Reviews

• gamedeal user

  Aug 2, 2016

  Welllll being one of the biggest fans of NRC there is, I have to write a review. First the good - It perfectly recreates the arcade experience, which is what DC was going for, so that's great. Now the bad - For those of us, like myself, which have been following this from the very beginning, it has been nearly all about emulation. Now, at seemingly the 11th hour, the finished product, while nice, has ensured emulation has taken a back seat to all the rest of the glitz the arcade has to offer. While I do recommend this experience, it's fun, with lots of customization, I can't help but feel a tinge sad, because this was supposed to be "The One" we were waiting for, to give us emulation fans the experience (including multiplayer) that we all were so longingly looking forward to. Kind of like 3D Arcade, with the ability to add 100's of cabinets, from all our systems. Here, you get approximately 20 cabinets, which was the same amount as in the demo. Not nearly enough to fit most of the games you truly loved to play. The arcade needs the ability to knock down walls, and remove the pieces you don't want, and replace them with more (and varied) cabinet styles. Once that piece is in place, at least for me, it will be what I am looking for. Until then, a great experience, but missing that one special piece that could have made our emulation dreams come true.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 2, 2016

  I'll keep this short and sweet. The atmosphere is dead on. It's about as close as we'll get to going back to those old arcades we used to haunt. The music, the neon and that wonderful patterned carpet nail the look. The problem, sadly, comes from the lack of documentation and the just confusing interface options with regards to the coin-ops. I had to read a thread on the forums to figure out how to load the roms, emulator and even put a quarter in a machine. It's confusing and even for someone who is used to using MAME, it's just way too clunky and limiting. I also was unable to figure out how to put quarters into a certain slot for 4-player games like Konami's TMNT or Simpsons which require you to use your quarter to pick your character. You can't rearrange your arcade or remove items you don't want. You're limited to a set amount of machines. The games won't run their attract sequences so you can walk around and get the full "arcade experience". They really need to set up some kind of in-game UI to set up your arcade and make things simpler. I'll keep an eye on this and see what/if they improve things. But I can't honestly recommend it as it stands and that breaks my heart because it has so much potential.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 7, 2016

  New Retro Arcade: Neon is my new Life. Ok - HUGE caveat: 1. New Retro Arcade: Neon does NOT come with arcade machines loaded with games to play. You must modify them yourself with emulators and roms which must be acquired on your own. 2. This game is VERY buggy right now, it almost should have been an early access game. 3. This game is very much intended to be modified to suit your needs, but requires you to have some decent problem solving and research skills to figure out how to work all of the features to make it shine. It is not for the feint of heart .. or 'mind' in this case. Despite those points I am still recommending this title. NRA-N is the BEST emulation lobby you will ever encounter. The immersion factor is THROUGH THE ROOF on this one, you get to walk around an 80's-90's style arcade environment which includes many interactable features and mini-games such as the ticket-style games you would typically find in an arcade like: ski-ball, basketball hoop shooting, darts, air hockey. Then, with the NRA-N configuration tool you can add: Each arcade can emulate a game of your choosing, so that when you walk up to it and interact it loads the game and it plays on the screen IN the environment! You dont even leave NRA-N .. if you want to stop playing that arcade machine .. just turn around and walk away to another .. start that one up and play. The feeling you get when doing this will flash you right back to the 90's when you slammed your fist down after losing at a game and the continue screen appears and starts to count down. There are game cartridges littered throughout the environment, using the config tool you can make these games emulate any SNES/Genesis/NES or other console game, instead of just interacting with it, you have to physically pick it up and put it into the game console and it will start playing on a CRT screen. Just think, in 2016, you can play Super Metroid on a CRT screen on your top tier PC in VR. There are cassette tapes littered all over the place, you can use the config tool to load these up with any MP3 you want and then plug them into a cassette player to play whatever song you want to set the mood. There are VHS tapes you can set to movie files so you can watch Aliens .. or Terminator 2 on a CRT TV! - note however this feature is currently buggy for some people. I have gotten it to work but without sound, still trying to mess with it .. but the tech is there! .. it should work eventually! You can modify posters, you can modify the graphics of the arcade machines .. the graphics of the cartridges. Or you can just chill and throw darts at a wall. NRA-N is my new life. It's still janky .. its still being worked on despite being released .. but I dont CARE! .. ITS AWESOME! and I still recommend it in spite of its flaws.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 25, 2016

  tl:dr - Buy it, but be aware that you'll have to do work to make it at all useful. 1) This is where I want to go when I die. 2) The "game," "out of the box," does next to nothing. Because this replicates an environment where you'd play classic, "retro," "copyrighted" arcade games, none of those games are included in this arcade. Amazingly, even the arcade emulators have to be downloaded (the libretro packages) and installed separately. "Game does not ship with ROMs" doesn't even begin to cover it: game does not ship with anything except the shell of the arcade. You can buy this, and then walk around in it. 3) To make this into a working arcade, you'll have to: a. download and install the emulators b. download and add your legally owned ROMs c. you see the art on the machines? The side panel graphics, the marquees, and the button and stick arrangements? You'll have to configure those for your games, too. Remember that you'll have to do this for each game in your arcade. They provide an "arcade builder" tool which makes this less difficult than it would be if you had to custom-write your own xml, but 4) [b]SOME DOCUMENTATION WOULD BE NICE.[/b] As of 8/24/2016, the documentation that I can find is this: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=736005082 for everything else, the answer appears to go to Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/NewRetroArcade For example, I'm working on an Asteroids machine, now. I managed to find and install mame2014_libretro.dll, my legally-owned Asteroids ROM, front and side panel art from Reddit, but now I'm at "panel layout" - do I use LayoutPhallicOrder, LayoutRobertCop, or LayoutAlienBoom? (Actually, I just found the information that I was looking for in an image on the Steam guide page, but they certainly don't make this easy.) In avoiding copyright issues, Digital Cybercherries is sometimes a little too cute for its own good, although "Stonky Dong" is one of the funniest things that I've seen this week. 5. I haven't even talked about the other rooms, like the theater, where you can watch plug "videotapes" into a virtual VCR and watch videos. You can customize these with local or streaming media. There's also a kind-of creditable bowling alley, weird-floaty darts and dartboard, and a virtual bar (I think that this is new - you can't do anything in it). In short, this is neat. I like it, and I'll like it a lot more when I get the thing running, I just wish tat it was [strike]at all[/strike] better documented.
• gamedeal user

  Dec 14, 2016

  Spent $800+ dollars on Virtual Reality hardware, then used it to play Megaman Soccer. 10/10 would buy again
• gamedeal user

  Dec 25, 2016

  A few thousand dollars in Virtual Reality equipment all so I can play the SNES and watch The Goonies in my personal arcade. The future is fucking awesome.
• gamedeal user

  Mar 2, 2017

  "Ready: Player One" and "Oasis" pre alpha stage/early access. Soon we will all be hanging out in virtual 1980s basements playing retro videogames with our friends as we neglect our real life responsibilities. I, for one, can't wait.
• gamedeal user

  Apr 3, 2017

  ONLY BUY THIS GAME IF YOU WANT TO PLAY SOLO IN YOUR ARCADE Why? Selling points: -Multiplayer: Spend hours making your own cozy arcade... That no one will ever see! What a joke. I get the whole "emulators dlls aren't made to be in sync so multiplay on the same ROM is not included" Ok. I get it. That's disappointing, but ok. Are the wall posters in risk of getting desynched too? Or the machine decorations? The multiplayer is akin to what you get on Dark Souls. You don't play with other people, you just see their ghosts. They are on their own dimensions, they have their own arcades and play on their own games, EVEN IF YOU ARE IN THE SAME SERVER. Nothing is shared. If you want to play WITH your friends, I hope you like juggling with beers and playing bowling because there isn't much else. Only the physical games are synched. You won't see what game they are playing, you won't see how they decorated their arcade, nothing. You'll just see where they are in their arcade and be able to exchange physical objects. Why is this not mentionned on the store page? -Still wanna play Multiplayer? Better bring your friends, because so far I didn't see a single public server -There's not even a key to leave an arcade? You have to physically turn 180° and walk away? Really? -You cannot turn off the radio/tape player? Really? You have to either make an empty tape or just put it as far as you can because of the obnoxiously loud music it plays? I'm seriously asking now because I cannot believe you cannot push the pause button on that. -You don't have a QWERTY keyboard? Wanna map your keys? Well fuck you too! -You can only walk. Slowly. Pros: -Pretty, even if you cannot customize the wallpapers and floors, or the placement of any machines. -The controls on (qwerty) keyboard/gamepad and VIVE are nice so far. It's incredibly stupid to not even synchronize the posters/arcade machine decorations. I would NEVER have bought this game if I knew. I half-feel like making a SVN or uploading the files to play with my friends in my arcade and half asking for a refund (But I think I just might be past the time, thanks to that arcade builder that is a sore) Also, let's completely ignore that there are multiple emulators that allow to multiplay on the same rom. I finished G&G with a friend multiple times. Yeah, desynch can happen. But it's way better than not multiplaying at all. Or not knowing what they are playing. If this game was sold as a solo Arcade salon simulator, it would be ok, but this isn't. The dev has by now seen other people being disappointed by that and probably the multiple articles online claiming this game would offer multiplay. Not mentioning this on the store page is obvious lie by omission. But hey, that's 20 bucks for him right. :)
• gamedeal user

  Jun 4, 2017

  Game's amazing. Better in VR. Has multiplayer! Would be cool if the arcade cabinets were more flexible, for instance, playing games that aren't roms and such. Don't know how but heck, would be cool.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 28, 2017

  one of the best VR apps ever made,buy it its a bit of a ballache setting the arcade up,but at least you can customize it from the ground up EDIT! There are some places on the net you can find "packs" where you download them and replace a folder with another and boom it fills your arcade with everything you need...cant say here as that is against the rules but google is your mate...mate :D