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REVIEW: ANTSTREAM (BETA)

29/5/2019

14 Comments

 
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I've spoken before about how I was never big into pirated games as a kid. Maybe I'm just better than everyone else, or maybe I like looking down my nose at people, or maybe I'm just burdened with an overabundance of empathy, but piracy never sat right with me.

Actually, maybe it's just that I like to comfort myself with the thought of all my former schoolmates going to Hell when they die - if they haven't already...

​LOL!!!!!!

I'm not going to lie; of course I've played emulated games, but only when there was no alternative. There have been so many lost, obscure, games that I never thought I'd get to play in any sort of official capacity, it felt like I wasn't doing any harm. You know: like eating some chips out of a bin.

But now... step forwards Antstream.

Streaming is the future of gaming, but Antstream also believes it's the past; this new service, which went live to backers yesterday, is a retro gaming streaming service, featuring hundreds of officially-licensed old games - some more esoteric than others.
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ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
Antstream lets you play its games on pretty much anything with a screen, using your choice of controllers. You can even challenge friends and compete against the global Antstream leaderboard, and are awarded gems for completing certain milestones. 

Currently, the bulk of what's on offer are assorted Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amiga games, along with a good selection of arcade titles, and a slightly odd handful of Mega Drive games. Don't expect to find any Sega or Nintendo classics in there (yet, anyway); as everything on Antstream is officially licensed, some licensees aren't yet ready to share their back catalogue. 

And, frankly, I can't imagine a time when Nintendo ever will, when it's still pumping out mini classic consoles, and re-selling ancient games through its eShop.  

So, while you get Skool Daze, Dizzy and Jack The Nipper, you don't get anything from, say, Ultimate Play The Game or Melbourne House. There's Bad Dudes vs Dragon Ninja and Shadow Fighter... but no Final Fight or Mortal Kombat.

Nevertheless, I did appreciate is how obscure some of these games are. I never knew there were games called Swettibitz in Space and Drunk Policeman... but, well, they exist - and Antstream gives you the opportunity to play them. I mean, they're terrible, obviously, but at least they're there.

Antstream has been asking backers what other formats we'd like to see represented on its platform, and it's fair to say I'd like to see all of them - home computers and consoles alike, both big and small. Part of the appeal of the service is sifting through the obscurities. 
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SAVE ME!
Unfortunately, while much of what Amstream offers is extremely promising, there's one massive issue with it. And that issue is this issue: Antstream doesn't let you save games.

Frankly, and it pains me to say this - because so much of what Antstream is aiming for it gets spot-on - but it's kind of a fundamental issue. Admittedly, many of the games featured here couldn't be saved back in the day, but we live in different times.

​We're not the kids we once were, who could give up an entire Saturday to complete Xenon 2; we need to be able to dip in and out. Making this omission even more baffling is that there are some games - such as a couple of editions of Premier Manager - which did support saving back in the day. Premier Manager is not a game you dip in and out of. 

I contacted Antstream last night to confirm that you couldn't save, and they responded by saying that a lot of people have asked for this option (no shit), so they might look at adding it in the future. I honestly don't know how Antstream has made it this far without anybody on their team suggesting that a save facility might be a good idea. It's like releasing a car without any brakes. 

Also problematic is its interface; there seems to be no way to search by format or genre. Again, a weird omission, and even weirder when the layout of the menu seems to change every time I log into it. Sometimes I'll be presented with a list of C64 games... other times they'll be missing, and I'll be offered Amiga games instead.

There's sometimes a curated list of shoot 'em ups... other times that won't be there and there'll be a list of beat 'em ups instead. It's bizarre, and these are not small problems; they're kind of fundamental for a service like this, which is essentially taking on ROM sites and emulation.

Even the most basic of those sites will let you find games on the format you want, and all emulators will let you save your games. This has to be fixed now if Antstream stands a chance of succeeding.

Likewise, you don't need to ask me EVERY SINGLE TIME I log in whether I want to sign up for exclusive offers and marketing emails!!!!!!
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PROMISING, PROMISING...
As massive as its issues are, there's much about Antstream which is very promising.

The games load almost instantaneously, the interface - at least in terms of giving you instructions etc. - is clearly laid out, and there's a social and competitive element, which allows you to issue challenges to other users. These are usually timed mini versions of full games, which require you to, say, stay alive for as long as possible.

All of that works great, it's all nice and friendly, and if Antstream can broaden its selection of games, it really stands a chance. I like that the focus is currently rather UK-centric, but I can see it needing to expand beyond our borders, and introduce more games with international appeal. 

It also needs more heavy-hitters, more marquee titles - big arcade games, or a Sonic The Hedgehog-level gaming icon - to really bring in the crowds.

Antstream is positioning itself as the Netflix of retro gaming, but in among all the dross on Netflix there are also big blockbuster movies and original content, which get bums on seats. I'd love the service to one day maybe introduce original indie "retro" games alongside all the old stuff. 

So, it's a mixed bag currently, but as a foundation - and especially if Antstream can continue to add new content on a regular basis, fix its layout/search, and get that save feature in there - it's a strong foundation.

There are going to be those who scoff, and ask why you'd need this when it's so easy to emulate games for free, but Antstream removes a lot of the faff, wraps it up in a pretty bow, and... most importantly, for many of us... it's legit. I'm glad I backed it, and hope it succeeds.
​
FIND OUT MORE ABOUT ANTSTREAM.
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14 Comments
Taucher1979
29/5/2019 09:50:40 am

Well I have to say this looks excellent - the Commodore 64 was my first. I do love my old hardware but owning a Commodore 64 and loading games on tape seems like the actions of a psychopath in 2019 so this is perfect.

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Matt Again
29/5/2019 09:57:44 am

If they can fix the ending to Xenon 2 that would be appreciated.

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Antstream Arcade link
29/5/2019 10:53:48 am

Thanks for a really fair and balanced review. We're glad that, overall, you are enjoying the service. Save features are coming and are on the roadmap for the team. We have to prioritse early access right now but it is something that the team are working on in the background and will be able to give more time to now that we're in early access :) If you have any more questions or want more in for, please feel free to reach out! And thank you again for such a fair write-up!
The AntTeam

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Shreddy Mercury
29/5/2019 11:54:33 am

Its unfortunate that, after a final paragraph of praise, you scroll down a few lines to see the words "BALLS" in massive red letters. I say "unfortunate", when i obviously mean "fantastic"

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Spiney O'Sullivan
29/5/2019 01:12:48 pm

This is exactly the kind of service that should exist for retro games: A middle ground for those who find those proprietary mini retro systems far too expensive for the limited and inconvenient experiences that they offer, but who are happy to pay a fair amount for content rather than going a more questionable route. It's worked for Spotify and Netflix, so hopefully this works out.

And hopefully it also gets state saves, because nobody has the patience for Jet Set Willy in 2019.

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The Man with no Beard
29/5/2019 02:35:19 pm

Mr Biffo. Please can you advise, were the controls responsive? This is a retro game service where twitch arcade reactions are vital to so many games but it streams. That seems fundamentally incompatible to me. Was there any lag?

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The Man With A Boringly Normal Proportioned Face
29/5/2019 05:15:07 pm

Sure Biffo will respond himself but I am also on the Antstream early access beta and I couldn't detect any lag at all which is really quite impressive. I have had a few instances of slight artefacts appearing on the screen for a split second but nothing that interfered with gameplay.

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Bobmonkeypimp
29/5/2019 05:36:02 pm

I just don't see the point when I already have all their games & more on my PC for free.

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Karma Chameleon
29/5/2019 11:08:38 pm

Ahh, but you haven’t got them for ‘free’ - nothing in the universe is free’ - everything has a price......what this will be, who knows.....

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Chris
30/5/2019 02:04:02 pm

An eternity spent shoveling coal for Satan in the depths of Hell?

Geebs
30/5/2019 08:35:11 am

Sorry, but this is incredibly silly. For something like AssCreed: Odyssey there’s some sense behind streaming - it’s about 50 gigabytes of assets to download before you can play and needs a fairly powerful graphics card and CPU. These games are mere kilobytes of data, in fact many of them are much smaller than the average web page. Emulators for all of these games will run just fine on a five year old smartphone. Heck, plenty of them run perfectly in a web-based javascript emulator.

Why the hell would anyone want to use gigabytes of data streaming a game that you could download in less than a second, using an emulator that you could download in ten seconds? What a waste.

I’m assuming that the business model here is to get nostalgic old farts to sign up for a subscription, have them realise (within the first minute, on average) that most games this old aren’t really worth playing, and never actually use the service.

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Aonghaa
30/5/2019 09:38:24 am

Why will these games use up gigabytes to stream? Surely if they're only a few kb to download they'll not use a lot of bandwidth to stream?

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Geebs
30/5/2019 11:58:26 am

Google says an hour of 720p video is about 2 GB of data, depending on compression settings (e.g. you might be able to optimise for the limited colour palettes that 8- and 16- bit games used). You’d still be looking at at least several hundred megabytes per hour, or two to three orders of magnitude more data than just playing e.g. a 1 MB game locally.

Pedant
30/5/2019 03:17:55 pm

I rather suspect streaming here is just a buzzword. The rom will be downloaded to browser storage and played from there.




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