Half arcade running simulator, half arcade game playing. That's arcade paradise. For the low entry cost, seriously 25 bucks for the physical and soundtrack download code, you get a lot of bang for your buck here. Let's break it down between the both halves.
The simulator elements while simple do a great job at breaking up the pacing with the arcade game playing. You start with a dump of a laundry store and eventually build it up to a living breathing acrade of it's own. piece by piece. There is a small story about a girl with an overbearing father and their relationship around the job. I really appreciated these parts as it helps build a connection and feel like i'm a part of someone's every day world as opposed to a digital janitor. I wish they were more fleshed out or deeper but they mostly are good at helping the pacing. It's all about earning money so you can buy more arcade games. At the start of your menial laundry job, washing and drying clothes to keep the place running is nessesary task. However the money you make and more games you add to the side room, the more money you have to make expansions to fit more games and eventually dump the laundry element all togather. Every menial task rewards the player with money. Taking out the clothes, cleaning up the garbage, unclogging the toilet, removing gum splatter, maintaing the machines and more. Everything is tied to a little mini game that keeps the task from becmoing tedious. They are quick and fast and do help from getting quick arcade playing exhaustion. Also everyday there are three tasks that are optinal to complete. They range from doing a specific chore, to obtaining a score in a certain game or playing for a certain time and things like that. Those earn you seperate point that you can use to buy perks or upgrades that make doing certain things easier or buying music tracks to play in the juke box and more things of that nature. Pretty decent amount but some of the things really don't seem to do much or just pad out the store.
As for the arcade games themselves there is about 30 different ones. A lot of them are mimics of old popular arcade games such as frogger. pacman and space invaders but there is a big varity to play and you really only need to play them in short bursts so they don't wear out their welcome as fast as you might think. There are clearly a handful of games that are more designed than others but I think there aren't very many that are true clunkers. As for how they play I will say they don't excactly replace any of their contemporaries or make me want to ever play them outside of this game but I will say I didn't mind that much as I thought I would. The games all have built in challanges and scores. Trying to complete them is really a big part of the game but it's not required at all. If your an achievment hunter I think you will get much more playtime out of this than say someone who just wants to see the start and the end and play each thing only once.
Overall I think Arcade Paradise accomplishes what I think it set out to do. I don't think the games themselves make a great mini game compliation but in combination of the simulator elements and quick pacing of the objectives and actual game playing time create quite a nice vibe and it's easy to get lost in. I recommend it to any simulator fans or fans of classic retro arcade games.
Platinum #167
The simulator elements while simple do a great job at breaking up the pacing with the arcade game playing. You start with a dump of a laundry store and eventually build it up to a living breathing acrade of it's own. piece by piece. There is a small story about a girl with an overbearing father and their relationship around the job. I really appreciated these parts as it helps build a connection and feel like i'm a part of someone's every day world as opposed to a digital janitor. I wish they were more fleshed out or deeper but they mostly are good at helping the pacing. It's all about earning money so you can buy more arcade games. At the start of your menial laundry job, washing and drying clothes to keep the place running is nessesary task. However the money you make and more games you add to the side room, the more money you have to make expansions to fit more games and eventually dump the laundry element all togather. Every menial task rewards the player with money. Taking out the clothes, cleaning up the garbage, unclogging the toilet, removing gum splatter, maintaing the machines and more. Everything is tied to a little mini game that keeps the task from becmoing tedious. They are quick and fast and do help from getting quick arcade playing exhaustion. Also everyday there are three tasks that are optinal to complete. They range from doing a specific chore, to obtaining a score in a certain game or playing for a certain time and things like that. Those earn you seperate point that you can use to buy perks or upgrades that make doing certain things easier or buying music tracks to play in the juke box and more things of that nature. Pretty decent amount but some of the things really don't seem to do much or just pad out the store.
As for the arcade games themselves there is about 30 different ones. A lot of them are mimics of old popular arcade games such as frogger. pacman and space invaders but there is a big varity to play and you really only need to play them in short bursts so they don't wear out their welcome as fast as you might think. There are clearly a handful of games that are more designed than others but I think there aren't very many that are true clunkers. As for how they play I will say they don't excactly replace any of their contemporaries or make me want to ever play them outside of this game but I will say I didn't mind that much as I thought I would. The games all have built in challanges and scores. Trying to complete them is really a big part of the game but it's not required at all. If your an achievment hunter I think you will get much more playtime out of this than say someone who just wants to see the start and the end and play each thing only once.
Overall I think Arcade Paradise accomplishes what I think it set out to do. I don't think the games themselves make a great mini game compliation but in combination of the simulator elements and quick pacing of the objectives and actual game playing time create quite a nice vibe and it's easy to get lost in. I recommend it to any simulator fans or fans of classic retro arcade games.
Platinum #167