What Is Antstream Arcade? A Review and in Depth Look
Вставка
- Опубліковано 20 лип 2023
- #antstream #antstreamarcade #retrogames #xboxretro #forthescore
Visit Antstream and give it a try here: aarca.de/sharopolis
Antstream Arcade is a game streaming service with a heavy focus on retro action. I took a look and gave it a go. - Ігри
Give Antstream a go here: aarca.de/sharopolis
Or don't, this service is stupid.
“The idea that some people might enjoy this inexplicably bothers me.”
Really don’t understand why this seems to upset so many folks… maybe gatekeeping? Too many muggles having free and easy access to something they feel they should have to work for?
Everybody and their brother played flash games for years… why wouldn’t someone enjoy clicking and playing some of their other old favorites from time to time?
Meh… stay angry folks… 😏🤷🏻♂️✌🏻
@@RobertBatina The entire concept of this product is meant to separate suckers from their money and to give them a subpar experience in return. Quit being a sucker.
No sir. No sale.
N o
Now, Antstream has decided to not renew their license with Warner Bros (owner of most Midway, Atari and Williams games), resulting in 27 popular games being removed from their catalog, like Mortal Kombat, Total Carnage, Smash TV, Rampage, Gauntlet and Marble Madness.
Well, it looks like Antstream has finally earned its "The Netflix of retro gaming" title, since like Netflix, who removes movies from their catalog from time to time, Antstream does the same with its games.
This is a solution for a non existing problem. Every cpu on Earth can emulate any of these games giving you a better experience and a *lot* of better options to tinker the emulation, adding achievements, etc...
Yeah, who on earth would want to use a convenient, legal streaming service that contains a huge collection of their favorite media, where they can just click and immediately enjoy wherever they want? Next thing you’ll tell me is that someone will try that with TV shows or even movies! LOL
@@RobertBatina Have you ever heard of the concept of legal emulation? You know, having your own legally obtained roms and playing them on your legally obtained emulator? Just a, let me see, click away to immediately enjoy wherever you want! No internet required even! The future!!!
@@RobertBatina Nobody wants to stream retro games you dolt, just playing locally is such a wildly better experience.
@@Rolodzeolots more steps involved though. most people don't have disc drives or cartridge dumping hw and only some roms are available legally online.
@@jc_dogen Most people don't care if it's legal or not. Most people realize these people are being greedy and the original development teams for these games got their last paychecks years ago. Sane people don't care if these people continue to get paid for making our lives less convenient.
The reason I don't like this idea is the fact that it's cloud-based. If I'm going to play games, I want them running directly on my PC or console with no input lag or visual glitches, and without risk of interruptions by unstable internet. And considering how old these games are, getting them to run on modern platforms is not a big order at all.
Thanks for the review, but as long as it's cloud-based, I'll pass, no matter what content is on offer.
The reason why it’s cloud based is to make it easier to get games. If their stored locally it’s easy enough to extract the rom and share it then the owners of the property no longer will make money from it and the game service has no reason really to be subscribed to outside updates. It’s not great but it’s why they are cloud based. It would take a lot of engineering that I rather doubt someone is gonna put into to make the rom files unusable in emulators and a completely different format that can’t just be converted. Steam has many examples of this such as the sega genesis collections and such, you can even swap roms to play different games within the program. Another example is the smash pack on sega dreamcast you could take and replace romfiles and run whatever you want. But that being said I hate that it’s cloud based.
@@Roninkinx lol the price is abit too expensive for a year considering what it offers
“streaming service”
This is where I noped out of the video, sorry.
Why is a 15 minute advertisement not listed as such?
Interesting. I like sharopolis but this is that… but it might just be his own review as opposed to sponsored or paid for.
I have SponsorBlock installed, and it discloses that the entire video is sponsored content.
@@Dwedit I have sponsorblock, didnt realise the plugin puts up the `sponsored content` green button thing under the video, I thought it was youtube themselves lol. Bit naughty of sharopolis not to disclose its an advert.
There is a fundamental problem with this advertisement: your audience is mostly tech savvy. You can't possibly hope to entice them with an online only, cloud based, gaming-as-a-service offer: they know better. This already happened with Game Hut / Jon Burton some time ago, and things didn't go any better back then.
this has got to be the stupidest fucking idea ever. rather than download an emulator and a rom (together maybe 100 mb), you stream the fucking game, gigabytes of data is sent, you have shitass latency, and you have to pay a subscription fee. you will own nothing and you will be thankful for it, eat the bugs, live in pod, take daily estrogen injections, and pay all your wages to an onlyfans model with ai generated porn while you chomp down plant based chicken nuggets.
@@cheater00 I get where you're coming from, but I'm betting that they're not streaming the controller inputs and the game visuals back and forth. It's likely that it's just downloading the game to a UUID named folder and giving it a UUID name to attempt obscuring the ROM's. Either way, I'd rather just get a cart dumper and read my own games, if I really have to read my own instead of downloading someone else's dump, and just play with an emulator. Granted, these are arcade games and unless you own the actual cabinets you can't legally do either, but whatever, I'll stick with what I already own anyway.
@@anon_y_mousse You would have typed less and saved time if you had googled it first to verify that it is actually streaming.
WHY would anyone use this? I've been playing emulated arcade games since the 90s,
Because it's legal, easy and convenient
Regardless of Antstream's merits, it's not a classy move to effectively make an advertisement without labelling it as such.
The only clue I found* was the sponsor link in the description, and there don't seem to be any direct mentions of advertising.
*besides the overall positivity of the review!
The first day Antstream was launched on the Xbox, there were already 2 more players (6 players total) having the exact same 'magical' score of 479961 for the challenge called "Alien Attack", for the Metal Slug X game, whereas the maximum score possible seems to be around 30000 only.
Any idea how something like this is possible ? Could it be because the challenge has bugged for them ?
The amount of 10 players with this score of 479961 has been reached, for this challenge.
Also, anyone can see on this challenge's leaderboard, that 4 of these players, already had this same score, more than 3 years ago.
They've added The Chaos Engine 2 game, this year, but I wasn't aware that it's possible to reach the "impressive" score of 23724076 or even 1227245340, especially since that the last 2 digits are supposed to be either "00" or "50", since the lowest score increment you can do in this game, is 50 points.
And for the Metal Slug games, their score is supposed to end with the "0" digit, since the lowest score increment you can do in these games, is 10 points.
It's just that these games are so small your console should be able to download the whole ROM in less than 60 seconds, i just don't see the purpose of steaming unless it's something weird like licensing rights
Not only that, but the games are so small that you could easily fit the entire library of games they offer onto a cheap flashdrive.
Love ya my guy, and I don’t begrudge you earning- but it’s hard NO for me.
It would be a better service if they downloaded the game if even for period of play as opposed to streaming the game. It’s been done over and over and because of the fact it isn’t a video or music and the picture is relevant to your input and that input is travelling across the world and then back again; no matter the speed, it just won’t work compared to being from a hardwired cord to the computer in front of you.
is this an unmarked ad?
It's marked.
@@tabletaccountforyoutube He didn't mark the video until it was like two hours old.
Sure. We all needed another version of Stadia…
This is nothing like stadia.
@@benfox6383 At least Stadia had games that were designed for bad input lag of modern systems and were big enough to make download a hassle.
Is this a sponsored video or are you profiting off referral codes?
😂😂
Having the proper controls to actually PLAY a classic arcade game is the key. Lots of these games were designed with analog controls that won't translate well with the obligatory joystick and buttons combo. In fact they often become unplayable. Just some food for thought before jumping in with both feet.
Thats why Steam Deck is so great, or I guess just Steam. You can program what button should do what. If for example the game only make you jump by pressing up, that button can be swapped for the x,a,y,b button. If this would be possible within anstream arcade emulator, then that would be nice.
@@Lon1an Button mapping is must have these days. One of the reasons I chose the Super Retro-Cade was the button mapping options. Plus an SD card for MAME roms with artwork, HDMI out and 2 USB controller ports. It won't do Play Station, Xbox, N64 but my interest is arcade games from the 70s and 80s. Perfect for that and only $60 delivered to the door.
4:09 why mention the low-lag ibuffalo? what's it save, a frame? There's probably 5 frames in the round trip... Why on earth would they focus on streaming twitchy arcade games, over maybe strategy games, or turn-based rpgs?
The games are not streamed, only the data, the games are processed locally, the games are so small they can be "streamed" instantly
@@MisticDW This would make the most sense, but per their FAQ and intro video, this is not the case. Antstream appears to be streaming inputs out, and a/v back, like the Atgames 'ArcadeNet' does. That's a lot of places for lag to add up.
WTF this ain't new. It has been out since 2018! 😲
Did it look just as dumb when it came out?
@BonkedByAScout As far as I can remember yeah 😆
I'm pretty sure according to UA-cam's Terms of Agreement, you have to disclose that you have been sponsored, otherwise you could get a strike. Regardless of what the company who's sponsoring you has told you.
I'm saying this because nothing in the video, the description, or your pinned comment makes reference to being sponsored. And with the way you talk about this "Antstream" it's blatantly obvious you were sponsored.
I like your channel, and I'd hate to see you get a strike. So maybe perhaps consider reading up on UA-cam's terms and updating the video as appropriate.
Or don't... I'm not your mother. I'm just trying to be helpful.
it's definitely got noticeable controller latency. Some people on here might say otherwise but oh my goodness it's there for sure as you'd expect being it's streamed of course. Played this on a friend's machine and I pointed out how it was quite delayed from my inputs but he just couldn't see it lol. Ignorance is bliss
Antstream....ah yes the scammy service that solves a non existent problem and the scammy service that cost gamehut pretty much all goodwill and believability.
Good call
Please, his gfx effect videos are still priceless
You can play all the games on emulation you must be getting paid for this ohh and the lag :-(
Why are you talking to us like a bunch of noobs? You don't know your own audience? The fact you didn't even cover input latency tells me you're promoting and advertising, not reviewing.
Yea it’s sponsored it seems
He never reads or at least replies in the comments.
Cloud gaming only makes sense for games your computer can't run. Half these games were playable on my PC in the 90s. Not to mention the wasted bandwidth when games and emulators only take up a few MB.
Arcade gaming with lag and mpg compression? No thank you :D
Emulating at home is made easy enough for pretty much everyone.
Galarger sounds like my kind of game.
The "licensing" is a bad thing, IMHO. Why should these people continuously and repeatedly get paid for the same thing over and over and over?
😐🤦🏻♂️
Yea, it's pretty pathetic that these people are abusing copyright like this. Copyrights for specific titles should expire within 10 years of release.
@@BonkedByAScout Or be generous and say 20. Copyright law is mostly evil. Now it has been extended to protect a single corporation.
Look at all the records that get copyright matches on youtube. The alleged "owner" won't put it up themselves. The record is out of print and not available as mp3 or iTunes and the person signing the song dead for 50 damned years already.
In most cases the original authors get bugger all because the I.P is owned by companies that hoover up the rights to everything and make bank reselling the roms on every machine they can get their grubby hands on whilst damaging genuine attempts to preserve game history.
Game streaming? I am out.
Good go
Have to agree sadly. It be fine if it downloaded entire game and ran but if it full on ‘streams’ it - we’ve done this over and over
Same.
@@MrMegaManFan well leave im having fun with it
Yeah me too 😊
Are the games streamed or are they actually emulated in the client using JavaScript?
Streamed. There is a noticeable input delay, at least for me.
I'm actually quite surprised to see such negative comments here. Guys, he's not making anyone use Antstream Arcade. Yes, he's advertising it, but so what? If you think it's pointless or a scam, don't use it. It's as simple as that. Yes, you can emulate all of this. He's very well aware of that. All he's saying is basically "Hey, this exists and I think it's pretty cool. Check it out if you want to."
Personally, I see no problem with having this as another opinion for people to play these games. Not everyone knows how to set up and use emulators, and some people just don't want to bother setting up all that stuff. This may be quicker and easier for some people. The only problem I see with it is that the game selection for each console/computer is very lacking, but I'm sure it will improve over time. It still has over 1,300 games, so it could certainly be a whole lot worse.
He is advertising it without clearly marking as such to audience that can easily see through this BS.
@@noop9k Why should he mark it as advertising if it's so obvious that it is?
@@JMFSpike Rules. Declare when you are accepting money to push some BS.
@@noop9k Whether it's BS or not is subjective. Again, if you don't like it, don't use it.
@@JMFSpike I don't use it. My problems are not with Antstream, but with this advertisment.
This appeared on my TV and I gave it a go with my moga bluetooth Xbox controller. It's good. Even the steaming which is appearing in many of the complaints here. I'm just not sure I trust a streaming service to support my favourite games. Digital service life. Licensing etc. That said, it does what it does well tho. Op wolf forever ✊
Bluetooth controller latency plus streaming game latency, can you even finish Mario with such a bad setup?
@@BonkedByAScout don't think it has mario which is partly the problem with it but the games I did play the latency is fine for casual fun.
I'd rather perfer to actually own a copy over streaming any day as once this service goes offline then all the money I threw in will be gone.
@sinister4205
If you were to use this service for several years and it was then to go offline you wouldn't have wasted 'all' of your money as you would have had, hopefully, many hours of enjoyment.
I'm nearly 60,so compared to many on here my lifetime membership is likely to last 25-30 years at best as apposed to many of you who may potentially have 60 years or so membership, should I, in the afterlife, consider my money wasted?
@@RUSH2112RUSH Interesting way of looking at it, but if you live beyond your access to the games that you pay money for, you never owned them and it was at least a partial waste as you could have just bought a game outright and continued playing long after the company that produced it died. Truthfully, I look at renting as a waste of money because you'll end up paying for something over and above the actual cost of that something.
Naw dawg
What was wrong with "Did Retro Gaming Get An Upgrade?"
I don't think anyone is dumb enough to think a cloud-based subscription service for an emulator is an upgrade over _anything_.
How many people were pronouncing Taito as Tay toe instead of tie tow? I only knew it was Tie tow because an advertisement in Compute!'s Gazette BITD had the phonetic pronunciation in the advertisement. Before that, I always call it tay-tow.
Was always tie-tow to me but I did have a friend that due to the logo styling pronounced Konami as Kuh-jon-arm-ee.
Tate mode is even better. Ta-tay not tayt. The Game Sack guy has it as a running gag on his channel.
@@_yadokari This was back in the day when I had seen the word the many times, but never heard anyone pronounce it. Apparently this mispronouncing was so widespread that they added "Pronounced Tie-Toe" in advertisements.
Potaito petaito
Like Joe from game sack. Tiè toe
1 Thing I don't get is the low game list a pandora box has 3 or 5 or 10000 games cost 100 pounds, there 1300 list is nothing not even have shinobi good idea but they should be better, and impossible to find a tier free game just to test the website.
Man this is kinda useless for me. I have so many collections that are paid for its not funny. I'd say I have at least 800 classic games from midway to capcom.
Or you can run MAME on a 10+ year old laptop.
I don't like game streaming in general but for retro gaming it makes even less sense i thought the point of game streaming was for people who live in a place with fast cheap internet but who can't afford good hardware so this is the only way to play new aaa games. but these retro games can be emulated on very weak hardware .and ofcourse most retro gamers prefer physical media and are even reluctant to accept downloading games and this gives you even less options for keeping your games. this seems like a prime example of trying to shove new fads into everything even where it makes no sense. they also want to put things like crypto or ai into retro games just because its trendy despite there being no benefit and the retro gamers are not even remotely interested.
The USP for me would be whether systems like the Spectrum and C64 have auto-configured controls, for simple games, at least. I love RetroArch but struggle a bit with some platforms, getting the gamepad working.
I’m still on the fence years later. I can’t see it’s application outside streaming.
Love it its fantastic if you get the high tier one you keep all the games
no you dont its the same but cheaper for life membership. they already took away galaga and all namco games from it.
@allanallen1835 You're correct apparently if you get the 30 dollar one just means you have to resub a year later still fun as hell
namco games all gone from it
Obviously it’s cloud based to put developers/ip owners fears to rest. With these collections/emulation releases there’s usually people who are able to rip the rom files and share them online. We’ve seen it with Wii PS2 collections Dreamcast SmashPak 3ds Wiiu PS3 Switch(Nintendos official Fire Emblem 1 translation is out there now) freaking steam rereleases/new games on old hardware via emulation are notorious now. This has 0 chance of their game roms being ripped and redistributed. It’s probably cheaper to license from IP holders having 0 risks on that end and sorta is showing that devs are more willing to license their games to the service. It has a bunch of good games honestly. But obviously I could run these games raspberry pi or other low powered cheap computer/gaming system. There’s times for cloud based gaming but… I just can’t justify this use even though it’s helping people replay older games or discover new hidden gems. I just can’t get behind cloud gaming arcade games on an Xbox or Switch. Can’t get behind every Kingdom Hearts being stream only on switch as well 0.2 BBS a Fragmented Passage and 3 they couldn’t run well on switch. This trend is just making things cheaper for developers but consumers still have to pay full price OR a subscription…
That being said there is a faucet of people who are extremely causal in their approach or perhaps they don’t have a computer/pc and have a smart tv. This is for those people who are casuals and don’t care about a perfect experience. Those people just wanna replay their childhood and having this on their current (possibly only) console or tv is good enough for them.
Wait, they're worried that people will rip the rom files for games whose rom files have already been ripped a dozen times over?
It's a little late to be scared of that don't you think?
And if that's the case, maybe they should put up some games that haven't been properly ripped, like Space Invaders Frenzy.
Considering that he mentioned in the video having spotty internet service and the outage icon was displayed multiple times while he was playing and yet had not interruptions, I'm guessing that the ROM's are just downloaded to the local computer and given obscure filenames so you can't just search for "metal slug" and find it. So, it's probably not streaming in that sense of the word and anything they have that hasn't already been dumped will be dumped soon enough.
Sorry Sharopolis...unsubbed. Please disclose your paid advertisements to your subscribers. Good luck to you.
Yeah I think he's going to lose quite a few subscribers over this.
Big no from me..i would sooner use locally installed emulators of choice..i use ms-dos and fs-uae which work great...depending on a cloud based service is a big no from me.
I don't like cloud gaming at all. Like one day Warframe, one of my favorite games of all time is going to die, the whole thing requires a central server, but there is a tiny hope that after it dies a server emulator/modified client could show up. Once you put everything up on a cloud that's it, once a cloud based thing dies it is gone forever, the whole thing just farts out of existence. It's such a depressing thought that I don't even like looking at cloud based gaming services because it feels like I'm paying somebody to threaten to burn books if I don't keep up a subscription.
Its deffentaly goten better with time I when I had spotty internet about a year ago it would skip and artifact a bit for a second might still but haven't had it happen in a while
Streaming game services suck and thats with the word latency.
This better than xbox live gold.
Cloud-based? Nope.
Fist
Galaga lol
Honestly couldn't blame someone for pronouncing it that way if they had never heard it spoken before.
Should be Galigga.
While it's not for me, I hope they succeed and more games, especially those that are obscure get ported forward into the future. Also, you're from a country that mispronounces many words on purpose anyway. You should just own it and pronounce Galaga in the most hilarious way you can.
There's a lot of negativity in the comments. Yes, I agree this service is absolute garbage but Sharopolis makes wonderful content and he deserves to get that sponsor money.
UA-camrs don't 'deserve' anything. What are you smoking?
Granted. Should list it as that though.
lots of grumpy butts here heh I suppose y’all think that nobody pays for a premium Nintendo online subscription to play emulated games on that platform either… 🤷🏻♂️
Always surprised at the “I don’t need/want this, so how could anyone else possibly want it” crowd struggling to see beyond their own bubble 😏
Just comparing this to NSO shows you don't understand what is being sold here. This is a cloud streaming service like OnLive or xCloud made for retro games. Nobody wants this.
I would be full game for buying legit ROMs to use as i please, but streaming? That train left the station with Stadia on board long ago. Please let it die already.
It's all valid criticism, no abusive comments thus far, so it's fine - people are allowed to be critical too, I don't understand why some people are so uncomfortable with that.
@@mattpierce5009definitely. Debate ain’t hate.
It does seem the mere mention of a streaming service gets a lot of hackles raised here, yes. I suppose that most of it seems to be because people think he's making an ad and not disclosing it, which I suppose make sense, but I mostly got the vibe from this video that he seems to make use of this service and simply wanted to talk about it- no conspiracy neccessary.