Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers
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Developer Blog - Introducing Good Clean Fun

For the background art for Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers, we wanted a design that heavily evoked the neon-soaked nightscapes of cyberpunk films, showing the life and energy of our unnamed city to its fullest. We drew inspiration notably from Liam Wong, photographer of Tokyo cityscapes, and wanted to find an artist who could take that same vibe into the world of visual novels. For that, we selected Jessie Lam to help us bring these backgrounds to life. We're thrilled with the results, and wanted to share some of them with you in this week's developer blog!

Today, we'll highlight Good Clean Fun, a hybrid pizzeria / laundromat / arcade run by everybody's favorite customer service gurus, Ben and Matt. You may recognize them from Arcade Spirits as proprietors of The Hole Story -- but in The New Challengers, they've moved on to a new venture, and that's serving up food and fun and clean clothing.

You'll find Good Clean Fun nestled in the heart of Chinatown, the glowing core of metropolitan living. Residences, commerce, and offices alike fill these streets, all of them part of a thriving community.

Picture of Chinatown at night, with several colorful neon signs written in chinese. Cars and trucks drive by on the street as streetlights glow. In the center is a sign flanked by the outlines of t-shirts in neon, reading G C F.
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As with backgrounds in the original Arcade Spirits, this is fully animated -- lights pulse and glow, providing the scene with just enough subtle visual style to keep from looking like a photograph. With so many neon elements, we had a lot to work with!

But let's get off street level -- way too crowded out here, too much traffic for my liking. Stepping through the doors, we end up in the laundromat.

A laudnromat, with overhead tube lighting glowing a soft blue. Blue washing machines line the walls and plastic benches have magazines strewn across them. A neon sign reading pizzeria points to the left, while a sign reading arcade points to the right. An elevator is available as well as stairs which both lead to the arcade.
Click to embiggen!

With a fine array of detergents on tap, the laundromat has everything you need to get your clothes nice and tidy for quarters at a pop! Browse issues of Modern Inexplicable Fashion Quarterly, Fishing Highlights for Sad Dads, and of course Important News Stories Weekly while waiting for your bedsheets to lose their more questionable stains.

Or... if you want a better way to pass the time, how about getting some lunch?

A pizzeria, with red and orange highlights everywhere. A woodgrain counter surrounds the serving area, with pizzas on display and menus on offer. A sign reads: take the surprise me pizza!
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From the team that brought you fine literature and doughnuts comes only the finest worldwide selection of pizzas! Get deep dish, flat crust, stuffed crust, stuffed dish, flat dish, or forbidden crust. Take the "Surprise me!" pizza challenge, or... dare you sample the "Nuclear Option?" With so much pizza to choose from, you'll never want to eat anything else ever again for the rest of your entire goddamn life!

But once you've had your fill, it's time for the main event...

An arcade, washed in purple and blue hues. Prize crane games, snack machines, driving games, japanese import candy cabs, and notably a giant splitscreen game of Fist of Discomfort 2.
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Welcome to the beating heart of Good Clean Fun, the arcade! Home away from home for our characters, Grace, Jynx, Domino, Zapper, Rhapsody, and Locksley. Here you'll find all their favorites, including driving and shooting games, prizes and shmups, and of course... Fist of Discomfort 2, which is sweeping the esports scene by force.

We hope you'll drop on by Good Clean Fun and say hello to everyone, when The New Challengers arrives in the distant future year 20XX!