New Retro Arcade: Neon

New Retro Arcade: Neon
Information
VR/AR	VR
Developer	Digital Cybercherries
Publisher	Digital Cybercherries
Platform	SteamVR, Oculus Rift (Platform)
Device	HTC Vive, Oculus Rift
Operating System	Windows
Type	Game
Genre	Action, Adventure, Casual, Indie, Racing, Simulation, Sports, VR, Arcade, Retro, 1980s, Online Co-Op, Multiplayer, Co-op, Basketball, On-Rails Shooter
Input Device	Tracked motion controllers, Gamepad, Keyboard / Mouse
Play Area	Seated, Standing, Room-Scale
Game Mode	Single Player, Online Multiplayer, Co-Op, Online Co-Op
Language	English
Review	Mostly Positive
Release Date	August 1, 2016
Price	US$19.99
App Store	Steam
Website	https://digitalcybercherries.com/games/
Infobox Updated	2026-10-21

New Retro Arcade: Neon (abbreviated NRA:N by its developer) is a virtual reality arcade simulation and emulator front end developed and published by Digital Cybercherries for Windows. It recreates an amusement arcade of the 1980s and early 1990s in which players load their own game ROMs into virtual arcade cabinets, consoles and handhelds, and it also has original mini games such as air hockey, bowling, skee-ball and two light gun and shooter cabinets. It was released on Steam on 1 August 2016 as a full release, not an Early Access title, and supports SteamVR headsets such as the HTC Vive, the Oculus Rift through the Oculus PC runtime, and play without a headset.

Neon is the paid successor to NewRetroArcade, the studio's free 2014 arcade demo. It added online multiplayer for up to six players, motion controller and room-scale support, and a new main arcade map, while keeping the original arcade as a "Classic" area. No games are bundled with the emulated cabinets: the player has to supply both the ROMs and the setup work.

Reviewed 21 October 2026. Release and update dates, features, multiplayer limits, awards, price, Steam rating and launch coverage checked against the developer's Steam announcements, the Steam store and API, and 2016 announcement and review coverage. About review dates.

Gameplay

The game takes place inside a detailed arcade that the player explores in first person. It has two maps: the main Neon arcade and an older "Classic" area. A bar area was added to the Neon map on 12 August 2016. Most of the space is filled with emulated machines of three kinds: full-size arcade cabinets, home consoles that take game cartridges, and handheld consoles called "Gamebros". The store page lists support for over 30 arcade cabinets, 18 console cartridges and 10 handheld games. Emulated games run on the screens of the virtual machines, and players control them with a gamepad or motion controllers.

Original content made for the game sits alongside the emulated machines. The mini games include air hockey, skee-ball, whack-a-mole, a boxing machine, basketball, darts and ten-pin bowling lanes, plus two original cabinet games, Zombie Problem II and Aimbot. At launch the multiplayer games included a two-player light gun zombie shooter and a six-player first-person shooter. Green reset buttons on the walls next to the basketball, skee-ball, darts, bowling and air hockey games were added in September 2016. Players can also pick up a playable guitar, a drum machine and many loose objects such as bottles, cans and tapes. Cassette tapes change the music played on a boombox, which also carries streamed internet radio stations. In a projector room, players load web videos onto VHS tapes and watch them on a large screen.

Multiplayer

Up to six players can share an arcade online and talk over built-in voice chat. Multiplayer sessions are limited to the original mini games and cabinets. Emulated ROMs run only on the local player's machine and cannot be seen or played by other players in the same session, a limitation that early coverage attributed to the legal issues around sharing emulated games. A December 2016 update added local multiplayer, letting two to four input devices register and play on a single machine.

Controls and locomotion

The game can be played with tracked motion controllers, an Xbox 360 or Xbox One gamepad, a DualShock 4 (supported from August 2016) or a keyboard and mouse. On the HTC Vive, players move by teleporting; later updates added world rotation, smooth "slide" locomotion (left controller to walk, right controller to teleport) and a seated gamepad mode started with the -vrseated launch option. Oculus Touch support was added on 7 December 2016, followed later that month by thumbstick turning and a configurable turn speed. The studio recommends motion controllers for the best experience, while stating that the whole game can be played without a VR headset.

Emulation and customization

New Retro Arcade: Neon ships without any game ROMs. Players add their own ROM files and configure each machine through the Arcade Builder, a separate tool that also sets custom cabinet art, posters, cartridge labels, VHS tape labels, music tapes and "attract" videos shown on idle cabinet screens. The store page warns buyers that setting up the arcade "may seem like a daunting task" and that the game may not suit players with no knowledge of emulation, or those expecting pre-installed ROMs. An official Arcade Builder guide on the game's community pages covers the process.

Emulation is handled by Libretro emulator cores, which the studio credited in its November 2016 patch notes. That update made the cores expose their internal options and added an ArcadeEmulatorOptions.xml file for core-specific settings such as MAME cheats, throttling or booting to the on-screen display. A February 2017 update added a "Preview In-Game & Save" button that loads a small test map to check that a newly added game runs. On 22 December 2017 the studio released a rebuilt Arcade Builder. It replaced the single template for the whole arcade with an arcade layout system, in which players place individual custom machines on a map of the Neon or Classic arcade. It also moved configurations from the old XML format to a new JSON format, with an import tool for legacy files, and added tabs, audio and texture previews, filters and interface themes. The studio described that version as a work in progress.

Development

Digital Cybercherries began work on the original NewRetroArcade as a learning project for exploring Unreal Engine. In its launch announcement, the studio said the free demo "soon became something way deeper than that". Players then requested more features than it could fit into the original project, and Neon was developed as a separate product. In a question-and-answer piece it published in August 2016, the studio gave its reasons for creating Neon: to expand the free demo with more content, to add other VR games and multiplayer, and to make use of Steam's update and feedback tools. Neon was announced on 2 May 2016 as a SteamVR version with multiplayer, motion controls and room-scale support for the HTC Vive, while the original demo was to get free SteamVR support. Early announcement coverage expected the game to stay on Steam rather than appear on the Oculus Home store because of the uncertain legal status of emulation.

The game was built in Unreal Engine 4. The art team modelled assets in Blender and other packages, and used the InstaLOD plug-in to generate levels of detail automatically during the final crunch before release. Audio uses FMOD Studio. On 27 June 2016 the studio released a free New Retro Arcade Tech Demo on Steam, which it said had the same amount of content as the earlier free versions; it is still available as the game's demo. Shortly before launch, the studio recruited testers with access to an HTC Vive for a final stress test.

The launch had problems. The studio pulled voice chat from the first-day build after problems surfaced at the last minute, and over the following days it shipped a series of numbered patches, restoring voice chat on 8 August 2016. In a 12 August 2016 announcement it acknowledged that the launch had not gone as smoothly as it could have, writing that "our attempt to add additional content at the last minute led to unexpected issues". The studio tracked open bugs on a public support board.

On 9 December 2017 the studio posted a message explaining months of silence. It said Digital Cybercherries was a small team without a physical studio whose members worked from home, some in different countries, and many of them held full-time jobs. After a major restructuring, it said the team did not have enough funding to develop both Neon and its next game, HYPERCHARGE: Unboxed (announced on 19 December 2016), full time. It also stated that Neon had not been abandoned.

Release

New Retro Arcade: Neon launched on Steam on 1 August 2016 with a launch discount of 10 percent. On 1 September 2016 the studio lowered the base price, saying that a sizable portion of the community had found the release price too high. It suggested that people who had just bought the game could refund and rebuy it, and gave players who bought it during August an exclusive in-game extra. An original soundtrack of synthwave, NewRetroWave and electropop tracks was released as separate downloadable content on the same day as the game.

Date	Release or update
2 May 2016	Neon announced for SteamVR, with multiplayer, motion controls and HTC Vive room-scale support
27 June 2016	Free New Retro Arcade Tech Demo released on Steam
1 August 2016	Full game and original soundtrack released on Steam for Windows
8 August 2016	Voice chat restored after being disabled at launch
12 August 2016	Bar area, more cabinets, customizable VHS labels and DualShock 4 support added
30 August 2016	Seated gamepad mode and world rotation added for the HTC Vive
1 September 2016	Base price lowered
12 September 2016	Video attract screens and Vive slide locomotion added
14 November 2016	Libretro core options and emulator options file added
7 December 2016	Oculus Touch support and local multiplayer added
21 December 2016	Light gun support and calibration options added; launch option for multiple arcade setups
27 February 2017	In-game ROM preview added to the Arcade Builder
22 December 2017	Rebuilt Arcade Builder with layout system and JSON format; new boombox radio stations; faster texture and level loading
19 February 2018	Attract audio crash fix, instant reloading of custom textures and a Genesis and Mega Drive emulation fix for Windows 10

As of October 2026 the game is still sold on Steam at US$19.99, with the demo and the soundtrack also listed, and a bundle of the game and soundtrack is also sold. The February 2018 patch is the last update announced on the game's Steam page. The studio's March 2018 sale announcement said further updates were planned, but none had been announced by October 2026. The studio's website lists later games, including HYPERCHARGE: Unboxed (2020), Paranormal Tales and Don't Scream, alongside New Retro Arcade: Neon.

Reception

Critical coverage at launch was mixed to positive. Reviewers praised the recreation of the arcade itself: its level of detail and its worn, scratched surfaces made it highly immersive, and one reviewer called it one of the most convincing VR scenes they had experienced. Teleportation on the Vive was found to cause almost no comfort problems, and the developer's quick response to bug reports was also praised. The main criticisms were the bugs and broken voice chat in the first week, the manual work needed to add emulated games, and the fact that friends could not see or play emulated games in multiplayer. Critics also found that the mini games lost their appeal quickly and that the lack of comfort options on the Rift could cause discomfort. One review found the out-of-the-box experience weaker than the 2014 demo's, and others said the game felt closer to an unfinished proof of concept or an Early Access release than a finished product. Too few critic reviews were published for the game to receive an aggregate critic score.

Player reviews on Steam are "Mostly Positive", with about 78 percent of user reviews positive as of October 2026.

Awards

Year	Award	Category	Result
2016	Proto Awards	Best Social Experience	Honoree
2016	VRDB VR of the Year Awards	Players Choice	Won (1st place)

At the 2016 Proto Awards, the Best Social Experience award went to AltspaceVR; the other honorees in the category included Rec Room, Engage, Pool Nation VR and Speech Center VR. The VRDB award was decided by public vote. The studio reported that New Retro Arcade: Neon finished ahead of Pool Nation VR, Arizona Sunshine, Chronos and Job Simulator.

Features

System Requirements

The requirements below are the ones currently listed on the Steam store page. The store notes that the game supports non-VR play as well as SteamVR and Oculus PC headsets, with motion controllers recommended.

Windows

Minimum

OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel i5-4590
Memory: 8 GB RAM
Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 970
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 5 GB available space
VR Support: SteamVR or Oculus PC