From the off, the idea of Antstream Arcade absolutely appeals to me. The elevator pitch for Antstream Arcade is that you can instantly play more than 1300 retro games from a whole spread of platforms on modern day hardware, all the while numerous community challenges abound to encourage social play between Antstream subscribers in a way to mimic the high score and challenge chasing that used to be prevalent with titles from the 1980s and 1990s.
Antstream Arcade PS5 Review
A Nostalgia Stuffed Retro Gaming Platform With A Compulsive Social Gaming Hook
Now, if you’re wondering how Antsteam Arcade manages to pull off this feat of massive collective nostalgia quite so quickly, it leverages the power of the cloud (sorry, not sorry) to ensure that these games from yesteryear are rapidly piped to your PlayStation 5 in a manner similar to how PlayStation Plus game streaming currently works.
Similar to PlayStation Plus game streaming then, Antstream Arcade is also subject to the same issues of latency and picture quality – both of which are entirely dependent on the quality of your internet and network connections. Simply put, the faster your internet connection and the more reliable your network connection is (a wired ethernet connection is still very much king, in this regard when it comes to maintaining no packet loss and a consistent connection), the better experience you’ll have.
In my own testing over a fairly decent WiFi connection with a roughly 200-250mb download and 300mb upload stream, the level of performance I got from Antstream Arcade was both responsive and visually stable for the most part, with even faster paced fare like Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja and Fatal Fury performing admirably well. Again though, if you know for a fact your internet connection isn’t the best, you can probably expect Antstream Arcade to struggle in maintaining a responsive and visually coherent experience.
Assuming you can pull a respectable level of performance out of Antstream Arcade, its offering is arguably a compelling one. With an all-you-can-eat approach to playing a chunky catalogue of games from yesteryear, Antstream Arcade lets a contemporary gaming audience dip back into a whole bunch of classics from a variety of platforms spanning everything from the humble Commodore 64 through to Sony’s legendary PSOne home console. Certainly, playing the likes of Indiana Jones: The Fate of Atlantis and the entirety of The Bitmap Brothers Amiga back catalogue in 2024 – on a PlayStation console of all things – is still something of a treat, not least because titles like this feel lost to time. This is especially if you’re a PlayStation exclusive gamer without access to a PC and a broad GoG library.
Don’t expect too many banger games from Sony’s inaugural PlayStation home console though – presumably because of licensing agreements (or lack thereof), the selection is limited to a lot of UK-centric stuff like Worms, Hogs of War, Loaded and Premier Manager 98. Speaking of licensing, those who do remember these games in their original form might be disappointed to discover that any game which had licensed music, now has no music at all, which can be quite jarring to ol’ memories if you have fond ones tied into those soundtracks.
Nonetheless, from the (still superb) Speedball 2 on the Amiga, to California Games on the Megadrive/Genesis to the Neo Geo powered, arcade version of SNK’s excellent Samurai Shodown, there’s something for everybody. Even though it’s clear that a lot of big titles are missing, Antstream Arcade adds new titles every week and even the existing selection of 1300 or so titles, provides an ample gaming banquet for any retro gaming aficionado to feast upon.
From a functionality standpoint, you can get into any game extremely quickly too, which makes Antstream Arcade pretty well suited to a nice bit of pick up and play. Additionally, every game has its own selection of save state slots too, allowing you to to play a game, put it down and then return to it on your own time. Arguably though, one of the best aspects of Antstream Arcade and its raison d’etre outside of its positive game preservation intentions, is how it leans heavily into the social side of gaming in a way that feels both refreshing and a reminder of how old-fashioned score chasing and competitive play can be an endlessly enticing prospect.
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Realised through the mechanic of challenges, a subsection of Antstream Arcade’s titles task players with completing a particular feat unique to that title. In Metal Slug for example, you might be tasked with rescuing a certain number of POWs, or not taking any hits, while Operation Wolf for instance, might task you to clear a stage without ever using your screen-clearing grenades. Some sophistication is added to the system too, with higher tier challenges only being available if you have the requisite gems – Antstream Arcade’s easily earnable in-game currency – to attempt them. Elsewhere, weekly tournaments seek to establish the best of the best on particular games, bolstering Antsteam Arcade’s social gaming sensibilities yet further still.
Rather than just merely existing in a vacuum of sorts, these challenges and tournaments don’t just let you view classic titles in a different light, but also encourage you to reach out to other Antstream players, start up rivalries and genuinely have a good time beyond the immediacy of your own social space. It’s a great idea really, not least because bonding over classic games and your mastery of them, is something that eminently lends itself well to making new friends and forging competitive play going forward.
Where Antstream Arcade trips over its feet somewhat, is in the implementation of a UI that feels undercooked at best and downright frustrating at worst. More than a touch clunky to navigate, the UI more concerningly gets pretty sluggish and borders on being non-responsive if you’re browsing games from a huge selection of search results. For example, I searched for ‘The Hobbit’ (in a bid to relive my early 1980s time with the J.R Tolkien adaptation on the C64) and more than 1000 games rocked up. Not only was the game I was after not present in those results, but the UI immediately also slowed to a crawl – which is far from ideal to say the least as I had to restart the app to get it working again.
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It would also be really helpful if the UI had much more obvious curation based on the platforms across which the more than 1300 titles are spread, because as of right now you need to search for the name of the platform, rather than being immediately informed by the UI what platforms are available and then filtering your searches from there. Further afield, it’s also clear that some titles are better optimised than others, with some games having on-screen keyboards that obscure the text field you are supposed to be using. And while this might seem a small thing in the grand scheme of things, the fact that there are so many titles for the Antstream Arcade team to look at and optimise, suggests that there is still a whole lot of work ahead of them.
From a value standpoint, Antstream Arcade is more than reasonable. For £32.99/$30 you can nab yourself an annual pass which provides a year’s worth of access to the entirety of the Antstream Arcade library, along with any additions which arrive during that period. Conversely, if your pockets are a little deeper, you can pay £79.99/$80 which gives you lifetime access for a single one-off payment. Whichever subscription you choose, Antstream Arcade always feels like great value.
Despite some hefty flaws, the fact that Antstream Arcade has come on leaps and bounds since its debut in 2013 gives me hope that the service will continue to improve in the weeks, months and years after its PlayStation debut. Even so, in its current far from perfect form, Antstream Arcade still represents great value for what is a veritable mountain of games from a broad swathe of gaming systems that would otherwise be lost to time and garnishes that offering with a compelling social gaming hook.
Antstream Arcade is out now on PS4 and PS5.
Lifetime pass subscription kindly provided by PR for the purposes of this review.