122 AUGUST 2019|COMPUTERSHOPPER|ISSUE 378
Moneyfor oldrope?
Asvideo-game publisherskeep atighter reinon theirolder titlesandtakeaction
againstillegaldownload sites,cananew ‘Netflixfor games’ help bringretro
gaming toawideraudience?DavidCrookestakesalook
T
ype ‘abandonware’intoyour preferred
search engine and you’ll find websites
chock-full of old games from the 1980s
and 1990s. Theyclaim the titles have long
been cast aside by their developers and
publishers in favour of seemingly more
sophisticated offerings. What’s more,many
reckon you’re entirely free to download them.
In truth, most of those games are still
under copyright, with one particular site
including Pac-Man, Tetris and Lemmings,
which are still active franchises. But it has to
be said that software companies have perhaps
been alittle tooquick in the past to treat their
past games as throwawaycommodities with,
you maysuspect, more than ahint of regret.
Codemasters, forinstance,let players
download Treasure Island Dizzy forfree in
2005, while Revolution Software allowed
Beneath aSteel Skytobereleased as freeware
in 2003. Cinemaware also put its action
adventure game Rocket Ranger out in the wild
following its original 1988 commercial release,
and those are just ahandful of examples.
And yet newly found versions of Dizzy
have been placed on cartridge and snapped up
by eager fans, Beneath aSteel Skywas
released as aremastered
paid-for version on iOS six
years later when it became
clear there was still some life
in the game,and plans fora
remake of Rocket Ranger
were launched on
Kickstarter (albeit
cancelled ayear later).
Today, understanding the ongoing clamour
to playretro titles, publishers and developers
are more switched on to the potential of their
old games, and the trend now is to make it
easier forgamers to enjoythem without
having to fiddle around with emulators or
blow intodusty carts to get them working
on the original machines –
assuming, of course,that
you still have them.
To that end, anew
service called Antstream is
hoping to make abig
impact. It dubs itself
‘Netflix forgames’,since it
allows players to take out a
subscription and stream
scores of retro titles to
multiple devices. The
company has taken to
122
➡Steve Cottam says
Antstream began to take
shape four years ago when it
received investment
ononon
sub
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com
