Arcade Paradise Review

Classic game compilations rarely frame themselves within another much more modern game, let alone blend those classics to create new, just as enjoyable experiences. This is where Arcade Paradise stands out, blending versions of those classic arcade titles you love with a modern-day management simulator that gives you all the thrills of washing other people’s laundry.

Your journey in Arcade Paradise starts out with being forced to run a laundromat. You take in laundry, wash it, keep the place clean, and collect the small amount of cash customers pay for the service. Also falling within your remit is unblocking the toilet, and cleaning gum from various surfaces. It’s not until you discover the back room with a couple of arcade cabinets inside that you realise a much more lucrative business could thrive here, and the game properly begins.

Customers of the laundromat can play the games in your arcade while they wait for you to wash their clothes and slam them in the dryer. This earns you some extra cash on the side that you can use to buy more arcade machines, increasing that income until you’re demolishing walls to make room for more cabinets so you can astutely ignore the duties of the laundromat. However, it’s the balance of management elements and classic arcade games that keeps Arcade Paradise interesting until the endgame.

You won’t have enough cash to buy a slew of arcade machines right away, so you need to keep up those laundromat duties for a good long while. This benefits you though, earning you more cash for the jobs you do. Neglect those jobs, and you’ll earn less cash for completing them in the future. It adds a layer of stress to your day that’s necessary to keep the bulk of the gameplay entertaining.

That bulk is, of course, playing arcade games. There are more than thirty to collect, each one inspired by classic games you’ll see in arcades today. While not all of them are outstanding, there are a few that everyone should be able to identify with thanks to their more recognisable inspirations, such as GTA, Pac-Man, and Tetris. The developer’s vision was almost certainly to give players a collection of arcade games inspired by classics without simply ripping those classics onto a Switch cartridge. In that, the game succeeds, but other elements fall by the wayside quickly once you start to earn a decent amount of cash.

It’s possible to increase how much customers spend in the arcade by completing specific goals in each game, making them more difficult and therefore forcing players to spend more cash on them to reach the end. You can also artificially boost the popularity of a game by spending more time playing it, giving the impression of popularity without hoping for the game to be the next big hit. This aspect, in particular, hit me with a massive dose of nostalgia and memories of queuing in arcades while piling up coins in a line to secure your place on the most popular game of the summer.

The game’s setting feels like a mix of the 80s and 90s, with some level of advanced technology such as the internet and a pocket organiser to hand, but without the high level of personal entertainment that smartphones and consoles like the Nintendo Switch provide. It’s a lovely window into a time when the Game Boy was probably the best handheld console on the market, but the best multiplayer experiences could only be found in brick-and-mortar arcades. The aesthetics and soundtrack reflect this with an almost low-tech cyberpunk feeling. Everything is intuitive but looks like it’s been designed to be old school and a little clunky, so it fits with the overall world.

Of course, the game’s overarching story doesn’t matter all that much since you’ll be spending most of your time playing the arcade games you pick up for your growing business. A lot of work has gone into these, and the whole collection is almost akin to a game jam. As if a group of developers has come together to make games in a certain timeframe to fit a specific theme: 80s and 90s arcade games. It works incredibly well and should keep you busy for a dozen hours or so if you want to complete every goal in every game.

Sadly, the management side of things falls short toward the endgame. You don’t care about money as much when you have loads of it, so all you can really do is bump up the earning efficiency of your games. You can still earn your keep in the laundromat and ensure that runs like a well-oiled machine, but monotony soon sets in once you’ve accomplished the goals you had as a penniless dropout at the game’s beginning.

Overall, what makes Arcade Paradise unique might make it unenjoyable for you, it’s very much a management simulation game that allows you to play arcade games rather than an arcade collection. But it never lies to you. There’s a lot of fun to be had with this game as long as you know what you’re letting yourself in for. Don’t dive in thinking you can boot up unique arcade titles based on those from your childhood without putting in a bit of mindless work first.