AGE of Joy - retro arcade virtual gallery (Quest2)

I just want to play with words… AGE = (A)rcade (G)ame (E)xperience.

Playlist How the game works

You spawn in the lobby of the gallery, to your left is an entrance to a “testing area”, we will talk about that later. On your right, you have an entrance where the gallery starts.

The gallery has a lot of rooms where you can play games.

There aren’t any cabinets bundled with the game, but you can download them (or make your own) easily. Collecting cabinets is part of the experience in some way, as many people do it today in real life. The game will deploy the cabinets for you automatically.

If you own game roms, then you can play (like in RetroArch). Just walk to the game cabinet, insert a coin, and start playing.

You can see some parishioners (NPCs) hanging out and playing games, just as in real life. If someone else is playing the game you want to play, you will have to wait your turn; this happens in real life too, right?

There are plenty of rooms in the gallery to accommodate all of the cabinets you want, and the game will deploy them for you. New rooms with each release.

Some rooms are generic, but others are themed or special in some way, so expect surprises.

How to control the game

Read this tutorial.

Realism / Simulation

The experience tries to be as realistic as possible. The lights, cabinets, pictures, all the components try to be as accurate as they were in the middle of the 80s.

Cabinets

Obviously, arcade cabinets are the key factor here. There are a lot of different cabinet designs, each company develops its owns and they are pure art. I want to recreate them as an exact copy of the original, but this is not a easy task, there are thousand of different cabinets.

It’s important to say, in other countries (as the one where I live) the games were mounted in standard local made cabinets (because of the export/import logistic, costs, etc), so many people in the world never saw an original one. For them this is a way to play original games in the original cabinet.

Facing the truth, I can’t make all those cabinets, so I find an easy way to play the games in standard cabinets, trying to personalize each one.

The user can make their own cabinets

It is possible to reuse a standard cabinet, personalize it, zip the files, and copy it to the headset without any special knowledge. Because all cabinets are made in this manner, the game comes with no cabinets; however, you can make your own or download them as assets for the game.

Read more about the cabinet building

Screens

One of the challenges is to have an exact representation of the screen in each cabinet.

Playing games using Mame

👮🏼‍♂️ I don’t want to talk about the illegality of the roms, you can read about that on the internet. I will not distribute any illegal material in any way, and please, don’t ask me where to find roms or anything related.

If you want to play a game, you will need a compatible rom, luckily if you don’t own roms anyway you can still enter the game and see the cabinets that you downloaded, the introduction screens, sounds, etc. It’s a way to revive the experience of being in an arcade gallery.

Because the game includes a libretro (MAME) compatible game engine, you can play it if you have a compatible rom and the cabinet for that rom. If you really want to play a rom and you can’t find the cabinet, then you can make your own; it’s very easy.

Not all roms are compatible, here is a list where you can see which rom is compatible, if a cabinet exists, and more details:

AGE of Joy - Rom compatibility list and Cabinet status

But you still need coins…

Obviously, I want to accurately recreate the experience... You'll need coins to play the games on the machines... and we are no longer as close to our parents as we were in ancient times to ask them for coins. So, what are our options?

In the game, if you look at your left wrist, there is a coin. Take it with your right hand and put it in the coin slot in the cabinet, the game will start (if you already upload a compatible rom).

Later, a new coin will appear on your wrist, and you will have an infinite amount of money to spend on your favorite games!

Rooms

Technically, the game was designed in such a way that we can add an infinite number of rooms; they will load when you get close to them, so headset memory will not be an issue.

For the time being, room creation is a developer task; players cannot create their own.

You do not need to manually place cabinets in the rooms; the game detects new cabinets (when the player uploads them) and searches for a space for that cabinet. The deployed cabinets will remain in place indefinitely, making it easy to find them every time you play.