Antstream Arcade – Review

We’re off to the beach for fish and chips and an hour at the arcades…
While Antstream might not have the sand, fish or chips, we do have a plethora of games and anyone who stepped foot in an arcade in the 80’s and 90’s will instantly feel nostalgic.

Anstream Arcade is coming to Xbox on Thursday the 20th July, with a bucket and spade full of over 1400 retro games played instantly, through the cloud.

We’ve heard a lot about cloud gaming over the last few years, but one service that’s not been in the limelight is Antstream Arcade, launched 4 years ago and growing from strength to strength, it now becomes the first external cloud gaming service available on Xbox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OciQKn7Ek_o&list=TLGGMRTXfEQaPk4xODA3MjAyMw

Rather than trying to relay next-gen games over the cloud, Antstream sticks to the classics, mostly from the 80’s and 90’s you’ll see hundreds of games from Arcade, Commodore, Spectrum, Atari and Amiga, as well as often dozens from NES, SNES, Megadrive, MSX, DOS and Lynx and even a few PS1 titles.

In total there’s currently said to be 1470 titles to choose from, with new games added, often weekly,
(Full game list available here) – I highly recommend scrolling through that list, because I’m pretty sure you’ll find dozens and dozens of games you cant wait to experience again.

so we jumped into Anstream to check out the selection as well as see how well they play on a modern system, especially over the cloud.

First up, we’re greeted with a main page, packed with game titles, I immediately saw classics like Gauntlet, Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja and Smash TV, but delving a little deeper Who Dares WIns, Bomb Jack, Clayfighter, King of Monsters, Speedball, and Double Dragon reassured me that there’s certainly a lot to choose from.

Obviously it’s never easy to find specific games when there’s over 1400 to choose from, and while the front end does a pretty good job of showcasing a selection (and keeping a list of your recently played games) there’s thankfully a pretty good search system in place, which allows you to search by title, genre, system or even the year, meaning if you want to feel really nostalgic and head back into the late 80’s you can pull up a list of games from 1988 in seconds.

When you finally decide on a game, you’re given a short introduction as well as the chance to view any challenges and leaderboards, as well as “Similar titles” these similar offerings weren’t the most accurate, for instance Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja (which was the first arcade game I fully completed out in the real world) had similar offerings from shooting and driving games, but it didn’t list Double Dragon (potentially the most popular game in the side-scrolling beat-em up genre) or Double Dragon 2 which was released the same year (’88) as Bad Dudes.

It’s also worth mentioning those challenges and leaderboards and achievements, you’ll find hundreds of challenges, most games, especially the more popular offerings might have a few each, such as playing under set conditions to beat someone’s high score, there’s also weekly tournaments all held together by achievements and a in-game currency of pink gems.

As you play more you’ll start to pick up these gems for hitting achievements and then you can use them to unlock further challenges. This currency isn’t paid for, it’s not essential, it’s just a fun way of rewarding your gameplay with playing (or replaying) challenges.

Obviously, there’s far too many games to even try to list, but anyone even nearly as old as me, will find a major nostalgia trip, old C64 titles like Law of the West and Space Doubt, never felt like “big Games” when I was a kid, but I loved them, and here they are, ready to play in seconds, and there’s no 10 minutes loading screens for the Commodore 64 either.
What’s most impressive is how well they play, and this includes everything I played, 80’s, 90’s and even a few titles from the 00’s.
The Xbox controller works perfectly fine, “insert coin” is always on the start/menu button and the pop-up to save or drop back to the main Antstream menu, is always on the view (back/select) button…
Most games utilise the D Pad and Analogue stick with main controllers on the 4 face buttons, meaning you’ll always know where to start even if you skip the brief control summary.

While I have a nice stable internet at home, it’s fair to say that performance was near floorless, I maybe had 1 small graphical glitch every 20-30 minutes, but otherwise it wasn’t even noticeable these games where being delivered through the cloud, obviously they’re smaller less demanding games, but if the time comes when modern day games play this well over the cloud, we really will be starting to ask if game consoles are necessary.

Overall the presentation of the system and menu’s is already high quality, every game looks and sounds exactly as you imagine, and even on today’s large TV’s the vast majority of titles will still look fantastic while delivering the exact arcade experience we witnessed decades ago, without any tacked on overlays or filters, while I appreciate the flare developers try to add to retro collections, I’d much rather have black lines, rather than distracting artwork.

Fnially a mention to the price, there’s two options, a 12-month subscription, that’s only £29.99 or a lifetime pass that’s £79.99. Over on PC prices are a little different at £40 for a year or there’s also a monthly subscription, so while Xbox is the cheaper option, you’re unable to link your account and utilise the subscription via Antstream on PC or Mobile devices.
This also makes the £80 life-time feel a little expensive, for a title that’s only just launching on Xbox, many won’t be familiar that they’ve been going for 5 years, but retro enthusiasts will definitely find the long-term value with that package.

But there’s no doubt that £29.99 for an entire year with (almost) all the retro games you can dream of, is a fantastic deal, and while I hope they introduce a £5 – 1st month trial, you really can’t complain at the price structure.

We’ve been really impressed with Antstream, the selection of games, their delivery and performance has exceeded expectations across the board and while there’s no doubt a few missing you wish where present (I’m pointing at you Wonderboy), You’ll definitely find dozens, maybe hundreds of games you will love.

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