Antstream Arcade review for PlayStation

Antstream Arcade boasts it has over 1300 titles in its catalog, with two games added weekly, with such a cadence you’re likely to believe you’re in for an endless amount of fun. This notion is further reinforced when you open the app for the first time you are inundated with a sea of squares detailing what you can be playing. Some squares are a bit familiar and obvious such as Pac-Man, Asteroids, Metal Slug, but there are other squares that would require a bit of squinting to identify. However when you actually comb through the list of games that the company lists on their website suddenly their advertised claim rings a bit hollow. While the library boasts games from 15 platforms, a majority of the service’s titles originate from three of them. Arcade, C64 and ZX Spectrum.

With the arcade selection we do have heavy hitters like Data East, Namco and SNK, but there are noticeable exclusions. SEGA, Konami and Capcom are nowhere to be seen, SNK’s titles that released after 1994 were noticeably missing from the platform (We couldn’t get a single King of Fighters title?). That’s not to say the platform didn’t lead to the discovery of something that I enjoyed, I can say I stumbled upon Kamikaze Cabbie and was drawn in by its gameplay (What can I say…I have a real soft spot for Crazy Taxi).

Antstream’s big claim to fame besides its legal access to retro titles is the community it seeks to foster. On the platform you can challenge your friends or the community at large to pre-configured challenges (usually 1 coin score attacks, although I have seen survival challenges, time attacks). Taking on the challenges solo is free, challenging your friend or the community at large will require gems. This is the platform’s currency that can’t be bought, but can be accrued by earning medals in challenges, beating community challenges or winning in tournaments. Having to use currency to challenge actual players provides some stakes and makes sure you’re bringing your A-game to these challenges.

I definitely found myself going into the rabbit hole when it comes to these challenges. Trying to secure gold medals, I noticed an interesting trend, some of the scores were upwards to 4 years old and I would never have the bravado to describe myself as an “l337” gamer, I still found some of my placing on the leaderboard to be quite high (Top 100…I think I broke into Top 50 here and there). So this makes me wonder…how big is the “community” on Antstream Arcade? For a platform whose pillar is competition amongst the community, if the population is nascent…will the challenges eventually dry up?

As an on-demand platform, the games library is not stored locally on your device, so expect to have a stable internet connection to ensure the most smooth gaming experience. Even though I am running a 1Gbps Fios connection (although my PS4 is connected via wifi), I did experience hiccups and sometimes these hiccups occurred during a challenge thus ruining that run…

Like every platform that has to license their content, the possibility of losing licenses is a very real possibility. Given the popularity of retro compilations especially from Atari (With their Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration), who’s to say we couldn’t lose access to whatever from the Atari catalog that is in the Antstream Arcade. Apparently the platform had and lost Midway (WB Games)’s titles prior to PlayStation launch. So hopefully the publishing team is more adept at signing deals than letting things expire.

While I eventually got used to the ui, I still feel there is plenty of room for improvement. The main page greets you with the current challenge/tournament going one, but why not use the front page to highlight the new additions to the platform. The week of the launch of the PlayStation client, Antstream added the PS1 versions of Worms Armageddon and Motor Mash. If I were to boot up the app right now, you would never know those two titles were added. Another thing that annoyed me was how easy it was to lose sight of what element you were hovering over, the only thing that tells you what you are looking at is a thin yellow highlight and there were plenty of times I had to twirl my left stick around just to see what I was highlighting.

The price of admission is quite enticing, but they really need to do a lot better with messaging. 40 dollars will grant you a year of the service, netting out to $3.33 per month. If you feel this service has legs, you can opt for the lifetime membership for roughly $100 dollars. However and this is a big HOWEVER, the membership is only applicable to the platform you purchased it on (right now lifetime memberships are only available on console only), meaning if you want the Antstream experience on other platforms, you will have to pay again and your progress will not cross over.

So in conclusion, as someone who had plenty of experience with M.A.M.E. (that’s Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator to you young’uns!) has a MiSTer, the Antstream service isn’t something I absolutely need. However if you are not interested in performing questionable legal activities, researching front ends…or gasp run command line (it’s been a while since I’ve used MAME, ok). Antstream is a perfectly fine off-the-shelf product to sate your retrogaming needs. The platform definitely has plenty of room for growth and improvements…perhaps after my year is up, I might revisit the platform to see if I’ll renew for another year or permanently add it to my PlayStation library. Until next September, I’ll definitely check in to try to earn some gems and medals…now does anyone want to be my Antstream rival? I’m taking applications!

Antstream is available now on the PlayStation platform as well as PC, iOS, Android, web browsers and the Xbox platform.

Note: Antstream provided us with an Antstream Arcade PlayStation code for review purposes.