I’m very big on game preservation and while emulation is a bit of a minefield, it is pretty much the only way that classic games can be kept alive. A recent study said that around 87% of classic games are ‘legally’ gone. IPs expiring, studios just not caring and other reasons, classic games are going the way of the dinosaurs. Other media is very much kept alive. I can read books from different decades, even different centuries. I can still buy films that are 60+ years old. But games? I have trouble buying some games from 20 years ago, never mind from way back in the golden age of the 1970s and 80s.

Then there is the retro collection scene, a group of people I have quite a fair bit of disdain for. They buy games, lock them away in plastic containers, never to be played and push up the price of retro gaming. I once saw a copy of Earthbound on the SNES for sale for £999. Something is very wrong here. I get that some games are rare and all that, but crap like this prices genuine retro gamers out of the market that they love.

This is why emulation is massively important. Some of those classic games are still very playable today and retro gaming is massive. Antstream Arcade, from developer and publisher Antstream, is a massive collection of 1300 classic games from some of the most fondly remembered eras of gaming history.

Antstream Arcade is the place where you can find the world’s largest collection of classic games in one place. Download to instantly play thousands of retro video games. Easily replay your favourite games from your youth such as Asteroids, Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble and many more! Challenge global leaderboards and compete against your friends to get the highest score. Take on our social challenges – bite size sessions which allow veterans and new players alike to experience a fresh take on retro games. Compete against the world in our weekly tournaments!

I was fortunate enough to have been sent a review code and I’ve been playing Antstream Arcade on the Xbox for a while to see if it is worth it. You get a massive selection of games from machines such as the Atari 2600, Commodore 64, SNES, arcades and more. There’s really a lot on offer here. New games are added weekly and they are as easy as selecting (or searching) a title from the UI, pressing a button, waiting just a few moments for it to load and away you go.

Over the last 2 weeks or so, I’ve been enjoying a trip down memory lane with Smash TV, Double Dragon, Bubble Bobble, Elevator Action, Rolling Thunder, Space Invaders and so many more. You really are spoilt for choice here with the many, many games on offer. Classic gaming from the heyday and childhood memories unlocked playing ZX Spectrum games or finally seeing the end credits of some arcade titles that were just too damn hard (expensive) back in the day. Not only that, there’s also a collection of new indie games too.

You don’t just get a large and impressive collection of classic titles with Antstream Arcade, you also get to take part in snappy Giant Slayer challenges. Worldwide tournaments and mini-challenges within the games. Get the highest score within a set time limit. Get as far as you can with 1 life. Defeat all the bosses in one run and more. Earn gems to unlock more and more challenges, or even set up your own and see if anyone can top your gaming skills. There’s really a lot to unpack with Antstream Arcade and you certainly get a great deal to play around with.

There are two pricing options. You can get a 1-year sub for £30 or a lifetime sub for £80. It sounds a bit expensive at first but, when you look at the price of some other classic game collections, it really isn’t. I reviewed both of the Capcom Capcom Arcade Stadium collections a while back and if you were to buy both with all of the games, you’d be spending £60+ for all 60 games. With Antstream Arcade, you can get 1300 games for £80 for a lifetime sub. For me, that’s a great deal.

However, there are some issues with Antstream Arcade that prevent me from giving it a full recommendation. First, the UI is not all that great. Just on the main menu, as an example, it is a bit of a pain finding games. There is a search function and with the tap of the Y button, you can bring up the search box at any time. But, if you are just doing a general browse, it is very cumbersome. Games are split into genres and scrolling down the entire list is a one-line-at-a-time affair. You can’t just tap a trigger button to scroll a page or a few lines at once, you have to scroll through each line one by one and it is a bit tedious. For instance, let’s say you are at the very top of the menu and want to scroll to the bottom to look at the action games, that’s 20 taps down. Also, if you are at the bottom of the and want to get back to the top, there is no ‘jump to the top option’. Again, you have to scroll manually all the way back up.

When you load a game, it displays the default controls before you start. Very handy. However, you can’t customise the controls and you really, really need to. I was playing Indiana Jones’ Greatest Adventures on the SNES, and the default control mapping is terrible. The A button is attack and the B button is jump. This is just counterintuitive, as everyone knows that A is jump, and it makes the game stupidly awkward to play. Now, you can adjust the controls for this game within the options of the game itself, but the buttons are mapped to the SNES pad, so you have to think of the SNES buttons being mapped to the Xbox pad to then do the conversion yourself. For games that don’t have in-game options, you have to use the default, and they are always ass-backwards. A to attack and B to jump… NO! Trying to play a beat ’em up like Mortal Kombat with the default controls is terrible. There should be an option to customise the default controls on the screen where they are displayed and save them for all games.

There are no dip switches for the arcade games. If you are playing a (usually console) game that has an options screen built in, fine as you can tinker with the settings. But, for all of the arcade games, you can’t change anything. I can understand not being able to change the settings for challenges and such, but if you are playing solo, you should be able to mess around with the settings to suit your own play style.

My last niggle with Antstream Arcade is that, this is a subscription service, and you don’t ‘own’ the games. As with the previously mentioned Capcom Arcade Stadium, which I reviewed, I own the games… all 60 of them. If Capcom decides to pull the collection from the store, I can still play the games as I own them. With Antstream Arcade, you can only play as long as Antstream keep the servers up. £80 for a lifetime subscription and 1300 games is great value… but how long is that ‘lifetime’? If Antstream decides to close the service in a year or two, you’ve lost that ‘lifetime’ subscription. Also, there’s no way to upgrade to a lifetime sub if you already have a year one.  So, let’s say that you paid £30 for a year, just to try it out (as there is no other option, you can’t buy a month and try it out) and you really like Antstream Arcade and now want the lifetime sub, you have to pay the £80 on top of the £30 you paid for the year sub. There should be a discount for people wanting to upgrade from a year to a lifetime subscription, but there isn’t. So you could end up paying £120 instead.

Overall, I do think that Antstream Arcade is a great service. There are issues, the not particularly user-friendly UI, no controller customisation, no dip switches for arcade games and such. Plus, there are other ways to play all of these games and not have to spend £80 to do so. They may not be exactly kosher means, but it is possible (with full controller customisation and more too). The added challenges and such are good fun but not really a massive insensitive to not go for one of the cheaper options out there.

For me, Antstream Arcade still needs a little bit of work done to it. A few tweaks to make the whole service more appealing. A discounted upgrade option for year sub holders to go for the lifetime sub and yes, get a controller customisation in there too. If you are a massive retro gaming fan and are looking for a new way to play some classics, then Antstream Arcade could be what you are looking for, and it is a great way to support game preservation… legally.