Antstream review - "Retro gaming on modern tech"

• A game streaming service for the mobile age
• Play over a thousand retro games on your touchscreen
• Fair pricing

If you ever have some twisted desire to feel old, just look up what's considered retro in the gaming community because the answer is most of it. We've come a long way since games were as simple as hooking up a box to another box and yet we still try to revisit those days with retro game shops and services like Antstream.

In the age of digital convenience, Antstream has arrived to offer you opportunities to stream a certain number of classic games from consoles ranging from the SNK to arcade machines. But what matters is the pricing, the selection, and ultimately, how these games run on technology they never expected to see.

What is Antstream?

Before you get excited, this has nothing to do with ants so put your little terrarium away. Anststream is the new arrival to what is the still expanding garden of gaming streaming services.

You can download it onto your preferred iOS or Android device and opt for one of two plans: A monthly plan that will cost you about 5 of your respective currency per month or a yearly plan that will collect around 40 monies as you wonder whether writing down resolutions is pointless or not.

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Once you're signed up, you'll have full access to a bunch of official retro games as well as a few indies that may or may not have been made just for the service. Either way, it's like a small digital library where you visit some of your old favourites… And if you're too young to have old favourites, this is one way to break into the retro scene.

The nice flow of Antstream

Now, the big and obvious question for Antstream is: What games does it have on it? Well, I won't bore you with the details of all the licensing hoops that a streaming service needs to jump through (I'm still learning about them myself) and say that the service tries to have a balanced coverage to start.

It covers platforms and companies like the SNES, Megadrive, Atari, Taito, SNK, and such. It has many popular and influential games like Metal Slug, Double Dragon, Fatal Fury, Joe & Mac, Space Invaders, Galaga, Centipede, and such. It even includes long-form adventure games like Monkey Island and Day of the Tentacle. For a retro streaming service, it has a pretty solid base.

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Then there are the controls and how they translate to touchscreen. Since these are older games, many of them operate on the simple regimen of move and jump, maybe throwing in an attack function where appropriate. It defaults the movement and actions buttons to clearly defined spots in the corners of the screen and it works well. The controls are responsive and the game action is pretty smooth (Well, for retro anyway). It may take you a bit to get used to the exact position of the buttons, but you can always take breaks between continues.

An additional gimmick is the rotating challenge. While your subscription is active, the service will introduce challenges to certain games. Choosing a particular challenge will highlight something you have to do in a particular game such as complete a difficult part without dying. Doing so only serves to add your name to the scoreboard and maybe net you some in-game currency for spending on specific game challenges, but it's a nice touch to keep you coming back and introduce you to new games.

The rapids on Antstream

The biggest issue facing Antstream is one that Google Stadia faced before it instantly crashed and burned several years later: The titles. For a gaming service to be successful, it needs to get access to IPs that many people love. Older people will want access to games they grew up with and younger people will too so they can try to understand what all those old people are yammering about.

It has quite a large library with over 1300 games that are ready to play from the start, but maybe only a third of them have mass appeal. It'd be like going to a karaoke bar and the only songs they have from the '80s are Duran Duran's greatest hits. Nothing against them, but I came to this place for a proper Journey. If you see what I mean.

Riding the Antstream

Antstream is a new streaming service for mobile with a focus on retro gaming. The prices are decent, the catalogue is big, and the touchscreen is well-suited to adapt controls for games from 40 years ago. It's new so it still has time to expand its scrapbook of licenses for games people hope to play, but it'll need to move quickly. If it doesn't, it'll struggle to mimic the mighty salmon swimming upstream in the gaming market.