Ready player one? Why the games arcade is having a rebirth

Ready player one? Why the games arcade is having a rebirth

After years of sprawling ‘forever’ games, players are rediscovering the pleasures of more focused experiences. Could a new wave of independent arcades bring back the social side of gaming?

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There’s an important semi-nostalgic movement happening in games, and I’m excited about where it’s heading. But I don’t want to get ahead of myself here.

Over the last five years, major publishers, obsessed with the success of “forever games” such as Fortnite, Minecraft and Roblox, have been throwing hundreds of millions of dollars into their own sprawling, endlessly updating, battle-pass-infested mega franchises – each designed to take all our time and money. The result has been astounding failures such as Concord, Mindseye and Tales of the Shire. Even the good games – Crimson Desert, Path of Exile 2, Blood of the Dawnwalker – are so bloated they have become the unyielding masters of our precious few hours of free time.

It’s a relief, then, to see a growing number of mainstream titles heavily inspired by arcade design conventions, and intended as discreet, contained experiences. Along with the excellent driving game Star Wars Galactic Racer, which I rave about below, there’s Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve, an unreconstructed air-combat shooter that doesn’t want to become your whole life. You don’t have to romance your F/A-18F Super Hornet (although that does sound sort of cool), you don’t have to build your own airbase. You fly, you shoot things, there’s a story in the background, the end. It’s been equally lovely to see the success of Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, a demanding 2D fighting game with complex interlocking power-up systems – the sort of thing my friends and I might have played in the arcades in 1993 before buying it on imported £100 Neo Geo carts.

All of this points to one inevitable, socio-ludological phenomenon: the rebirth of the games arcade. Yes, I know there are brilliant retro arcades, and chain bars and cafes such as Continue and NQ64 offer classic coin-ops alongside themed cocktails. There’s also Arcade Arena, a new “immersive experience” venue in London that lets you play physical versions of Pac-Man and kart racers. But a growing number of players are interested in arcade-game design, and don’t necessarily want to play a few rounds of Time Crisis while downing a mojito.

What I’m hoping to see is a more refined take on the coin-op arcade, something akin to the rise of the independent bookshop, with carefully curated collections and interesting events.

This, I am pleased to discover, is happening. “The popularity of gaming bars and cafes is demonstrating that there is a sustainable business model in out-of-home gaming here in 2026,” says games journalist and arcade obsessive Will Freeman. “I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a boom, but there are a handful of smaller set-ups taking an approach that feels comparable to independent bookshops and record stores.”

He mentions NQ Japan, which is about to open in London’s Soho. “While it is a cafe, there’s a firm focus on imported Japanese coin-op cabinets – covering newer games and cult classics that carry weight in the arcade community,” he tells me. “It really looks to be serving an authentic, arcade experience, bringing back that anticipation of getting your hands on exotic games from the cultural centre of arcade gaming.”

The retro gaming industry is booming, with specialist manufacturers such as Analogue and Evercade producing high-end consoles that play original carts or new emulated collections of rare and sought-after titles. People are willing to spend money on an authentic arcade-style experience, just as they are now spending money on DVDs and vinyl records. A growing number of us want to have experiences that mega corps can’t provide through sleek, glassy devices.

But while it is lovely that people are rediscovering foundational game mechanics through Ace Combat and Marvel Tōkon, there is much more to discover. The joy of arcades in the 1970s and 80s was that they were social hives as well as gaming spaces – you made friends, you learned from better players – and each game created its own community. Crucially, you went in with a handful of coins and could have a handful of very different experiences. A new era of boutique arcades could bring that back.

“Something is under way, even if it is quietly,” says Freeman, pointing to smaller independent arcades with curated games libraries, such as Pixel Bunker in Milton Keynes. “I think we might see more independent arcades open up that drop the established ‘gaming cafe’ model to various degrees, and bring that feeling of local experts who really know their arcade culture, and want to build venues that draw in enthusiast communities.”

Modern video games are bringing the arcade back into our homes. Perhaps now it is time to bring arcades back to our rapidly emptying high streets.

What to play

It feels like ages since we’ve seen an exciting mainstream racing game with a traditional linear structure rather than a vast open world. Enter Star Wars Galactic Racer – where you pilot landspeeders, speeder bikes and other outlandish Star Wars vehicles through intense circuits on excitingly familiar planets. As you progress, you unlock new parts and abilities, and plot your own route through a branching series of events. But crash out from a race and you have to go right back to the beginning of the season – a really clever implementation of rogue-lite design sensibilities in what is essentially a modern day take on Wipeout.

What a joy it is to zoom through the wreckage-strewn canyons of Jakku and the icy tundras of Ando Prime, hitting the ramjet button to scorch past other vehicles at hundreds of miles-per-hour while a John Williams-adjacent symphonic score adds to the thrill. There hasn’t been a Star Wars racing title since Star Wars: Racer Revenge in 2002, which was, um, not a great game. I hope this is the beginning of a beautiful new era.

Available on:PC, PS5, Xbox

Estimated playtime:20 hours plus

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What to read

• As reported in Bloomberg, it seems that the Fortnite creator Epic Games has ordered an “AI-first” approach to developing a forthcoming Disney title. “Progress on the title has allegedly been slower than expected, partly because Epic underestimated how many staff it would require,” writes VGC. The team has apparently been told to use tools such as Anthropic’s Claude AI. GamesIndustry.Biz adds: “In an internal message seen by Bloomberg, one of the game’s directors told staff: ‘No more hand-written code.’ The director also said all of the game’s art would be ‘generated with full AI workflows.’” How do the developers feel? Stunned is the most widely reported reaction.

• There is a lot of interest in the subject of games industry unionisation, partly because of the most recent Xbox lay-offs and partly due to the ongoing legal battle between Rockstar and a group of ex-employees fired, they contend, because they were seeking to unionise. Kotaku has an interesting and enlightening story, this time about a failed attempt to unionise at the veteran studio Double Fine and the ongoing ramifications.

• The latest novel by Guardian games contributor, Sarah Maria Griffin is out. Strange Is the Light is a gothic thriller about a group of friends whose lives are torn apart by a live-action role-playing game they invented as children.

What to click

• Castlevania: Belmont’s Curse – every fantastical vampire-hunting vision is fulfilled | ★★★☆☆

• End of Abyss – a creepy dollhouse take on Resident Evil and The Thing | ★★★☆☆

Question Block

A great question this week from Trudy

“I’m really into documentaries at the moment. Could you recommend any that deal with video games and the gaming industry?”

There are a few absolute classics that really defined the genre – among them are The King of Kong, about the competitive Donkey Kong players Steve Wiebe and Billy Mitchell, and Indie Game: The Movie about a community of indie devs in the early 2010s. I’d also recommend the Netflix series High Score, the bizarre Atari: Game Over, about the burial and excavation of hundreds of ET carts in the early 80s, and the self-explanatory Rubber-Keyed Wonder: The Story of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. For online documentaries, you definitely need to visit the excellent YouTube channels NoClip and People Make Games – they have done fascinating, important work. I also enjoyed Travis “Samox” Beauchamp’s charmingly idiosyncratic series, The Smash Bros. Finally, I have to do this – try AnAlternative Reality: The Football Manager Documentary, which features an insightful video game journalist you may well recognise.

If you have a question for Question Block – or anything else to say about the newsletter –email us at pushingbuttons@theguardian.com.

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