As of July 21, the UK-based cloud gaming company Antstream has brought its app of the same name to Xbox: Antstream Arcade. In exchange for a one-time payment or a monthly subscription, this gives Xbox players access to Antstream’s ever-growing lineup of retro games.
There are over 1,400 games on Antstream Arcade at the time of writing. There are a number of obvious hits just to get you in the door, like the arcade versions of Bubble Bobble or the original Mortal Kombat, but that still leaves hundreds of games that only the most obsessed hobbyists would recognize at a glance. Some are great, some are undeservedly forgotten, and clearly, some are only on here because the rights cost a nickel. Even so, with hundreds of available games, it can be tough to know where, or even if, to start digging through Antstream’s library.
I’ve had premium access to Antstream for a little over a week, and I’ve used that time to go digging for gold. Sometimes I found silver instead, or I discovered I was in a septic tank, but the point is that I was digging.
To give you a place to start, here are some of the games I’ve enjoyed while I’ve been touring the Antstream library. I’ll be the first one to tell you that this has an arcade/console bias, but those are what tended to work the best when I tried them out. (I’m also a former ’90s arcade rat. Sue me.)
Some of the Best Games to Play on Antstream Arcade
ClayFighter (1993)
Screenshot by the Escapist
I can’t pretend this is some kind of lost classic, but at least it’s weird. ClayFighter on Antstream is the original SNES version, which features eight claymation characters beating the absolute hell out of each other.
This is one of the more self-aware games from the ‘90s fighting-game boom, where everyone and their mother was at least thinking about making something to compete with Street Fighter II. ClayFighter’s sequels would lean harder into parody, particularly Mortal Kombat, but the original SNES game plays it relatively straight.
If I were going to make a big ranking list of SNES fighting games that aren’t Street Fighter II Turbo, I wouldn’t put ClayFighter near the top, but it’d be higher than you might expect. It’s a release from Interplay’s 16-bit era, where it stood alongside games like Boogerman and Earthworm Jim; they could be good or bad, but they were all at least quirky, which was enough to get some attention in the sea of platformer shovelware on the SNES. Whatever else you can say about ClayFighter, it’s not just SFII with a new coat of paint, and I like to reward that kind of thing.
The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy (1990)
Screenshot by the Escapist
Is it my imagination, or were most of the best Data East games stuck in the arcades? When I was a kid, I always thought of Data East as that B-tier company that put out stuff like Karnov or Kid Niki on NES (and, yes, let’s be fair, Bad Dudes), so I didn’t have that high an opinion of it. Now, it seems like I find another good-to-decent Data East arcade game every year or so that I’d never heard of before.
There are a lot of Data East arcade games on Antstream Arcade, from the obvious picks like Fighter’s History or Bump ‘N’ Jump to a few games from the obscure end of the library. The one I’m picking here is The Cliffhanger: Edward Randy, a fairly shameless ripoff of the Indiana Jones series that looks shockingly good for a 1990 game.
As Edward Randy, a whip-wielding adventurer who fights people who are at least Nazi-adjacent, you run through several stages of crazy action. You have to respect a game that starts with a powerboat speed chase down a river while people shoot at you from a helicopter. You can even whip onto the hovercrafts above you and swing around in an arc to kick people off your boat.
The controls feel a little loose and I’m never quite sure why I did or did not take damage, but The Cliffhanger strikes me as a gotta-see game if you never ran across it in a ‘90s arcade. Its inspirations are all over its sleeve, but it’s got some real spectacle and creativity.
The Combatribes (1990)
Screenshot by the Escapist
The late Japanese company Technos casts a long shadow over the modern games industry, and most of that’s due to WayForward and Arc System Works. Not only are these companies going out of their way to keep Technos franchises like Double Dragon and Kunio-kun alive, but they’re also remixing them into new projects like River City Girls.
There are a lot of old Technos classics (and not-so-classics, like Battle Lane Vol. 5) among the games on Antstream Arcade. It’s particularly worth checking out the original arcade version of Double Dragon, if you only know it from the NES port, and seeing the start of Kunio-kun with 1986’s Renegade.
I’m giving the nod to the arcade version of The Combatribes, though. Right now, this game’s most mainstream claim to fame is probably how every one of its characters makes a cameo somewhere in River City Girls 2. It’s also got one of the big mullet crimes of ‘90s video gaming, and that’s a crowded category.
Even so, it’s easier to do cool things in The Combatribes than in most of the late ’80s / early ’90s beat ’em ups. Each stage simply drops you into a big pile of armed goons and leaves you to figure it out on your own, with punches, kicks, throws, and occasionally beating a couple of them to death with a handheld motorcycle. It doesn’t look good, but that’s the kind of thing I forgive when it gives me an entire level full of hostile mimes and clowns. I’ve got some circus vengeance I need to take.
Eyra the Crow Maiden (2020)
One of the things that occasionally frustrates me, when I’m looking for video game news to write about, is that there isn’t a great way to cover the “retraux” homebrew scene. Dedicated fans have been creating new games for old hardware for decades, many of which get relegated to the “only true retro maniacs even know this exists” shadow realm. (There are exceptions. Shout-out to Retrotainment for also throwing games like Haunted Halloween ‘86 on Steam and Nintendo Switch.)
As such, if there’s one thing about Antstream Arcade that I’d unequivocally recommend, it’s the Indie Games tab. It features a number of retraux projects, which lets me try out a few of these weird little homebrew games without having to spend $50+ on mail-order cartridges.
So far, the Antstream indie I’ve had the most fun with is Second Dimension’s Eyra the Crow Maiden, a 2020 Kickstarter success story that’s otherwise available as a physical cart for NES, SNES, or Mega Drive. It’s a little Castlevania and a little Ninja Gaiden, where you make your way through a maze of skeletons and spellcasters to find and free the other members of Eyra’s tribe. Eyra is simple but has a nice flow to it.
King of the Monsters (1991)
Screenshot by the Escapist
Before SNK fell all the way down the King of Fighters / Samurai Shodown well, it made a lot of games that weren’t tournament fighters. If you grew up on the NES, you might remember P.O.W., Ikari Warriors, or its famously botched port of Athena.
With King of the Monsters, it’s not so much that this is a well-kept secret as it’s a game I always thought should’ve been bigger than it was. It’s a head-to-head kaiju fighter, but King of the Monsters has way more in common with Fire Pro Wrestling than, say, Fatal Fury. You can Irish whip Godzilla into a skyscraper or suplex King Kong into an oil refinery, all while poor puny humans try to bring you both down with superweapons. The combat system’s a little more obtuse than it needed to be, but you can also team up with a friend to take down a CPU kaiju.
It’s good, clean fun, and if there’s one game in SNK’s 40-year history that it should’ve fast-tracked for revival by now, it’s King of the Monsters.
Puzzle Uo Poko (1998)
Screenshot by the Escapist
Cave is a Japanese developer that’s well-known for its “bullet hell” shmups, particularly DoDonPachi and Espgaluda. It’s got a few games on Antstream, which includes the “manic funk ‘em-up” (read: shmup with a weird funk-infused soundtrack) Dangun Feveron and Muchi Muchi Pork, which is both a respectable shmup and obviously someone’s fetish.
What took me by surprise was the one Cave game on Antstream that isn’t a shmup: Puzzle Uo Poko, an arcade puzzle game that didn’t see release outside of Japanese arcades until it hit this service.
Imagine Bust A Move, but it’s entirely played with a pinball plunger. In Puzzle Uo Poko, up to two players destroy colorful bubbles by firing more bubbles to land on top of them. Get three or more bubbles next to one another, and they’re destroyed. It’s simple and takes a second to figure out, but it’s got the same hypnotic appeal as a Puzzle Fighter. This was a pleasant surprise.
Raimais (1988)
Screenshot by the Escapist
I know somebody who’s downright evangelical about this game, so when it popped up on Antstream, I figured I’d better try it. Otherwise, I’d probably wake up one morning to the feel of $200 in arcade tokens being poured on my face.
Raimais is an arcade game from Taito that didn’t get released in America at all until a PlayStation 2 compilation in 2006, 18 years after its Japanese debut. As Rika Midorikawa, you’re a hologram racer in the distant future, and somebody’s captured your little brother Makoto. This will require you, for reasons, to run around a series of 32 mazes.
The first stage of Raimais didn’t do much for me. It’s a little bit Bubble Bobble and a little bit Pac-Man, where you grab dots and dodge enemy racers. It’s not until the second stage that things get interesting, when you can acquire power-ups like a front-mounted laser and an energy shield that gives you one hit of armor. You have to reacquire your car’s abilities on each stage, but there’s a lot I can forgive about Raimais because it gave me what I always wanted in Pac-Man: a gun. If you’re looking for lost arcade games, this one’s an obscure cult classic that you probably never got a chance to play.
Those are our picks for some of the best or at least highly intriguing games to play in Antstream Arcade. Let us know if you have any favorites.
Published: Jul 24, 2023 08:38 pm