Pocket Arcade Story

Genre: Management Simulation

Players: 1

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Review:

Without a doubt the most prolific developer and publisher of Management Simulation games on Nintendo Switch is Kairosoft, who specializes in games with a retro-style isometric pixel art style, often with the word “Story” in the title. As of this writing, Kairosoft has released 61 games on Nintendo Switch, most of them Management Simulations.

After their earlier games, Kairosoft had established a few templates for their Simulation games that later games would largely follow. Game Dev Story established a Simulation-style game more focused on managing employee time and focus, Hot Springs Story established a Simulation style in line with Theme Park Simulators where you try to cater to guests’ tastes to maximize attendance and income, and Epic Astro Story established a Simulation style akin to games like Sim City, where you’re building out a town or settlement.

Pocket Arcade Story originally released on mobile devices in 2016 with a “DX” version released in 2019, then a port to Nintendo Switch in 2020, then to PC in 2022, then to PlayStation 4 in 2023, and to Xbox One in 2024. And this is one of the “cater to guests” sort of Kairosoft games, with players building and managing an arcade, but also oddly trying to train its patrons to be better players to win tournaments, I suppose because it will bring prestige to your arcade?

Not long ago I reviewed Station Manager, and I feel like Pocket Arcade Story shares one of that game’s biggest problems – slow pacing. The amount of money brought in by customers, at least at the start, is a pittance compared to the cost of a new arcade machine, meaning you’ll be stuck with only a handful of machines for a surprisingly long amount of time. Strangely, you may have better success training up your customers to win gaming tournaments, which somehow results in you pocketing a significant chunk of cash, though soon you’ll find the process of training up your gamers to compete in more rewarding and challenging tournaments is also quite slow.

The “Kairosoft jank” isn’t quite so bad here as it’s generally pretty clear how to do what you’re trying to do, it’s just that what you need to do doesn’t make much logical sense and takes forever to actually build up the funds you need.

As I mentioned above, this game makes use of Kairosoft’s signature presentation style using simple retro-styled pixel art visuals, paired with annoying, repetitive chiptune music you’ll want to mute within minutes of playing, and simple sound effects. Apart from the music, everything about this presentation is really endearing, though by this point we’ve seen more or less the same thing in numerous other Kairosoft games.

Overall, I feel like I wanted to like Pocket Arcade Story a lot more than I actually did. The slow pacing and bizarre focus on training customers for tournaments dilutes the potential joy of managing your own arcade, which I think for many is the entire attraction to this sort of game. And while it’s not a terrible Management Simulation, it’s not an especially good one.

tl;dr – Pocket Arcade Story is a Management Simulation where players manage their own videogame arcade, but oddly they must also focus on training up their customers to compete in tournaments. This strange split focus is compounded by some pretty slow pacing, making this game far less satisfying than one would hope for in a game about managing a videogame arcade.

Grade: C

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