Antstream Arcade – PS5 Review 2

Antstream Arcade is a retro game streaming service that launched in 2019 as a PC application but has finally landed on PSN.  The idea is simple.  It takes well over a thousand retro games, from multiple formats, and lets you play them via streaming.   But given the failures of services like OnLive and Stadia, can a fairly niche service like Antstream deliver?

On firing up Antstream, you’re faced with a Netflix-ish interface.  You can search for games by name, format or genre and then run them directly from within the software.  The selection is pretty much ’80s to mid ’90s focused with the most powerful format being the PS1 (which has a handful of games available here).  Of course it’s your ’80s and ’90s stuff that takes prevalence though with consoles like the SNES, Megadrive, Atari 2600 and 8400 all being represented and even a couple of handhelds, namely the Game Boy and the Atari Lynx.

What’s more exciting though is that some of the popular retro computer systems are also on here.  You’ve got the Amstrad and C64 but, way more importantly, the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore Amiga are also available.  It definitely leans towards a UK market, which is good, rather than, say, the recent Atari 50th compilation, which was more focused on our friends across the pond.

The main menu is split into various sections.  First up is ‘Play Now’ which offers up a selection of the most popular challenges of the day.  This is where Antstream shines.  It’s not just a ROM depository.  There are bespoke challenges on a lot of the games.  For example, you might have a one life challenge or specific ones such as playing Pac-Man with the power pills turned off, eating as much food as possible in Bubble Bobble or killing a certain number of enemies on a section of Sly Spy.  And most games have multiple challenges but you’ll need to unlock these using crystals (that are earned for doing pretty much everything in the game).  Nothing’s ever too far out of reach though.  So don’t expect to grind.  There are also ‘Giant Slayer’ challenges where the community teams up against one player on a specific challenge (I’m currently smashing the community on a Bomb Jack challenge which is neat).  Add to that trending games, new games, multiplayer games and so on and this is a great place to start.

You also have a section devoted to Challenges only, a section that tracks the PSN trophies (which are all based around getting medals in the challenges rather than anything game-specific), a messages hub, the search and a profile editing section.  If we’re moaning, it’s not the best UI we’ve ever used.  Sometimes it’s hard to know exactly where you are on the screen.  That said, you can use L1 and R1 to jump to the section headings but even that is clumsily implemented with each button initially taking you to the far left or right of the options on the top row rather than taking you to the next option.

You have to applaud Antstream for actually giving you a reason to play the games and not just do what we all do on MAME which is spend three minutes on each game before moving on.  It’s good to actually persist.  And the streaming actually holds up really well.  We’re on Wi-Fi and everything has been pretty responsive.  We were able to play most things without feeling any lag.  The only game that we struggled with was Manic Miner just because that game needs so much precision but otherwise it’s all really good.  From platformers to shoot ’em ups, everything has been pretty good we have to say.

Of course, there are lots of games you’re not going to get.  The Antstream team have been hard at work nabbing licenses for all these games but you’re not likely ever going to see Capcom, Nintendo or Codemasters loosening the death grip they have on their licenses unfortunately.  But with Namco, Taito, Irem and others on board you’ve still got well over a thousand games to play here and hopefully that number will continue to grow.  But, for now, this is going to be more aimed at fans of The Bitmap Brothers and Team 17 than anyone hoping to play a Mario game.

We are hoping for the PS1 section to grow as, at the moment, there’s not much there and even less of it is great.  One is still PS1-era impressive (although kind of horrible to play), the Loaded games were kind of average back then and we really don’t want to play Premier Manager ’98 on PS1 or any format.  None of the PS1 gems are on there (although Hogs of War has some charm) and also a lot of games are repeated across multiple formats.   For example, Speedball II is under SNES, Genesis and the Amiga.

Another issue is that a lot of games just aren’t suited to the DualSense.  Certainly the Speccy was always better with keyboard controls (in fact the most popular joystick carried a very real risk of bricking your whole computer back in the day) and some arcade games require tighter controls than the joypad can handle.  But most games are basically okay here and you can remap the controls (which is good because nearly all the arcade games are mapped in a daft way).

So yeah, for fans of retro gaming, Antstream Arcade offers some spectacular value and breathes new life into a lot of retro games that may not have had much more attention.  The community aspects make it all the better and if they can keep growing the service, this could be the best one stop shop for old-school gamers on PSN.