Antstream Arcade Review

No matter where you started your journey in the gaming space, you always tend to look back on the classic games with great memories. For me, it all started in around 1990 when my mother surprised me with an Atari packed with fun. The first game I ever recall playing at five years of age I’ll never forget as it was the legendary Space Invaders. Lots of games have passed me by and have not been forgotten but I always imagine what it would be like to play them again.

Antstream Arcade not only gives you the ability to dive into 1400+ games spanning across many eras and platforms, it does it in a way that is unique. You can stream them on the cloud at your convenience and also take part in tournaments, challenges and even battle friends across any game with their very own cleverly built hub. You won’t want to miss out on this if you’re into retro games and have played games over the past 3-4 decades.

How Much Is It?

It’s important to go through the pricing structure and whether it is worthy of your hard-earned cash. On Xbox, this is the very first time a third-party cloud streaming service has landed on the console. It is important to note that the service is purely cloud-based and you can’t download any of the games onto your machine. That said, the games are tiny in size and this service will run brilliantly even on internet connections with low speeds. The Antstream launcher itself is less than 0.5gb in size so it won’t take much room on that precious hard drive space.

There are currently two tiers with Antstream Arcade. The first is a yearly subscription at £29.99 and this gives you unlimited access to the entire game library for a period of one year only. The second option is a lifetime subscription is £79.99 which will allow you full access forever with no additional costs for as long as the service is functional and active. There is always a slight risk with anything like this as you only have to see the demise of Google Stadia to understand that some great things can come to an end.

A Flawless Service With Absolutely No Hiccups

I have tried and tested this both on my 1gbps download speed home internet and as expected there are no issues with getting to games and getting started with that monstrous speed. I then decided to switch my router off and use my mobile phone hotspot as my connection with the Xbox Series X. Again, running off mobile data was equally exceptional with no slowdown on loading speeds or performance issues within any games.

What Shall I Play Next?

The only issue with Antstream Arcade is what to play next with so many timeless classics on offer. At the current time of writing, there are 1470 games in the library and you may be wondering what kind of games are on request. Well, thankfully the developers and publishers at Antstream Ltd have compiled a list HERE.

To put it into context there are 201 titles on Amiga, 35 on Amstrad, 293 for Arcade, 28 on Atari 8-bit,  28 on Atari 2600, 11 for Atari 7800, a whopping 358 Commodore 64 titles, 5 DOS games. I’m not finished yet, the list goes further with 5 Game Boy titles, 5 on Atari Lynx, 57 SEGA Genesis games, 13 on MSX, 33 NES titles, 2 Playstation 1 classics, 42 for SNES, a massive 351 games for ZX Spectrum and a lonely 1 title for both the MSX 2 and Atari 5200. The team at Antstream have said that the list should keep growing as time progresses.

Tournaments & Challenges Bring Excitement

For the first few hours of my time, I was on a nostalgic trip down memory lane playing games like R-Type II, Root Beer Tapper, the original Mortal Kombat and even Gauntlet. Before I knew it, I had been playing for a good five hours and then I stumbled on the tournaments and challenge feature. The tournaments appear to be weekly and this week it is Gunbird and Defender.

Both of these require you to progress through the game and score as many points as possible with one life only. Once you get your first score on the board you’re placed on the leaderboard with the premise of getting to number one. I can’t tell you how many times I have tried the Gunbird run and it has become a daily obsession of mine. Whilst there only appeared to be two tournaments running at any one time, I would like to have seen more to keep me invested in other games during each week.

In-Game Currency, You Either Love Or Hate It

There is in-game currency and when I started my retro journey I started with 1000 diamonds. These can be used to enter tournaments and as a gambling tool during some of the challenges. It is all in the name of fun, but you often find that if you do some heavy hitting in challenges and don’t fare too well you can run dry with this currency. More can be gained by logging in consistently each day or simply levelling up through playing various games.

Personally, I didn’t mind this approach as it gives you something to play for constantly. If all I had was the library of games, then eventually dipping in and out of them would get tiresome for me. But giving players the competitive edge and something to strive for kept me interested in the service, if you win a tournament there is a potential of 15,000 diamonds so there is a lot at stake!

Is It Worth It?

The answer to this is obviously a personal preference. Any 80’s and 90’s kids will especially enjoy going back 20-30 years and diving into some of the greats when gaming first blossomed. I do wish that they could offer a trial first for those that would like to try the service before going straight in at the deep end. £29.99 is a reasonable investment for a year but when you have to stump that up in the first instance then you risk losing out if it isn’t for you. That said, the longevity and replayability is literally unlimited with the generous servings of challenges and tournaments to keep the abundance of games fresh and competitive.

If you wish to live through the memories in the two-player games that are available in the service then you can absolutely do that provided you have a second controller to hand. I may stump up for the lifetime access when my subscription ends because having the huge catalogue at your disposal with quick and easy access is fantastic and almost like having an arcade machine in your living room. The hope is that the team at Antstream Ltd keeps adding to the service and keeps people hooked with new introductions over time.