Build Your Own Retro Gaming Oasis in ‘Arcade Paradise VR,’ Out Now on Meta Quest

The hazy glow of CRTs in a dimly lit room. The chaotic din of bleeps and bloops. The carpet. A good arcade is all-too-hard to find nowadays—so why not build one yourself? Maybe even right in your living room.

The critically acclaimed Arcade Paradise comes to Meta Quest 2, 3, and Pro today. You’ve been put in charge of the failing King Wash laundromat, and sure, you could keep doing laundry all day—or you could take your scant profits, buy games, and build the arcade of your dreams.

There are 39 fully-playable arcade cabinets in the game, including six exclusive to Arcade Paradise VR, so there’s plenty to do while you’re procrastinating doing laundry (real or virtual). On Meta Quest 3, the optional MR mode even lets you place arcade cabinets right in your real-world space.

We sat down with Nosebleed Interactive CEO and Game Director Andreas Firnigl to discuss favorite arcade cabinets, using your hands versus using controllers, changes and additions to the VR version of Arcade Paradise, and more.

Read on for the full interview, or go check out Arcade Paradise VR in the Meta Quest Store!

Andreas Firnigl: It’s 1993 and you play as Ashley, a college dropout starting work at your Dad’s laundromat. You tidy the place, run the deluxe drop off service, clean the toilet and so on. Then you discover a back room in the laundromat where your older sister had invested in some (fully playable) arcade machines. Turns out these games have the potential to earn a lot more than the laundromat.

And so, with the help of your sister, and unknown to your Dad, you start reinvesting profits into buying more games and building an arcade empire. The way this plays out is that you juggle your time between the (fun) daily tasks in the laundromat and buying/playing arcade games. The more money you make, the more arcade cabinets you can buy, which increases how much you can earn.

We’ve balanced the game so that if players want to, they can completely ignore the laundromat. As you play games and complete a number of goals within each of the games you can level up their popularity and profitability. But as it happens, people find the laundromat gameplay really relaxing too. It’s a game you can play at your own pace and however you like.

AF: This is an interesting one. We did prototype fully immersive controls and they kind of worked okay for some games, but for others it was a bit like playing a game on mobile with virtual sticks when you have a perfectly great controller sitting right next to you. That’s what’s so great about the Meta Quest controllers. You have a whole host of input options.

The way we approached it was to look at what existing games or gameplay activities would be elevated by immersive controls and concentrating on those. So stuff like washing clothes—where in the original game you'd just hold a button, we spent time making that feel good, allowing the player to throw baskets over to the machines or lob clothes into machines from a distance. We also fully reworked the system that got the most criticism in the original game, losing laundry rank for carrying on playing games. We’re really happy with that change.

We also targeted games like table football, air hockey, thump-a-gopher, and any activities like opening safes and such that were kind-of button press proxies for something you'd do for real. And we ended up reworking a lot of the more physical games too, and they feel so much more natural in VR than they did in the original game.

With more traditional arcade games like Zombat 2, a twin-stick shooter, it really made no sense to use virtual controls. Some of the arcade games are quite twitchy, and for those the sticks on the Meta Quest controllers are the best way to play! We looked at each game and activity and figured out what was the most fun way to control them. I think we’ve struck a good balance.

AF: As well as reworking existing games and activities to be fully immersive we’ve added a whole bunch of VR exclusive content. The various light gun games are a big favorite at the studio, as is KO Champ, the new boxing game, and Basketball Blast. But probably the silliest one is “Istvan Speaks,” based on the Zoltar machine from the Tom Hanks movie Big.

It started out as a bit of a joke, but we ended up having loads of fun making it. Coincidentally, Istvan is my dad’s name. He provided the original voiceover in his very strong Hungarian accent, but given he’s never acted in his life, we decided to get Doug Cockle (who plays Geralt in The Witcher) to re-record them. I laughed a lot during that recording session!

AF: In short, yes! Once you’re a little bit into the game you’ll unlock the ability to place any purchased machines into the real world. It’s such a cool feature and we had a lot of fun implementing it. I don’t really want to spoil how it unlocks as it’s a nice surprise for players.

That said, as a feature it’s very, very cool. My 91-year-old mother had never tried VR and I got her playing in mixed reality before she went into full VR. It just instantly clicked for her. “Here’s a machine in the room with you…pick up the gun and shoot at the targets.” She did surprisingly well!

AF: My favorite pinball table is Star Trek: The Next Generation, easily. It's a masterpiece! My favorite arcade game is Windjammers. We used to play rounds of it in the office to determine who made the coffee.

Finally, the most ingenious arcade cabinet, from a commercial point of view, is Namco’s Quick & Crash. It’s a light gun game where you shoot real targets as quickly as possible over 4 rounds. The idea is to get the fastest time. It’s hyper competitive and if you’re really good you can spend your entire credit in under 5 seconds. Absolute genius!

You might find something similar in Arcade Paradise VR…

AF: We have some things planned for sure so keep your eyes—or should I say ears—peeled. It’s also worth mentioning that we love hearing feedback, too. A lot of our biggest changes between the original release and Arcade Paradise VR came from direct feedback from our players.

AF: Ever heard of the IMANOK code? ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A…

Oh, and go play our awesome new game now, please!

Got a pocket full of quarters? Arcade Paradise VR is available now in the Meta Quest Store.