As of midnight UTC July 21st, Xbox players across the US, UK and Europe will have access to a huge catalogue of over 1300 retro games ranging from Arcade machines, Commodore and Spectrum, to Sega Mega Drive and SNES all the way through to the first generation of PlayStation. Thousands have already pre-ordered Antstream Arcade in the past week taking advantage of a new lifetime subscription currently as a limited trial at https://aarca.de/microsoftstore.
New games are added every week to the existing list found at https://aarca.de/games. Out of the 1450 games currently live across 18 retro platforms (including different versions of the same game across multiple platforms), Anstream boasts 1000s more licences that have not yet been made live, awaiting a rigorous ingestion and QA process by Antstream’s team of veteran retro emulation experts.
Retro fans have been making game requests, suggestions and recommendations through friendly debate and nostalgic banter over at Antstream’s discord channel https://aarca.de/discord. July also saw the first ever Antstream Connect, a regular live stream by Antstream employees announcing new games, features and upcoming news, https://aarca.de/connect.
A huge number of questions have been arising in the past week around the highly anticipated Xbox launch for which Antstream’s Head of Studio, Mike Rouse (ex Playstation, Microsoft, Ubisoft and 2k) has prepared a video answering many of them and inviting retro fans to ask more questions, https://aarca.de/xboxq&a.
Rouse is also well known as Retro Gamer Boy on Youtube and a prolific retro collector himself. “Not every game on Antstream is for everyone” said Rouse, “however, everyone will find plenty of great games. Even as a retro fan myself, I discovered fantastic games on Antstream, such as Dangun Feveron. Normally I’m not a fan of Shmups, but this one is brilliant!”
Finally, to celebrate the Xbox launch, Antstream is running two tournaments, both starting Friday 21st July and ending Monday 24th July at 11:59pm BST. One on Yoshihisa Kishimoto’s 1987 Arcade beat ‘em up, Double Dragon with a 1 minute challenge to deal as much damage to the evil biker gang as possible. Second, a one life challenge on the arcade classic, Smash TV 1990 co-written by Eugene Jarvis who was also known for Robotron: 2084 and Defender.
The tournaments are available to all players of Antstream, simply register and enter here https://aarca.de/live
Acclaimed Developer’s 3D Puzzle Platformer Sephonie – Out Today (21st July)
