What’s better, a roundup of several $500-$1,000 arcade machines or a single, ultra-expensive XR headset? Apple’s $3,500 Vision Pro with its striking 4K micro OLED displays seems like the perfect candidate to finally determine if a virtual arcade can ever match a bare ounce of a real arcade’s glory. That’s why the upcoming Apple Arcade app Retrocade was so enticing. It promises to drop a full arcade suite right in your living room, saving you the space you would need to spend to fill your basement with the quarter-based cabinets of your youth.
Apple and the app’s developer, Resolution Games (you’ll remember them from games like Demeo and Spatial Ops), offered me a chance to play Retrocade early before its release on Feb. 5. In practice, Retrocade’s retro gaming experience is as engrossing as it is disappointing. Arcade games were built as a communal experience. Even those single-player-only titles would involve slack-jawed kids gathered around the glow of the screen like moths to a flame, either marveling at a high score or waiting for their turn. An XR (extended reality) headset like the Vision Pro is by its nature a solitary affair. The games look glorious thanks to the Vision Pro’s displays, but the few titles on offer don’t have any of the feel of an actual arcade machine’s clacky buttons and joystick.
Beyond issues with authenticity, the app only has 10 arcade games at launch. These include Asteroids, Bubble Bobble, Breakout, Centipede, Frogger, Galaga, Haunted Castle, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Track & Field. The more popular Ms. Pac-Man is nowhere to be found. You won’t find any of the fighting game classics of yesteryear, likely because licensing such titles would be a financial nightmare. There’s room to grow the selection, but it’s easy to get tired of what’s available at launch when you only have your own high score and daily missions to keep you going.
Who needs a real arcade cabinet?
Inside the Retrocade app, you can choose whether you want to enter a spatial environment made up of an ’80s-style mini-mall arcade or plop a cabinet inside your living room. The model of each machine captures small details of these old-school cabinets, all the way down to the inset screens requiring you to lean over each device to bask in its glow. To put it frankly, each cabinet looks gorgeous. You even have options to set up CRT (cathode-ray tube) screen effects and a faux reflection to add to your immersion. I only wish I could set up multiple machines around the room and create a true fake VR arcade inside my office. Instead, you’re limited to one machine at a time.
And here comes the kicker. The buttons on these virtual cabinets flex and move, and they even generate the satisfying clicking sound on every button press. But you can’t manipulate the controls with your hands, like you imagine you could. Instead, you’re forced to use a controller.
This is not my first experience with arcade games in VR. Last year, I reviewed the Arcade2TV-XR, a massive arcade controller designed specifically for the Meta Quest 3 and 3S. The connected software also set up a faux arcade inside your living room, though instead of including several classic games in the software, it expected you to supply your own ROMs—the game files that let you emulate these classics.
The Arcade2TV-XR is as weird and janky as it sounds. It involved manually placing a virtual arcade cabinet on top of the Arcade2TV-XR station to line up with the meat-space controls. However makeshift that experience could be, it was a more visceral experience than when you’re pretending to press your old arcade buttons on a modern-day controller.
The better option would be to find a Bluetooth fight stick that is compatible with Vision Pro. I asked Resolution Games’ co-founder and CEO Tommy Palm whether Retrocade supports third-party arcade sticks, but he couldn’t give me a direct answer. The only confirmation I got was that a PlayStation 5 DualSense will show up with the correct in-app controls. I do not have a fight stick to test it, so I can’t say whether it’s any more of an enjoyable experience. You would need to set a table as high as the virtual cabinet to even pretend you’re using the faux cabinet’s controls. That’s a lot of extra work to recreate a 45-year-old arcade machine.
Arcade games need controls like you remember
Other arcade sticks with USB likely won’t connect to a Vision Pro either. Even if you pony up $300 for the developer strap and its built-in USB-C, any outside peripherals likely won’t connect. Apple has done partnerships with companies like Corsair for gaming-specific keyboards and mice. Perhaps the folks in Cupertino may eventually support a fight stick as well.
Retrocade with the Vision Pro could potentially offer better verisimilitude with extra control support. However, what we’re left with is a beautiful way to look at old arcade games without an immersive way to play with them. The game forces players to unlock cabinets one at a time, either by finishing daily challenges in various cabinets (such as beating a level in Pac-Man without touching a ghost) or just by achieving a certain score in each title. I quickly found myself tired of the arcade games when there was nobody there to slide in an extra quarter for some two-player action. All this in-game currency and XP aren’t enough to keep me coming back.
Retrocade is available on Apple Arcade if you have a subscription for $7 a month. The app is also available on iPhone and iPad. You would imagine that you could play a two-player game with one person on a tablet and the other in a headset, but that’s not the case. There’s no two-player option on any version of the app. With more games, more modes, and more multiplayer, Retrocade could be an excellent time waster. Would it ever replace the dream of owning a home arcade? No, certainly not.