Soho’s Berwick Street has a new resident, and it comes with rhythm games you have probably never played and a neon glow straight out of a Tokyo back alley. NQ JPN, the latest venture from the team behind the NQ64 arcade bars, threw open its doors on Friday — a Japanese-inspired arcade bar that wants to feel less like an English pub with a few coin-ops and more like a night out in Neo Tokyo.
The venue sits at 53–54 Berwick Street, a few minutes’ walk from Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Circus stations. It is not an unfamiliar building to arcade fans: NQ JPN has taken over NQ64’s former Soho home, after the original venue moved up to a far bigger site at Orange Yard on Manette Street, five streets away. The team describe NQ JPN as a separate concept entirely, not a sequel — two contrasting worlds hidden behind one door.
A darker, grown-up NQ64
The front half of the building is the main bar: a moody late-night room dressed in black, red and chrome, with saturated lighting and street-art flourishes. The aesthetic is deliberately futuristic, and the soundtrack leans on bass-driven tech house and electronic music, with DJs taking over on Friday and Saturday nights to turn the room into a late-night dance floor.
Twelve signature cocktails anchor the drinks menu, all of them leaning into Japanese-inspired ingredients — dragon fruit, matcha and cherry blossom. Highlights include a Melon and Cucumber Daiquiri, a Frozen Dragon Fruit Piña Colada and a Chilli Pepper Margarita, alongside alcoholic bubble teas, Japanese highballs, whisky and a proper alcohol-free selection. Even the ice is cut and shaped for each individual serve.
Through the red butcher’s curtain
Step through a translucent red butcher’s curtain and the whole place shifts. The soundtrack changes, the bar gives way, and you are in a dedicated arcade built around machines shipped directly from Japan. The collection spans rhythm, action, driving and candy-cabinet games, including cult titles such as maimai, jubeat, Wacca and Dancerush — machines rarely encountered together in the UK, and experiences a long way from anything on a home console.
Co-founders Matt Robson and Andy Haygarth said: “While NQ JPN comes from the same team as NQ64, we wanted to create something that feels completely different.”
“We’ve brought over an incredible collection of arcade machines from Japan that you just don’t normally get to play here and built a whole new world around them.”
“From there we’ve taken influences from Japanese drinks and gaming culture and mixed them with everything we love about late-night bars, electronic music, street art and arcade culture.”
“The result isn’t supposed to recreate somewhere that already exists – it’s our own version of what a futuristic arcade bar can be.”
“There are loads of details to discover, from cocktails made with Japanese ingredients, Purikura-inspired photo booths to NQ Mart and an arcade that feels and sounds completely different from the room you’ve just left.”
NQ Mart, konbini-style
Tucked inside the arcade is NQ Mart, a hyper-colour counter modelled on the energy of a Japanese convenience store. Visitors build their own drink by picking a spirit, a soft drink and a flavoured syrup or foam — more than 2,000 combinations, by the venue’s reckoning. The fridges hold more than 20 unusual soft drinks sourced from Japan, America, Thailand and beyond, plus alcoholic bubble teas, and there is a self-serve ramen station for later in the night.
The wider arcade-bar boom
NQ64, the brand the founders built first, opened in Manchester in 2019 and has since expanded across the country, with venues in Manchester, London, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle and Nottingham. This summer the company also signed a deal to take over the former G-A-Y Late nightclub and the Borderline Club at 127 Charing Cross Road, a 42,000 sq ft site over seven floors — a signal of how seriously the arcade-bar format is now taken as a piece of London’s nightlife economy.
NQ JPN is the group’s first attempt at something more niche: fewer nostalgia coin-ops, more machines most British gamers will never have touched. Entry is free, with arcade credits starting at £10, and it is walk-in only — though groups of 20 or more can get in touch in advance.
What you need to know
The venue is over-18s only at all times. Opening hours are Monday to Friday 3pm to 3am, Saturday 12pm to 3am and Sunday 12pm to midnight, with DJs on Friday and Saturday nights. Purikura-inspired photo booths give visitors a way to take home a print before the night gets too blurry.
For Soho, a neighbourhood already packed with bars, NQ JPN is a different pitch: a night out where the drinks come with Japanese flavours and the entertainment is a row of cabinets that most of London has never played. For a Friday or Saturday evening, it might be the most unusual room in central London right now.
If you’re planning a night out in central London, a beloved King’s Cross pub has just had a £3.15m makeover — and if you’re hungry beforehand, our guide to the 112 surviving pie-and-mash shops in London is worth a read.
Featured image: Berwick Street, Soho (Paul The Archivist, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0). This is a file photograph of Berwick Street and not the venue itself.
