Arcade Paradise Review: A Flawed but Heartfelt Tribute to the Golden Age of Gaming

I was born too late to appreciate arcades. By the time I was old enough to fully get into gaming, arcades were pretty much dead. I still remember playing some arcade machines like X-Men or The Simpsons, but I never got to experience the arcade scene in it’s true glory days.

Most arcades these days are mostly amusement based. You might get some videogames here and there, but mostly it’s gambling or attractions where you win tickets or the like. Unless you live in Japan it’s hard to find a good video arcade anymore. And even in Japan it’s becoming a rarity.

But there was a time when arcades ruled the video game space. It was THE place to go for the biggest games, the newest innovations and where an entire community of gamers would be created. It was a magical place many have fond memories of.

And it’s that same nostalgia for the arcade which forms the basis of Arcade Paradise. Developed by Nosebleed Interactive, Arcade Paradise is a business management style game about building your own arcade. Not a wholly original premise, but there is one major twist that helps Arcade Paradise stand out. You actually get to walk around the arcade and play the arcade machines yourself.

Because Arcade paradise isn’t just a management simulator, it’s a loving tribute to the glory days of the video arcade. There are a ton of management simulators out there, but few of them let you be on the ground floor, watching the business grow from the inside.

I like management simulators in concept, but I can never fully get into them in practice. I just don’t like going through all the statistics and charts and numbers, trying to comprehend all that gives me a headache. The approach Arcade Paradise took appealed to me because that wasn’t a major focus. But there is more to Arcade Paradise than just running an arcade.

The premise of the game is that you inherit a laundromat from your workaholic father that just so happens to have arcade games in the back room. And since running an arcade is infinitely more interesting than washing underwear, you decide to convert the place into a full arcade.

But that takes time and money, and your dad is a massive stick in the mud who won’t let you do it. So you’ll need to keep the laundromat running, working there as a front while also secretly building an arcade in the back. Building up enough money to expand the arcade while also diminishing the presence of the laundromat.

The basic gameplay loop in the game is that you’ll run the laundromat by cleaning the clothes, picking up trash and occasionally fixing the toilet, then sneaking in the back to manage the arcade and play some arcade games.

How you manage the arcade is straight forward. Every game has a popularity level, the higher that is the more people will play it and the more money you’ll make out of them. To build up their popularity you need to play them. The more you play them the more popular they get, which leads to more people playing them and more money being made.

Of course, you can’t play these games for too long. You do have a launderette to run at the same time. Part of the game is trying to get through the games as much as possible before you’re pulled back to do work in the launderette. So, it’s a game that’s as much about managing your time than managing an arcade.

As you earn more money, you’ll be able to buy more games and eventually expand the arcade to accommodate more games. And that’s the loop of the game. You run the laundromat, play games so they get more money, so you can buy more arcade games to expand the arcade to buy more games which then earn you even more money to expand and buy even more games, you get the idea.

It is a satisfying loop once you get the rhythm down. Is it annoying when you’re interrupted to do laundry? Oh hell yes, but that’s the point. You don’t want to do the laundry. That’s boring real-world stuff. What you want is to build the arcade business up to the point where you don’t need to do the laundry anymore.

There is a benefit to doing the laundry though as it gives you a little extra cash to help build the business faster. You even get ranked by how fast you do it, higher ranks of which give more money. In fact, everything earns you money in some way. Doing the laundry, throwing the trash in the bin, even picking gum off the seats, it all pays out.

You can tell this takes place in the 90’s because the economy is stable enough that you can pay people just for throwing the trash out. And you’ll get paid for that a lot because your patrons are beyond dirty. You’ll leave after a hard day’s work with the place squeaky clean, and when you come in first thing in the money there’s trash all over the place. They’ll leave trash next to the bin. What can’t they manage a bin flap?

But enough of that boring stuff, let’s talk more about the arcade. One way of managing the arcade is by messing with the settings for the games. you can change how hard each game is as well as how much they cost, both of which affects how often each game is played and how much money you’ll make each in game hour.

The obvious goal is to get each number as high as possible, though I found having higher playability lead to bigger gains. I don’t know I was never clear on this part. It said that a game would get played more but would make less, I never understood which was more important.

It doesn’t really matter since all you need to do is get the numbers higher. You don’t need to think about it much. If you’re the kind of gamer who really likes management simulators where you micro-manage every minute detail to get the best results, this isn’t the game for you.

Arcade Paradise is a management sim for those who aren’t into management sims. It isn’t as focused on managing the accounts or crunching the numbers. Stuff like that is still in the game it just isn’t as important as it is in other sim titles.

Really all you need to focus on is where you place each game. Placing more popular games next to less popular games can help boost the revenue of the less popular titles. Not by a huge margin, but certainly enough to help. Honestly you can just ignore that and just focus on how you want things to look and still be alright. Though outside of game placement, there’s no cosmetic customization at all.

While I get the idea of the game simplifying the management side of things, the lack of any cosmetic customization is disappointing. I mean the entire point of the game is making your own arcade, so not having any way of changing how it looks makes it feel impersonal. Like it’s not your own place. Some kind of cosmetic options to pick from would have gone a long way.

That said, actually being in the arcade, walking around all the machines and taking in the atmosphere is a feeling very few management sims offer. And seeing the arcade steadily grow over time is a satisfying process.

But what of the actual arcade games themselves? After all, part of the appeal of Arcade Paradise is being able the arcade games. So how do they fare?

Pretty well for the most part. A lot of the games here are expies of classic arcade games, some of which are combined with other games. For example, one of the games, Racer Chase, is a combination of Grand Theft Auto and Pac-Man, which is a combination of things I never thought I would see.

But a lot of these are very clearly stand-ins for classic arcade games. You’ve got a futuristic Out-Run clone, a copy of Mr. Driller, a Frogger style game. The games aren’t exactly original, but that’s the point. They’re meant to be games you would see in an arcade back in the day. It makes sense they would make the games similar to classic titles, even if some are a little too derivative.

Now obviously the games won’t be nearly as good as the ones they’re copying, but they play well enough for the most part. The quality varies on a game-by-game basis. Some are just outright bad, like the Frogger clone is terrible with horrendous hit detection, but others are pretty good.

The games are pretty simplistic and lacking in depth but given how many of them there are that doesn’t surprise me. They’re more like minigames and in that context they work play well enough.

There’s at least a healthy selection of different genres. You’ve got puzzlers, shooters, a beat-em-up, a rhythm game, even some really old school stuff like Whack A Mole, Pool, Darts and Table Football. It covers all the basis of the types of games you’d see in arcades.

As I said, the more you play each game the more popular they get, but one way to boost popularity is by completing goals. Each game has a set of these to complete which can greatly boost the popularity of each machine. Some of these are easy to get done quickly, but others will take you a while to complete. It’s a little imbalanced because you won’t beat some of these without spending a lot of time on each game.

And you won’t always have time to do that. Not just because of the laundry, but because of your To-Do List. Every day you’re given 3 random goals to complete which usually involve completing requirements in certain games or performing tasks while managing the business. And you’ll want to do these because you gain a separate currency from these that let you buy upgrades to make running things easier.

You can also use the money to purchase extra songs for the Jukebox. The music does a good job of replicating the style of music you would here during the mid-nineties. A lot of synth pop, hard rock, rap, it’s some good stuff. A lot of it does devolve into parody, there’s a clear pastiche of Insane in the Membrane that I really enjoyed, but it still works. Go listen to the song Outrun the World, that’s the MVP of the soundtrack.

And that’s basically the game. it’s all about earning money and playing games. The gameplay loop can get a little repetitive, but it’s also very addictive too. Once you get stuck into it it’s hard to stop playing it. And the variety in the arcade games does help offset the repetition.

The overall goal is to fully convert the launderette. The game is broken up into parts with the goal in each being to buy all the available arcade games, which then let’s you expand the arcade by purchasing an extension.

You always have a goal to strive for. Part of that is because Arcade Paradise is more story driven than a lot of other management sims. And the story is a very good one.

The plot revolves around the strained relationship between the player character and their workaholic father. They do a good job of really making you hate the dad too. He’s the biggest stick in the mud you’ll ever see, and his constant presence being represented by the launderette looming over the arcade is a nice bit of narrative through gameplay.

The story can be very hokey and cliché, but it is likable. It has good emotional moments, especially near the end, and the writing was fun and lighthearted enough that it made for an entertaining ride. At the end of the day, it’s a story of following your dreams and trying to make a living doing what you love, something we can all relate too.

I really enjoyed Arcade Paradise, but that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. While it is obvious a lot of love and care went into it, the game also has serious drawbacks that hold it back.

First of all, the game is lacking in technical polish. I ran into several bugs and glitches during my playthrough. Some were minor like my arm getting stuck in place when removing laundry from the dryer. Those kinds of bugs were more comical than anything else, but others were much more severe. One glitch I ran into prevented me from playing the Pool minigame which cost me a To Do List mission and wouldn’t work again until I reset the game.

The worst of it was the game crashing every time I tried to use the movie player feature on the computer. I should specify that I am reviewing the Xbox version. I don’t know if this happens on any other version, but I would stay away from that feature just to be on the safe side.

But the technical issues aren’t that big a deal. They’re annoying, but you can work around them. The biggest issue the game has is it’s pacing. I mentioned that the game is broken up into parts, with every part the launderette diminishes while the arcade expands.

You would think then that the laundry would have less of a presence as the game progresses, but it never feels that way. If anything, you have more laundry to do as the game progresses, which doesn’t make sense with what the game is trying to do.

The idea of the game is that you’re trying to get more time to play games, but the only time I felt like I got that was when I fully converted the place into an arcade, and by that point I was in the end game.

It’s not like you aren’t interrupted while managing the arcade itself. Games will break down eventually and need to be fixed, Hoppers will become full and need emptied, and the toilet needing to be cleaned is a constant. That’s the stuff I expected to be doing more of in the latter half of the game. Instead, it’s more laundry.

Maybe the idea is that you’re meant to ignore the laundry after a certain point. But you still must manage it as a front, and some To Do List missions require you to do it. So you can’t just ignore it.

I think the game would have been better if you got rid of the launderette earlier. By the time you do get rid of it, and you can spend time enjoying the games fully, you’ll be at a point where you pretty much already done and just putting the finishing touches on things.

This also means that you never have much time to do a lot of To Do List missions, which makes it unlikely you’ll be able to buy many of the upgrades. Especially because some of those are on the pricy side.

You can still go for these after the story is completed, but there’s no incentive to do so. There’s no post game to speak of; no alternate modes to add any longevity. Once you’re done with the story that’s it.

The game is sorely lacking in replay value. A massive blow considering most management sims thrive on being replayable. Arcade Paradise is in desperate need of a sandbox mode, or any mode where you can just focus on the arcade without having to do laundry every 5 minutes.

Arcade Paradise has a lot of passion and heart put into it, but it’s let down by technical limitations and poor design choices. It is still an enjoyable game, but more in its concept than its execution. I feel like the overall idea is solid, if they can iron out a lot of the problem in a sequel or DLC.

It’s also not a particularly great looking game to. The arcade games look ok and do a good job of replicating the look of the classics, but the 3D stuff while managing the arcade can look rough around the edges. I won’t harp on it though because this was very clearly did not have a big budget. It’s obvious in the character models, they can look a little creepy.

So would I recommend Arcade Paradise? Yes, but only for those who have a fondness for the old arcade scene. Arcade Paradise’s gameplay is solid enough, but it lacks the depth of other management sims, and the arcade games here don’t hold a candle to the original games they mimic. It’s fine minus some technical hiccups, but its main appeal lies in being able to be inside of an arcade.

Younger gamers may not get the appeal, but older gamers with nostalgic memories of the arcade absolutely will. And it’s those gamers that I recommend this game too. It’s a flawed but loving tribute to an old gaming hot spot that has a lot of love put into it. You can tell the developers were fans of arcades and it does shine through.

Despite its flaws, I still really liked the game. At the very least it is a unique take on a management sim that I would like to see expanded on in the future. Arcades may be dead, but as long as games like Arcade Paradise exist, the memories of them certainly won’t.