Arcade Paradise is a fun, yet uneven trip through the 80s/90s arcade boom. Whether it was a laundromat, pizza shop, or gas station, you could count on there being at least one arcade cabinet to kill some quarters. While this game captures the aesthetic of that time quite well, it decides to strangely pull you out of that capsule with bizarre cabinets that had no analog from the inspired time period.
The game is split into 2 halves - the arcade business simulator and the mini-games found within. Yes, there is the laundry to contend with from the outset, but you will quickly find yourself ignoring those responsibilities as the arcade revenue grows. The sim management side of the house is a means to an end. There is little value is re-organizing the arcade throughout your business adventure, so it's really just there to move the narrative forward.
And everything in-between comes down to the arcade games. Yes, you can play every cabinet you purchase and home within King Wash Laundromat. But the enjoyment is hit-and-miss. Because almost every game is different, there are disparate systems that all had to be developed and shipped into this game. Which means the quality of some suffer. Various games have poor controls, poor physics, or both. Things like air hockey and table football are painful to play. Even one of the game's flagship cabs - Knuckles and Knees, plays worse than something like TMNT or Simpsons arcade - not to mention any modern contemporaries that are even more finely tuned.
Despite the uneven fun factor of the cabs, there are still plenty that you'll go back to. I was confused why the developer opted to include cabinets that had no obvious analog to the time period. Something like Zombat 2 could maybe be compared to NARC or Smash TV. But why not just go all in? There are hundreds of cabinets to model after; I don't get why certain machines were crammed in here. Entries like Line Terror, Attack Vector, Cyber Dance, and Barkanoid have prominent inspirations that feel right at home.
All of these mentioned games have Goals that you can work on to drive up popularity. The issue is that the systems are not all balanced. Your cabinets make cash to purchase more arcade games and building expansions, but you need to complete daily To-Do tasks to build a separate currency for upgrades and music. This didn't really make any sense. You can only do up to 3 To-Do tasks in a day. So your extra currency was significantly capped. Worse yet, the To-Dos did not de-prioritize games you already completed all Goals on, so you often were forced to play a few minutes of something you didn't want to. A better option would have been to remove To-Dos and just reward Goals with the extra currency.
As a 90s kid, I definitely vibed with Arcade Paradise. It has the decor, the music, and (for the most part), the games. It just doesn't have the balance or the consistency to be excellent.
The game is split into 2 halves - the arcade business simulator and the mini-games found within. Yes, there is the laundry to contend with from the outset, but you will quickly find yourself ignoring those responsibilities as the arcade revenue grows. The sim management side of the house is a means to an end. There is little value is re-organizing the arcade throughout your business adventure, so it's really just there to move the narrative forward.
And everything in-between comes down to the arcade games. Yes, you can play every cabinet you purchase and home within King Wash Laundromat. But the enjoyment is hit-and-miss. Because almost every game is different, there are disparate systems that all had to be developed and shipped into this game. Which means the quality of some suffer. Various games have poor controls, poor physics, or both. Things like air hockey and table football are painful to play. Even one of the game's flagship cabs - Knuckles and Knees, plays worse than something like TMNT or Simpsons arcade - not to mention any modern contemporaries that are even more finely tuned.
Despite the uneven fun factor of the cabs, there are still plenty that you'll go back to. I was confused why the developer opted to include cabinets that had no obvious analog to the time period. Something like Zombat 2 could maybe be compared to NARC or Smash TV. But why not just go all in? There are hundreds of cabinets to model after; I don't get why certain machines were crammed in here. Entries like Line Terror, Attack Vector, Cyber Dance, and Barkanoid have prominent inspirations that feel right at home.
All of these mentioned games have Goals that you can work on to drive up popularity. The issue is that the systems are not all balanced. Your cabinets make cash to purchase more arcade games and building expansions, but you need to complete daily To-Do tasks to build a separate currency for upgrades and music. This didn't really make any sense. You can only do up to 3 To-Do tasks in a day. So your extra currency was significantly capped. Worse yet, the To-Dos did not de-prioritize games you already completed all Goals on, so you often were forced to play a few minutes of something you didn't want to. A better option would have been to remove To-Dos and just reward Goals with the extra currency.
As a 90s kid, I definitely vibed with Arcade Paradise. It has the decor, the music, and (for the most part), the games. It just doesn't have the balance or the consistency to be excellent.