Antstream Arcade - on Atari VCS (in VCS Store)

[Mockduck]

Here's my review of Antstream Arcade on the new Atari VCS: 

 

 

[+SabertoothRetro]

I really enjoy Antstream. In particular, the tournament challenges for short bursts of gaming goodness. 

 

Have others had a hit or miss experience with Antstream remembering login information?  Sometimes I have to log back in, even when re-entering the app without powering down the VCS. 

[Mockduck]

Yeah, the past few weeks Antstream has had an issue where you need to log in EVERY TIME you want to launch the app. It is super annoying. Dunno what's going on. 

[+SabertoothRetro]

I filed a support ticket. I do not anticipate a fix but I figure the more noise being made, the more likely a fix. 

[+SabertoothRetro]

I already received a response that they're aware of the issue and are working on it. They will send me an email once it's resolved. 

[+SabertoothRetro]

I received a follow-up from Antstream. They say that the issue has been fixed and will be in the next update. 

[justclaws]

The Antstream Arcade update is there tonight, and although it has not made the
login process (which still needs the joystick and ignores a physical mouse/keyboard)
I hope that it resolves the forgetting details. Time will tell. Let me know your result.

It works perfectly for me. I tried various ways to exit, and it always logs me in OK 
without asking for the username and password again. Hurrah. Now I'll play again.

[Lord Mushroom]

On 1/6/2021 at 1:42 AM, Atarick said:

How did you land a free year? That's awesome.

I had just heard that they offered free play with ads, and decided to test it. Ended up with 1 year free without ads.

 

It doesn´t do me any good, though, as my gaming experience is glitches and/or severe input lag. I play on a PC with a slow connection in Norway.

Edited April 22, 2021 by Lord Mushroom

[Lord Mushroom]

I think it is strange they are not offering Sega´s Mega Drive/Genesis games, as they are everywhere else. Maybe they are too expensive for them at this time.

[justclaws]

17 hours ago, Lord Mushroom said:

It doesn´t do me any good, though, as my gaming experience is glitches and/or severe input lag. I play on a PC with a slow connection in Norway.

Try with a VPN, if you didn't already.
It works fine, usually, with 50 Mbits/s from The Netherlands, which most people call slow. It's so relative, ha ha.
I suppose it also depends on the game. I tend to love the ZX Spectrum games, as it was my first computer...
"Horace Goes Skiing". Poor Horace, he spent so much time in hospital, over the years.

[Lord Mushroom]

12 hours ago, justclaws said:

Try with a VPN, if you didn't already.

I thought those were only for hiding who you are. I didn´t think they could improve my connection speed or get me closer to the Anstream servers.

 

12 hours ago, justclaws said:

It works fine, usually, with 50 Mbits/s from The Netherlands, which most people call slow. It's so relative, ha ha.
I suppose it also depends on the game. I tend to love the ZX Spectrum games,

I considered using the term "very slow" to describe my connection, and I see now that that would have been more accurate.  My actual download speed last time I checked was 12,2 Mbit/s and the upload speed was 0,85 Mbit/s.

 

I haven´t tried many games, but they all have input lag. Otherwise the games have run fine, except once when Bubble Bobble had severe glitching.

Edited April 23, 2021 by Lord Mushroom

[justclaws]

39 minutes ago, Lord Mushroom said:

I thought those were only for hiding who you are. I didn´t think they could improve my connection speed or get me closer to the Anstream servers.

 

I considered using the term "very slow" to describe my connection, and I see now that would have been more accurate.  My actual download speed last time I checked was 12,2 Mbit/s and the upload speed was 0,85 Mbit/s.

 

I haven´t tried many games, but they all have input lag. Otherwise the games have run fine, except once when Bubble Bobble had severe glitching.

Oh, a VPN absolutely can help you with speed.
However, for VCS use, you'll need one which works on a router, as the VCS has no VPN support built-in. ?

The difference is that big VPN providers (like a previous employer of mine) have point-to-point connections
between major data centres, and super-fast connections between them on different continents, for example.
So, where your route to a server in the USA, the number of routing hops can be enormously reduced, also.
The other thing is, each connection normally might take a new route, where a VPN funnels it all one route.

I understand about very slow. It was only last year that I upgraded to 50 Mbit/s, from 16 Mbit/s, where a
Dutch resident with cable connection is widely able to get 1000 Mbit/s, and now Google USA offer 2 Gbit/s.

Certainly where there's a lot of lag, it makes the game unplayable. ?  (I had a lot with Stadia on my PC.)

[Lord Mushroom]

16 minutes ago, justclaws said:

Oh, a VPN absolutely can help you with speed.

Thanks for the tip, I will try that some day.

[justclaws]

Another review of Antstream service, and Rich is very cool and looks more deeply into the service.
I really recommend this video if you didn't have a look at the service already, (and his channel also).
 

 

[Lord Mushroom]

I am curious as to how playing for free with ads work on Antstream. What kind of ads are there? Videos? Pop-ups? Banners? How much of it is there?

[justclaws]

For interest, here I mention some news I saw. Atari has increased their direct investment in Antstream.

From partnership to invester; that looks like a good move to me.
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/11/23/2340059/0/en/Atari-Announces-Strategic-Transactions.html

 

Edited November 23, 2021 by justclaws
fixed typo

[Nall3k]

14 minutes ago, justclaws said:

For interest, here I mention some news I saw. Atari has increased their direct investmentment in Antstream.

From partnership to invester; that looks like a good move to me.
https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/11/23/2340059/0/en/Atari-Announces-Strategic-Transactions.html

 

It's a solid move in the right direction. Although, I still feel they need to form or purchase their own internal dev studios.

[phuzaxeman]

I'm a fan of Antstream but the app is so glitchy.  From controller issues to things not loading up, it's really annoying.

 Anyone else have similar issues?

[Atari_JaguarVCS]

For the most part Antstream has been working fine for me but I do experience controller issues with it and need to play with the controller wired for a good experience! it seems to run flawless that way if I run it with the controllers connected wirelessly I seem to get controller lag for some weird reason. 

[Admiral Ron]

On my Atari VCS 800 both of my controllers are very slow to respond to actions on Antstream. Either Bluetooth or wired, no matter the game. Asteroids I hit the fire button 10 times and maybe get 1 or 2 shots. Controllers work fine in all other games on VCS.  I have Win 10 on USB and when I have the controller connected and Antstream in Windows loaded it works better, but still not perfect.

[+jgkspsx]

I haven’t tried with wired controllers but input lag is pretty bad for me. I hope Atari SA are investing in improving the input lag in Antstream as it is not nearly as bad in native games.

 

 

I do really like the platform in general even if the selection is somewhat lacking. You know a service is hurting for content when they split out pinball tables from a Super Nintendo game into individual menu items.

[Lord Mushroom]

I may have mentioned this before, but I noticed that they have Star Wars (1983 Atari arcade game).

[+jeremiahjt]

There are a handful of Atari games already on Anstream Arcade, but not all of them obviously. I do not know how they decide which games to put on the service, but I wonder if any of these newly acquired Stern arcade games make it to Anstream. I would think Berzerk would be a very likely candidate.

 

* I put the topic here because I figured the Atari VCS users all know what Antstream Arcade is and are more likely to care.

[THX-1138]

I don't use Antstream but I did mention it on the VCS Discord.  They'll probably put them on Antstream, but I'd rather see the arcade versions packaged for the VCS store to buy.

I was curious if they'd modify the arcade ROMs to reflect Atari copyright rather than Stern.

 

Edited March 19, 2023 by THX-1138

[+jeremiahjt]

I saw a comment on a video about the Stern licenses acquisition by Atari that the arcade game Lost Tomb was already on Antstream Arcade and I had to go check it out.  Unfortunately, it is the Atari 8-bit port of the game that can be found on the service.  I decided to see what else I could find and I found a Commodore 64 game called Tazz, which is really close to Tazz-Mania.  Considering how close the gameplay and name are, I figured Tazz had to have a license from Stern when it was produced.  I am no expert on video game legalities, but I figured both of these games would have to have had some kind of approval from Stern to be on the service.  I went looking for versions of the other games, but found nothing else.

 

I was under the impression that Stern had been pretty much sitting on their IP and not doing anything with them.  I guess it is possible that both of those games were able to be put on Antstream without approval from Stern, but I would doubt it.