REVIEW: Arcade Paradise (+VR) [Horne Reviews]

It's that time again! time for another Fu- wait.... oh, yeah. I rebranded to get a little more "family friendly". Anyways, time for another review! This game, I have a LOT of experience with.
The name? Arcade Paradise, or should i say "pausing an online game simulator 2019". A chore Sim turned Arcade tycoon game.
Arcade Paradise was mainly developed by NoseBleed Interactive, Which i just realized has the same initials as New Blood Interactive. You may know Nosebleed for their other success, VOSTOK INC.
Similar to VOSTOK, the main goal here is making money, as well as unlocking new mini-games. You play as Ashley, a college drop out with a dead mom and dad that only cares for success and lives in England.
You are handed the keys to your father's old laundromat and told to keep it tidy, and do the laundry. Of course, being a teenager, you don't want to do the laundry. you want a massive arcade and a crap ton of money.
And so you do that with the help of your sister who works in city hall.
Moving on.

The Gameplay

The gameplay has 3 parts: chores, Arcade management, and arcade games. I'll break down each one for you separately to make it easier

Chores:  as you might have guessed from my "affectionate" nickname for this game, You do a lot of chores, many of which might need to be done randomly. I like to split the chores into 3 separate categories,
these being beginning of day, laundry, and interruptions. beginning of day tasks are things like picking up trash, throwing it in the dumpster, and cleaning gum. rather simple stuff, can be done pretty easy, and can get you around 130-160 bucks a day.
You pick up the garbage, when the bag is full you go out back and there is a timing minigame to see how much money you get, up to 30 dollars without upgrades.
Gum is also a timing minigame, much harder but doesn't affect much except for how fast you can pull and a few daily challenges. the laundry chores are more waiting based, but you can just not do them, without any repercussions.
This is your main income for a while, and is literally "go to basket, press e, go to machine, hold e, wait, repeat steps 3 and 4, go to dryer, repeat step 4 and 5, hold e again, go to clothes dropoff".
that's it. after you get enough arcade cabinets you can just ignore the laundry, though, so that's good.
what you can not ignore are the INTERRUPTIONS. Fix the toilet, fix the machines, empty the hoppers. These things happen randomly throughout the day and cause you to need to drop everything and go.
the toilet clogs randomly and you have find the "sweet spot" to plunge it faster so you can be done quicker. the arcade machines get roaches inside of them and get a default error message. (this is kinda funny on some cabinets where like pong or a vector machine, because the tech inside wouldn't be able to do that)
You have to kill all the roaches when this happens, or else nobody can play. The hoppers also fill. unlike in 1972, where the hopper filling stopped people from playing, here it just means you stop making money from your machines until you empty them and put the money in your safe.
In the VR version, the chores have differences, you are now able to work as fast as you would in real life. there's more trash to pick up, the laundry one actually feels like doing laundry, having you put in different settings for different loads of laundry, the dumpster is more of a throwing minigame, you can squash all the bugs in one hit, and the toilet is fun and and gives you a bunch of money.

Arcade Management: This is the main thing you do in arcade paradise. make money, buy cabinets, use cabinets to make more money, there's a popularity mechanic for you machines that allow you to make even more money, strategic placement of arcade machines you absolutely hate to make those also make money, and overall just..... money. you so tasks to get filthy Bri'Ish money to buy upgrades so you can make more money for less chores, and that's basically it. it's very simple, but fun. and leads to you getting a bigger and bigger arcade until the laundromat stops existing altogether. Money.

Arcade Games: This is the real meat and potatoes of Arcade Paradise, As Master Jaywalker would say "this is where the fun begins". there are around 35 arcade games in the base game, more with DLC, and even more with the VR version. these games range from "absolutely terrible, i wish i could throw you out the window", to "Good fun", and "legendary". You can definitely tell where the earlier developed games are. there's a few really good games here, and goals for each one to incentivize you playing everything. There are parodies of arcade and non arcade classics, such as Pacman, Outrun, 1942, Pong (still not as good as the originals), Frogger, asteroids, and (I kid you not) an old PC game by llamasoft called "BOMB BUENOS ARES". I'm serious, this wasn't just a port of an arcade game. some games here aren't even arcade games in the real world, like candy crush, that little bubble game, the pipe puzzle from system shock (my beloved). the gameplay in a lot of these is great, you even get a twin-stick shooter, DDR,  and a fighting game ala streets of rage! There are quite a few stinkers, such as the pacman clone, a game I hate with a burning passion. These are outnumbered by actually solid roster of other games.

The Vr version has all the DLC cabinets and different controls for some of the cabinets, including a lightgun game. Very fun.

The soundtrack

The soundtrack for this game is TOP NOTCH! There's a song from most genres of music here, the jukebox comes packed with some awesome songs, and you can buy more off of the in game computer using your bri'ish money. amazing. there's parodies of such classic bands as nirvana, the police, and the spice gurls. chef's kiss. and even better, you can listen to anything that's not available for the jukebox using your computer and a special upgrade.  amazing.

this game is amazing. I'm giving it a 10 outta 11.3. buy it, and get the vr version while you're at it!

This is Johnathan Horne, signing off.