden gems and flowers, Spica is still rather paper thin as a video game. The extra Taito Gallery unlocks are what I’d argue would normally be worth 100%ing all the levels and squeezing some extra time out of the game for those not into scoring, but with their descriptions broken it makes obtaining them rather pointless, and I’m kinda stunned they still haven’t been fixed by now.
This is part of a double pack with Parasol Stars, and of the two in that set I find Parasol Stars to be far superior; it’s more addicting, challenging, secret-filled and in-depth enough to keep you busy for a lot longer than this game. Neat to have a mid 2000s Arcade game reissued for a change, but this one I don’t see myself going back to much after this review goes live, and you might want to wait for a sale or just get it via the digital bundle if you wanna pick this up.
I give Spica Adventure a 5 out of 10.