Taito and Inin have announced that a port of 2005 arcade title, Spica Adventure, is coming to Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox One sometime in Spring 2024.
Never heard of Spica Adventure? That’s not surprising, considering it was only released in Japanese arcades in 2005. It’s a twee sidescroller that is sometimes considered a spiritual successor to Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III (also with an upcoming port). You play as Nico, who beats the crap out of robots with a magical umbrella. It’s an interesting platformer in the classic arcade style that came out when that particular niche had gone all but extinct.
This is really good news for another reason. It might mean Taito is eyeing some other Taito X board games that were never released outside of the arcade. Chase H.Q. 2, maybe? Or, heck, we could use a Chase H.Q. collection. It’s exciting to have Taito mining through its back catalog of arcade games with things like the Taito Milestones collections.
The arcade platform benefits heavily from preservation efforts. Even if there were home ports of a given game, they were often inaccurate. Because the hardware was often extremely different from game to game, emulation can be difficult, so some companies just don’t even bother. It’s nice when someone makes the effort.
Spica Adventure will be coming to Switch, PS4, PS5, and Xbox in Spring 2024. Physical editions for Switch, PS4, and PS5 will also be up for pre-order on November 14, 2023.