You initiate the laundrette, day by day, bussing in and out.
Arcade Paradise review
But in another back room there are arcade games - cabinets with playable games!
It’s like opening a door and finding that aliens have landed.
you could collect the money in their coin hoppers and whack that in the safe.
And what if all this money you’re collecting, what if you used it to expand?
To buy new cabinets, to create more room to store them in?
So Arcade Paradise moves on, in step with the rolling Katamari of commerce and capitalism.
More, brighter, shinier.
But also quicker, more efficient.
Did you know that the original GTA was based on pinball?
That’s just one of the games, and the only one I will even partly ruin.
So yes, this is the core appeal, right?
Slowly turn the laundrette into an arcade and rake it in.
(Just playing the games and ticking off achievements helps make them more popular with punters.)
For the first few hours, this is the main game here.
I love the stretchy micro-drama of pulling away an old piece of gum.
All of this stuff is a matter of button-presses and lovely feedback.
(Not talking about the paper round any more.)
Where did this game come from?
Arcade Paradise is fiction and abstraction that feels like memory.
Maybe this is because it understands the way that memory also fictionalises and abstracts.
And more than that, it hints, games can be a way of seeing the world.
Later, the arcade as an entity becomes a playful fixation too: where best to place the machines?
What’s the best price and difficulty?
But it also made me think of those mazes tiled on the walls of Warren Street tube.
Then you solve the maze and you’re off into a wider maze of the underground web connection.
And maybe, who knows, there’s a maze beyond that too.
