Arcade Paradise PS5 Review

Set in the early 90s, Arcade Paradise’s premise is this: you’ve finished college and you’ve been put in charge of Daddy’s laundromat. He’s a stern by-the-book businessman and he wants you to take some responsibility by taking over one of the family firms: the King Wash laundromat. The only problem is… Laundromats are no fun and being that you’re a graduate of business, you come to realize that the arcade machines lumped in a store room to give customers something to do while they wash their undies have great money-making potential.

But Daddy doesn’t care about video games. He thinks they’re a waste of time, and he urges you to get on with the job at hand and get folding them clothes and putting them dead presidents in the safe.

Obviously, being that the game is called Arcade Paradise, you go against the grain and take the initiative and turn the grubby little laundromat into a gamer’s haven with a collection of the sweetest arcade games known to 1993. An Arcade Paradise, if you will.

It’s a long journey, though, and surprisingly, I found the mundane day-to-day running of the business to be more fun than actually playing the arcade games, at least to begin with. Once the progression sped up and money started trickling in at a faster pace, I spent less and less time elbow-deep in dirty laundry.

I began each day with a quick run around the premises to clear up all the crap that customers had left behind before heading out back and lobbing it in the bins. This in itself is a game where you have to time your throw to get a bin bag bullseye, which in turn puts $30 in your pocket. In fact, most of the little menial tasks are a great way of making some dollars. See a blob of chewing game spoiling a seat? Beat the mini-game and pull it off quickly to get a nice little cash reward. Toilet clogged? Arm yourself with the plunger and take the battle to the bowl for a quick flush of cash.

Playing the arcade games might seem like skiving off of work, but you’re actually encouraged to play through them.

The big pennies, at least while the arcade is still just a grotty storeroom, come from serving the customers by dumping their clothes in the washing machine, waiting for the cycle to finish, then transferring them to the dryer. A quick turnaround can be the difference between an S-Rank score and $30 in your pocket and a C-Rank with just a lowly fiver for your effort, or lack of.

It might sound simple, but one can’t simply sit and watch the washers spin. What else is there to do? That’s where those dinky cabinets come into play. Or, you can make Daddy proud and just sit and watch the washers.

Playing the arcade games might seem like skiving off of work, but you’re actually encouraged to play through them. Each game has a set number of goals for you to complete, and completing each one will increase the game’s popularity which, in turn, increases the amount of revenue the machine will bring in each day. More cash in the coffers means you can buy more gaming cabinets and even expand the arcade area by knocking through adjoining walls, turning the uninviting dark backroom into a glowing hub of money-making machines.

The steady drip of cash leads to a steady drip of new games for the arcade, as well as upgrades that make running a business easier. It’s that loop that kept me playing for hours on end, sometimes up until the point where I’d almost fall asleep with the controller in my hand. Something about the gentle hum of a tumble dryer just sends me to dreamland.

If I had to direct any criticism towards Arcade Paradise, it would be at some of the games and their goals. Completing game goals will help you make more money, but some of them are just too darn difficult. I tried to “git gud” at Zombat 2, a top-down zombie shooter, but for the life of me, I just couldn’t do it, even after tweaking the difficulty on my trusty 90s PDA. Another early addition to the library, Blockchain, had me stumped with its confusing number-based Tetris-style layout. I must have put a good half an hour into it at this point and I’ve still no idea what I’m doing.

Thankfully, most of the games are fairly decent and once the business got to the point where I could more or less ignore the laundry side and focus on the arcade and its maintenance, I actually started to get really invested in some of the games I’d stocked my arcade and let the business essentially run itself. That’s the dream, eh?

Arcade Paradise lives up to its name by essentially being a modern plug-n-play TV compilation (remember those?) wrapped in a competent and rewarding business sim dressed up in the most garish of 90s fashion, complete with dial-up internet, Solitaire on the PC, and more turquoise tracksuits than I’d ever like to see. The collection of games on offer is massive, and the earn-buy-earn loop works well at keeping the game from becoming too stale too soon.