NQ64 is opening its biggest venue yet in Soho, two floors of retro arcade cabinets, free-play consoles and arcade-inspired cocktails, in the space that used to be Orange Yard.
The retro arcade bar chain, NQ64, is expanding its London footprint with a second site, opening on 11 September at Orange Yard on Manette Street, just off Charing Cross Road. It joins the brand’s existing Shoreditch bar, but this one is bigger than anything NQ64 has done before, anywhere in the UK.
Spread across two floors, the Soho venue steps up the games line-up considerably: Guitar Hero, PAC-MAN Battle Royale and Mario Kart Arcade GP sit alongside classic pinball and an expanded run of free-play consoles spanning the Nintendo 64 and original PlayStation through to GameCube, PlayStation 2 and Xbox 360. New for this venue specifically are claw machines, UV pool tables and augmented reality darts, none of which are standard NQ64 fixtures elsewhere.
The cocktail list leans just as hard into the gaming theme. The best-seller is the Quick Revive No.5, named for the Call of Duty zombies perk, alongside a Frozen Deadshot Daiquiri and a run of alcohol-free options under the CBD Hits From The Pong banner. Expect the full NQ64 house style throughout: neon signage, graffiti-covered walls, and a soundtrack leaning hip hop and RnB rather than chiptune.
“Orange Yard has given us the opportunity to create our biggest and most ambitious venue yet,” say Andy Haygarth and Matt Robson, NQ64’s co-founders. “We’ve expanded the games, introduced brand new experiences like augmented reality darts and UV pool, and created a space that gives people even more reasons to stay for one more round.”
NQ64 started life in Manchester’s Northern Quarter in 2019 and has since spread to Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Bristol, Nottingham and Newcastle. Soho is its tenth UK venue and second in London, and by some distance its biggest bet yet on what a night built entirely around a controller can look like.
The London x London Take: Soho already has The Trocadero’s arcades and a fair few pinball-adjacent boozers, but nothing at NQ64’s scale, two floors is a genuinely different proposition to the usual arcade-bar squeeze. The UV pool and AR darts are the real point of difference here rather than the console line-up, which, sofa-gaming nostalgia aside, isn’t wildly different from what’s already at Shoreditch. Worth booking a table if you’re coming as a group on a weekend, arcade bars this size still fill up fast on a Friday night.
Need to know
- Where: Orange Yard, Manette Street, Soho, London W1D 4AR
- When: Opens 11 September 2026
- More info: NQ64 website
