Retrocade From Resolution Games Fixes Retro Arcade Gaming With Apple Vision Pro Reclined Play

Step into an arcade from 1989 for a vibe check and then lay down on your couch in 2026 and enjoy Pac-Man, Asteroids, Frogger, Centipede, and more floating in mid-air.

When it comes to retro gaming, the joke goes that tinkering with emulation will see a great many aging gamers stuff the entire library of 1900s video games in their pocket only to play any one game from that library for about five minutes total. It turns out that recreating the texture and satisfaction that comes with classic gaming is extremely hard.

Resolution Games, however, just delivered a breakthrough experience for Apple Arcade and Apple Vision Pro with Retrocade fixing about 10 years of VR development in exactly the right way. There’s a really good chance Retrocade is never leaving any of my Apple devices going forward, not with my high scores in there waiting to be beaten.

Reclined Arcade Play

I’m laying back in the Dual Knit Band on the moon Amalthea around Jupiter holding my iPhone as it charges through the Backbone Pro. The iPhone kicks into Standby mode in my hands, becoming a clock tethering me occasionally back to reality when I look at it. The gamepad wrapped around my phone connects directly to my Apple Vision Pro over Bluetooth for precision control of Pac-Man, Asteroids, Breakout, Centipede, Galaga, Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, Frogger, Track & Field, and Haunted Castle.

Pac-Man is my favorite of this bunch — you’ll see more headlines from me if or when Apple and Resolution add Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong or Tetris — and I can barely convey the sheer joy and focus one can find playing the game out there beyond the Asteroid Belt, watching the reflections of the ghosts chasing Pac-Man on the metallic border surrounding the game’s screen. You can turn off the reflections in the settings, but you’d have to be a lizard person to do so because it is exactly this simulation of a real reflection that makes this such an extraordinary experience.

Resolution Games and Apple have teamed up to create a way to play these classic games that is fundamentally better than any other way. Bold words, sure, but I don’t think you can show me another way to play classic arcade games with this much flexibility. I played some of the best arcade games ever designed this week while I reclined on my couch. I didn’t even stop playing when my cat decided to take a nap purring on my chest right between my headset and the virtual screen.

People pay thousands of dollars to recreate physical arcades in their home with a fraction of the flexibility Apple and Resolution Games just delivered. Now people can pay thousands of dollars for an Apple arcade that can be carried anywhere in a Belkin bag. The value proposition around buying an Apple Vision Pro is not as black and white as Meta’s low cost devices would lead you to believe. This kind of wish fulfillment is practically priceless to some people.

Apple has been stacking serious value into Vision Pro headsets at the two year mark, from live Lakers games to the Dual Knit Band, and there’s absolutely foundation here in Retrocade for Apple to build on for a decade or more.

“I think this is a great showcase of things you couldn’t have any other way,” said Resolution Games CEO Tommy Palm in a spatial interview. “If you have a headset where you still see pixels, you still have this rather digital feeling. Once it becomes so incredibly realistic and you can see all the details — it does something else, at least for me.”