Nosebleed Interactive Studios isn’t your normal game studio. I mean, they’re really not normal. They love taking what might be considered absurd concepts and marrying them in ways that are often unforgettable as well as critically well received. It’s a lot like that scene in Grandma’s Boy where Alex gets unbelievably high and he begins looking around the fridge for food to toss in the oven. He grabs a tin foil wrapped bowl and says “I don’t know what you are, but I’m gonna fucking eat you, too.” That’s the glory of Nosebleed Interactive Games and Arcade Paradise.
I was lucky to speak with Andreas Firnigl at Nosebleed about their upcoming venture Arcade Paradise. One of the first things we discussed was how the game wasn’t even supposed to happen. At least not yet. There were other things in the works and other ideas they were trying to pitch long before Arcade Paradise had even been named. But as it so often does for indie hits, fate intervened and decided the world didn’t need another racing game, it needed Arcade Paradise.
“So there’s a few different stories about this game,” Firnigl said. “But the very first one is that we were pitching an entirely different game. We were pitching a 3D racing game to Wired Productions. I had it running on a Switch Dev kit and we were at this show and I asked Wired what they thought about it. They thought it was really cool, but they said they’d just released Grid, so that wasn’t a possibility.”
But there was something in the presentation Firnigl was pitching right then and there that was. As part of their racing game demonstration and because Firnigl loves to put games inside games, there was a computer with a whole bunch of mini games near the presentation and the person listening to Firnigl happened to notice it. He told Firnigl that the collection of games was really worth something and suggested they do something with it.
“That’s the dream project,” Firnigl said.
Ever since Nosebleed Interactive had been making games, they had been known for putting mini-games and games inside games. There’s something fun about finding out your game has games. I don’t know if it’s the same effect that makes an Easter Egg hunt cool or what, but even finding something as simple as Snake inside your game can be pretty cool. It’s also become quite a trend with many game companies having been around long enough that they have assets that existed and thrived during the coin-op era and like to reinclude them as Easter Eggs in bigger titles. The old Activision titles you can play in Call of Duty Black Ops: Cold War are a perfect example of this. It’s just a way to give the gamer more.
But it actually stems from Firnigl’s passion for games and gaming going all the way back to his childhood. Firnigl tells me that his love for finding games couched within games can be traced back to Ghostbusters on Commodore 64. Back before NAMCO popularized & even patented the idea of having mini-games take the place of loading screens, Ghostbusters did it with Space Invaders.
“I’ve always loved games in games,” Firnigl said. “The first one I remember that happened was a game called Ghostbusters on the Commodore 64. It’s the Ghostbuster game, but as part of the tape loaded, they had Space Invaders available to play while it was loading. I’m also a huge, huge fan of Yu Sazuki’s Shenmue.”
Shenmue was Grand Theft Auto before people knew what GTA was. Shenmue was really the first game to offer extended side quests and mini-games like pool, slot machines, and more. Those were the ideas that gave birth to all the little things you could do within Grand Theft Auto that eventually got associated with the series, even though Yu Suzuki sorta came up with the concept of doing that on that scale.
Eventually the concept faded out of popularity but we’ve seen a recent resurgence with the popularity of retro collections and discs or compilations featuring hundreds to thousands of these old games on them at once. Because of their size, they take up virtually no room and people absolutely love ‘em. It’s sort of a win-win. But how did Firnigl go from liking mini-games to creating an entire game built around them? Lack of access.
“Arcade Paradise is kind of a weird mix of these scenes in the United States and the United Kingdom,” said Firnigl. “The U.K. didn’t have that same arcade scene as the States did. Continental Europe didn’t either. I know that in places like Germany they were considered gambling so you had to be 18 to even play. So, they didn’t really exist. In the U.K., there were arcades at seaside towns and beaches. There weren’t really any big, dedicated arcade spaces.
“Places like Chuck E. Cheese, we didn’t have them and we didn’t go to them. In fact, the first big arcade I ever went to was in the back of a VHS store. It wasn’t a Blockbuster or anywhere near as big, it was a local dank back room that was just filled with smoke, smelled of body odor, and it was so little. Maybe just five or six machines in there, but it was like ‘what is this amazing place?’ You’d felt like you’d gone into this secret amazing world.”
And that’s where Arcade Paradise picks up for you! There’s a tiny little laundromat and in the back room you have three games to start with and the tutorial has you buy two more and you build up from there. The best part about this game is that you don’t have to manage the arcade if you don’t want to do so, but the best parts of the game are in the story. It’s not your normal management simulation either. Every aspect of this game is geared toward the love of arcades. Even plunging the toilet results in a very enjoyable boss fight.
The game’s setting is in 1993, which is just perfect for someone of my vintage. 93 is about the year that I began to move out of simple platformers and towards games with greater depths of story and mechanics. Coincidentally, 1993 was really when fighting games really took over and sorta simplified the more advanced controller movements by breaking them down into smaller parts. That alone made me want to try things a bit more difficult than Mario. I spent most of 1993 playing games like Doom & Mortal Kombat II, so arcades became my second home during this era.
Firnigl said that it’s the aesthetic of this era that inspires the look of Arcade Paradise. Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t take an entire sentence, paragraph, or really I could be forgiven for using the rest of the article to talk about what particular game’s look inspired him the most but I think I will just post his heretical statement and let you decide for yourself. I nearly canceled the entire interview right then and there and set fire to my phone just to ensure these words could never be heard again, but then I remembered that being a good journalist is about doing what is right, not what is easy. Without further ado, here’s said blasphemy:
“Since I grew up there, I spent my summers in Switzerland,” Firnigl said. “There was an arcade next to a pub. We were 14-15 trying to get into the pub, but obviously couldn’t so we decided to go to the arcade instead. Arcade Paradise represents my memory of that. It had the candy cab with Virtua Fighter and an obscure Japanese puzzle game, and it had Killer Instinct, which was a massive draw but I actually didn’t think was as good as Virtua FIghter, and Ivan ‘Iron Man” Stewart’s Off-Road Racing.”
But that’s who Firnigl is and why his games work so well. His unique experiences have shaped how he sees games and that is a story as relatable as liking video games themselves. We might not all like the same games. We might even debate over these games, but the one thing that stands true for almost every game is that we have memorable experiences of why we love those games and those things are inherent to our love of games in general. Firnigl loved Virtua Fighter because it was part of his story and what he was able to play.
In smaller towns and settings like the ones Firnigl describes, the larger games are the ones that are going to have the most attention. It’s going to have the longest lines. It’s going to have the most tension. Some gamers who are looking for a nice relaxing afternoon are going to take advantage of the “lesser” game because it’s open, nobody is fighting over it, and it’s easy to learn. I know that I’ve loved many “lesser” games because of this fact, so not only do I relate to Firnigl’s love of Virtua Fighter, I have many games that fall in that same category.
When it comes to the larger scale idea of gaming as a hobby, it’s these experiences that often shape the games we will play for the rest of our lives. We might expand our base, fall in love with new genres, systems, and ways of playing but at our core, every gamer is looking for that same experience of awe and wonderment they felt the first time they stepped into one of these environments and were introduced to the world of video games.
There’s so much more to tell about Arcade Paradise and Dre Firnigl himself, but I think the best case he can make for your attention is the game itself. Pick up a copy of Arcade Paradise, pop it in and discover how crazy similar your experience is to the one that Firnigl had for himself. Think of how universal that experience is while also being uniquely personal to everyone that experiences it. Do you have that feeling? Now press start and re-immerse yourself back into the childhood that eventually gave way to the games-loving adult you are now and live the experience one more time. You won’t regret it.
From literal rags to riches, manage the day-to-day tasks of running a business, whilst planning where to expand and which of the 35+ hot new arcade machines to order. With all the latest games available and fully playable, be careful… it’s going to be easy to get distracted; you don’t have time to just stand and set the highest scores, there are bills to pay and trash to take out!
Stay one step ahead of your father, manage and invest the profits, and build your very own Arcade Paradise!
Coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch and PC in 2021
Thank you to Wired Productions & Nosebleed Interactive for the interview.
Kane Webb covers video games, comics, and film/tv for BSO and The Marvel Report. He also covers the USC Trojans for Athlon Sports. He is an entertainment journalist and you can follow him for more on Twitter: @FightOnTwist.