Arcade News, Tips, Tricks & Ideas

Friends, it is finally time for me to discourse unto you about my great love of balls. The roots of my enthusiasm go back to pinball machines - both the fancier, arcade variety that transmogrify into e.g. screaming robot skulls when you achieve a high-enough multiplier, and the crappy, play-at-home variety that are basically a canted wooden sheet with some numbers drawn on it. But it wasn't till I embraced the holy medium of videogames that I realised the full potential of balldom.

While I’ve been a fan of fighting games since I was ten years old, Tekken is a series that has always taken a back seat for me. That’s not because I thought Tekken was bad, but it didn’t interest me as much as Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. Tekken 8 has completely changed that.

Xbox is starting up a new program to support and promote the best indie games on the platform, and it sounds like a delightful throwback to the Xbox 360 era and its regular Summers of Arcade promotions.

Since 2021, the French publisher that was once known as Focus Home Interactive has been known as Focus Entertainment, but the company will soon be going through another rebrand.

Nintendo has revealed exactly when most remaining online services for the 3DS and Wii U will come to an end. After 7AM ET on April 8, it will no longer be possible to jump into a multiplayer match on the original Splatoonor check out other players' levels in Super Mario Maker. Online co-op play, leaderboards and data distribution are among the features that won't be available on either console (unless you find an adequate homebrew solution). The Badge Arcade feature, which allows players to customize their Nintendo 3DS home menu, is going away too.

The Tekken 8 countdown is on as the release time is now just one day away. 

The bar for the fighting game genre has been uppercut to astronomical heights in recent years. Exceptional one-on-one combat remains the primary bullet point, but other series have complimented their packages with robust suites of destinations, from cinematic story campaigns to comprehensive training dojos. Although Tekken 8’s fighting remains a treat thanks to some neat tweaks to its strong formula, the rest of the package, while respectable, falls short of some of its contemporaries.

Acclaimed management game Arcade Paradise is getting the VR treatment, and in the run-up to its release on Meta Quest, developer Nosebleed Interactive has shared a closer look at how the whole thing will play once you've shoved your head into its lovingly grimy recreation of 1993.

Tekken 8 MSRP $70.00 Score Details DT Recommended Product Pros

Tekken 8 is the next installment of the nearly 30-year-old fighting game series. Its mere existence is enough to delight a lot of returning fans — myself included. I have no doubt that my cabal of Tekken-faithful friends will have hundreds of hours of fun sparring in online matches and local tournaments. We’ll have growing pains, quibbles with character balance, and opinions, but Tekken 8 is going to give us what we want, and what we want is gaudily dressed weirdos juggling one another through the air with gorgeous attack animations, all to the thumping beat of maximalist electronica.

Fortnite: Rocket Racing has a brand-new update that adds two new advanced tracks.

After a successful first outing, RPS Game Club is returning for another year of gaming show-and-tells, and this time, we're publishing the schedule in advance so you know exactly what's coming up and when. Handy, say, if you want to keep an eye on certain sale prices for games you've got your eye on, or you want to clear your calendar so you can join us for our end-of-month liveblog session where we all get together book club-style to talk about the month's pick. Each member of the RPS Treehouse is getting involved this year as well, so read on below to find out what's on the Club docket.

Months after Apple announced the Vision Pro mixed reality headset, the device is nearly here. It launches on Feb. 2, and you can pre-order it now for $3,499.99. That’s the cost of 9 Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth collector’s editions, or nearly just as many PlayStation 5 consoles.

WSS playground has announced Needy Streamer Overload spin-off mini-game collection Petit Game Collection Vol. 1. It is available now for PC via Steam for $7.99.

Street Fighter's bad boy of boxing Ed will join Street Fighter 6 next month.

The Sega Saturn never stood a chance. From day one it was hobbled by a surprise launch annoying gaming retailers and was soon in a one-sided brawl against Sony’s all-conquering PlayStation. The Saturn was comparatively more difficult to develop for, couldn’t push polygons as efficiently, and was soon cratering in sales.

“We Take a Zebra to Vegas,” the sixth episode of Percy Jackson and the Olympians, is one that fans of the book series have been waiting for. Percy (Walker Scobell), Annabeth (Leah Jeffries), and Grover (Aryan Simhadri) make their way to Las Vegas and enter the infamous Lotus Hotel and Casino — where the fans have been hoping a specific favorite character might make an appearance, due to what they already know about this location from Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson novels.

The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered has a new No Return mode that brings the roguelike genre into Naughty Dog’s postapocalyptic franchise for the first time, and with it comes a bevy of unlockable characters, skins, and more that dedicated players are certain to want to unlock for use in-game.

If you're familiar with the arcade scene, you're more than likely aware of Billy Mitchell. Having held multiple world records for Donkey Kong and Pac-Man arcade machines, video game database Twin Galaxies accused Mitchell of setting his scores on modified hardware. Twin Galaxies believed that the scores Mitchell earned were impossible to achieve on standard arcade machines, which then removed his scores from the site and banned him from competing on competitive leaderboards in 2018.

Nearly six years after the dispute first began, Billy Mitchell's record Donkey Kong scores have been officially restored by Twin Galaxies.

Billy Mitchell, the arcade gamer known for achievements in titles like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong, has had several records reinstated by the Twin Galaxies database after reaching a settlement in a defamation lawsuit that's been ongoing since 2019.

Microsoft has revealed its next batch of Game Pass titles for January and into the start of February.

The Last of Us Part 2’s No Return is so good it makes you wonder why Naughty Dog even bothered with making a story. A bonus mode that comes with The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, No Return transforms the acclaimed 2019 game into a full roguelike experience. It’s a well-rounded, engrossing rework that shows off the game in a new light, while also underlining the identity crisis at the heart of Naughty Dog: the version of the studio that excels at top-flight action-adventure games, and the Naughty Dog that strives to tell uncompromising, mature interactive stories.

Six months after its release, Street Fighter 6 has reached 3m sales.

The director of Warner Bros' upcoming Minecraft film adaptation wants to avoid any kind of fan reaction akin to that 'Ugly Sonic' reveal.

There’s no shortage of quality mobile games in 2024, and it can be hard to sift through the sheer number of games downloadable on your phone. That’s where we come in: Over the years, we’ve filled up our phones with mobile games to find the best games across genres. Looking for a hidden object game? A unique tower defense title? A turn-based RPG or classic side-scrolling runner?

Bandai Namco has announced that Eddy Gordo will be the first DLC character in Tekken 8.

Hidden Object games are popular, easy, and relaxing. Within the genre, there’s a really specific sub-genre that I’ve recently found myself enjoying maybe a little too much — hidden cat games. And I think I’ve found the best one out there, especially for those who grew up gaming. 

Tekken 8 is the next entry in one of gaming's longest-running storylines, with the Mishima family's successional feud stretching back three whole decades, but the series is still introducing all-new fighters after all this time. 

Following the events of Tekken 7, the stage for Tekken 8’s story is set up to be perhaps the most over-the-top yet. In the six months since the defeat of Heihachi Mishima, his son, Kazuya Mishima, has installed a reign of terror over the planet using his devil powers. And while the setup is, quite frankly, a lot to take in, if the first four chapters I played are any indication, the level of spectacle and bombast reaches new levels in Tekken 8’s Story Mode.

Quick Play is Overwatch 2's most standard, basic mode — where players log in if they just want to hop into a few matches without worrying about their rank or an unwelcome ruleset. But for one weekend, Blizzard's team-based shooter is shaking Quick Play up.

What with the launch of couch co-op, Adventures mode and a variety of other free content updates, a Switch version, a new engine, two paid expansions (including an Among Us collaboration), plus news of an animated TV adaptation, 2023 was a busy year for Vampire Survivors. However, creator Poncle isn't done yet, and it's now share a revised development roadmap (of sorts) for its perennially vampire-free minimalist survival RPG, which includes an update on cross-saves and a potential online co-op mode.

This weekend only, Sombra is changing up the rules for Quick Play. Enjoy Quick Play: Hacked – Quicker Play - a fun, new way to play with faster capture speeds, payloads, and respawn times.  Experience more team fights, more games, and new strategies. Here are the changes:

Nintendo has shared a nice little trailer for Mario Vs. Donkey Kong on the Nintendo Switch.

Game designer Jennell Jaquays, who was a level designer on Quake 2 and 3, the writer of notable Dungeons & Dragons adventures and more, has died at the age of 67. 

Minecraft Legends, the real-time strategy spin-off from the blocky survival game, is bringing an end to its post-release content additions with one final update later this month. The endcap to Legends comes nine months after its release.

Remember Suika Game? The charming puzzler blew up late last year thanks to its engrossing fruit-merging gameplay and colourful theme (and the help of a load of vtubers to boot). While the original was only on Nintendo Switch - although technically even that was a port of a game included on a projector, of all things - plenty of Suika clones quickly emerged to fill its watermelon-shaped hole on PC. The latest Suika-like is stepping things up another level by taking its chill combo-a-thon to a galactic scale with colliding planets and suns.

Akka Arrh is making the jump from the flat screen to virtual reality, via its upcoming arrival on PS VR2.

Publisher Atari and developer Llmasoft will release psychedelic arcade game Akka Arrh for PlayStation 5 with PlayStation VR2 support in March, the companies announced.

Arcade games? I’m all about them! They remind me of my childhood when my friends and I would spend hours at the local arcade, competing for high scores. So now whenever I hear of a new mobile arcade game hitting the scene, I am definitely up for trying it out. Arcado Champs: Slot Strategy is an upcoming RTS arcade game on Android by Gape Labs.

Apple has revealed more details on its upcoming $3499 Vision Pro headset, including specially created games which will take advantage of its «spatial computing» capabilities.

World of Demons is being removed from Apple Arcade, PlatinumGames has announced. The game is only available through Apple Arcade, so once it is removed from service it will become completely inaccessible through official channels. The last day the game will be available to download is January 18th, and the from February 1st downloaded versions will not be available to play either.

World of Demons is being removed from Apple Arcade, PlatinumGames has announced. The game is only available through Apple Arcade, so once it is removed from service it will become completely inaccessible through official channels. The last day the game will be available to download is January 18th, and the from February 1st downloaded versions will not be available to play either.

If Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is going to be your entry point into the Like a Dragon series (formerly known as Yakuza), first of all, welcome. You’ll probably have a good time. However, I implore you to consider playing its predecessor, Yakuza: Like a Dragon, before moving on to the newer release. While you could certainly still enjoy Infinite Wealth without playing Like a Dragon, it lays the groundwork to get the most out of the latest entry in one of gaming’s most entertaining franchises, introducing you to delightful characters and a bizarre world where you’ll be asked to save people stranded without toilet paper in public restrooms and fight a tiger with your bare hands. And it’s also on Game Pass, which never hurts.

The Hammerin’ Harry/Daiku no Gen-San series continued from 1990 to the last game, Hammerin’ Hero, in 2009. However, only the first game was released in arcades. After the original Hammerin’ Harry, the series shifted entirely to home platforms.

PlatinumGames has announced that its 2021 hack and slash action game,World of Demons, will soon be unavailable to download on Apple Arcade ahead of its end of service next month. The shutdown will come less than three years after the game’s release.

World of Demons, the Apple Arcade game from PlatinumGames, is ending service.

We’re back to our regularly scheduled open faucet of eShop games: if you have any eShop cash left over, you might have something to spend it on! In addition to two more Arcade Archives games (Mystic Warriors and Solitary Fighter), a few other classics return like Clue, as well as oddball picks like The Spy Who Shot Me.

Gran Turismo Sport has been delisted from the PlayStation Store, but it seems a little ahead of schedule. Polyphony Digital's PS4 exclusive was set to get the chequered flag for its online component at the end of January, after a slow sunsetting of DLC starting in December, offline modes remaining playable.

They said it couldn't be done, but to the nay-sayers let me tell you this — Tetris has finally been «beaten».

I've never really got on with mobas, the exception to the rule being Blizzard's excellent Heroes of the Storm. Inspired by Defense of the Ancients, the Warcraft 3 mod that birthed the entire genre, HotS was released in 2015 to a largely positive reception from critics and players. But despite the game's quality, and years of support from Blizzard, it never managed to reach that critical mass of players.

Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising follows the crew of the Grandcypher, an airship with a motley crew of anime stereotypes – and my dream husband, Rackam. After an antagonistic force that the crew thought disbanded attacks a peaceful nation, ship captain Gran and his friends discover that previous allies have not only forgotten them, but are now outright hostile. With a greater threat clearly at large, the Grandcypher sets off to reunite with old friends.

Jack Black is reportedly set to take on the role of Minecraft's Steve in the upcoming film adaptation.

Long gone are the days when the peak of mobile gaming was Doodle Jump, as fully-fledged experiences can now be had in the palm of your hand — and we have the best to play right now for both iOS and Android.

Vampire Survivors was a big enough sensation that it instantly inspired a horde of similar games to spawn. 20 Minutes Till Dawn was one of the more worthy: a topdown, 2D roguelite with a similar sense of spectacle and progression, but with traditional weapon aiming.

From today, January 1st, NBA 2K22 is no longer available for sale and the online servers for those who own the game have been switched off permanently. The game was released in September 2021, and follows 2Ks pattern to switch off servers for its NBA 2K games a couple of years after the initial release.

It’s the beginning of a new year, and despite being a weaker month usually for releases, there’s a selection of highly anticipated January 2024 games to look forward to. From intense fights in Tekken 8 to the calmer, puzzle-based Another Code: Recollection, there’s something for everyone.

January's PlayStation Plus titles have been confirmed: A Plague Tale: Requiem, Evil West, and Nobody Saves the World.

By Andrew Webster, an entertainment editor covering streaming, virtual worlds, and every single Pokémon video game. Andrew joined The Verge in 2012, writing over 4,000 stories.

Our individual Game of the Year articles allow our lovely team of writers to share their own personal PS5 and PS4 picks for 2023. Today, it's the turn of news reporter and reviewer Khayl Adam.

Our individual Game of the Year articles allow our lovely team of writers to share their own personal PS5 and PS4 picks for 2023. Today, it's the turn of reviewer Jamie O'Neill.

I have really been looking forward to Retro-Bit’s NES reissue of 1991’s Hammerin’ Harry. However, in retrospect, this is partially due to me getting it confused with Don Doko Don, a 1989 arcade game in Taito’s single-screen format. If I knew what I was thinking about, I’d be even more excited.

These are salad days for fans of novelty golf, from What The Golf? to Desert Golfing to Turbo Golf Racing. Released in 2022, Cursed To Golf set itself apart from the mini genre by being a golflike roguelike - and it's currently free to keep from the Epic Games Store.

The Nintendo Switch is already a versatile console - but we always want more. What do you need when you want a bigger screen than your handheld can provide, but don't have access to the full TV experience? The ability to play Nintendo Switch on your iPad or laptop screen, of course. 

After putting the Destiny 2 Legacy Collection up for grabs for a week, the Epic Games Store appears to have drifted back into a daily rhythm of free games. Today's offering is Art of Rally, a stylized top-down racing game from the maker of Absolute Drift.

This cozy arcade game starring a pizza-eating possum might just be enough chaotic fun to replace one of my favorite party games: Overcooked. 

Blizzard have revealed the January 2024 Trading Post which includes the Time-Lost Salamanther, Jeweled Copper Scarab and much more!

First launched in 2020, the PlayStation 5 is now one of the most popular consoles of all time and a fan favourite with experienced and newbie gamers alike.

Nothing seems to foreshadow the end of civilization in the popular imagination more completely than a toilet roll shortage. 

Super Mario Run, Nintendo's first mobile game to feature its moustachioed mascot, has been updated with a tie-in to recent Switch game Super Bros. Mario Wonder.

Battlegrounds Mobile India (BGMI) has become extremely popular among youth ever since it made a comeback in India. Earlier players were immersed in the PUBG world, however, due to security issues govt had to ban the game in the country. But this was not the end as Krafton designed BGMI specifically for the Indian audience and now it has been awarded the Best Ongoing Game in the Google Play Best of 2023 apps. Now, the game recently launched the 2.9 update with the “Frozen Kingdom” theme and introduced various in-game rewards and new crates for players to play and win.

Fortnite must be going through its third awakening right now. I haven’t played a single round of Battle Royale for weeks, and that’s mainly because I can no longer make it past the starting menu without running face-first into a flurry of full-sized spin-offs framed as new game modes. Fortnite Rocket Racing, an arcade racer that mixes ideas from both Rocket League and Fortnite, is one of them – and while it’s very much in its infancy, this barebones first draft is fun enough to call it the beginning of what could become a great standalone racing game one day. But, even with 26 decently-designed maps, seamless integration into Fortnite’s broader progression systems, and easy-to-setup cross-platform multiplayer for up to 12 players, Rocket Racing struggles to stay fresh after you’ve seen through the cracks of its simplistic car handling and questionable multiplayer balance. Even with a great idea at the center of its circuit, it’s difficult to declare this a Victory Royale.

Someone once told me that the Sega Saturn controller (the Japanese one, not the American original) is the best 2D controller ever made. I don’t remember who it was, but it happened. The claim stuck with me.

Tekken 8’s roster continues to grow with Shaheen being the latest reveal, the announcement accompanies with a gameplay trailer. It shows Shaheen primarily using kicks and punches, with movement being quite slow. Shaheen could be the choice for players who prefer this movement to some of the more flashier and faster characters that have been revealed.

Suika Game, the hit viral puzzler where you drop fruits into a container and combine them, looks set to be getting a release on PlayStation per a recent product page.

The iOS version of Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (2010) will be removed from the App Store as of March 25, 2024, as announced by Capcom via a statement shared on Twitter. Fortunately, the 2024 version will still be available on both iOS and Android devices, but the 2010 iOS port will no longer be available for download. 

I was in two minds about whether to write this up, because it is a teensy bit NSFW, but I take solace in the thought that my ideas of NSFW content aren't so much "tame" as "selectively bred to the point that I can only perceive the colour beige", and besides which, I haven't played an outright body horror-themed bullet hell/danmaku shooter before.

Video game fundraising initiative Jingle Jam has now raised over £25m since it began in 2011.

We’re friends, right? I can be honest with you. I know it. I was going to follow up my earlier list, 10 bad games you should play, with a similar list around the same time of year. However, I don’t have a kusoge chambered for today, so I’m bumping it to a year-end list.