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RETRO
ISSUE 378|COMPUTERSHOPPER|AUGUST 2019
Kickstarter to raise funds and it claims to have
more than 2,000 games already licensed.
ForCEO SteveCottam, it’s the realisation
of along-held idea. “I wrotethe first line of
code forAntstream about 10 years ago when
it was ahobbyist project and, like many
enthusiast projects, we formed asmall team
working tirelessly and unpaid forseveral
years, sacrificing evenings and weekends
with friends and family to get the project off
the ground,”hetells us.
Cottam certainly has fine retro credentials,
teaching himself Z80 coding on the MSX and
moving on to the Amiga, before developing
and publishing an eight-player PC game called
Nitro Racers in 1994. He says he had the idea
forthe company when he visited gaming
conventions and saw how gamers would flock
around retro arcade cabinets such as Pong.
“My motivation is to have these iconic
games as accessible as possible so that new
audiences can enjoythem,”Cottam says.
“I want playing agame on Antstream
Arcade to be as easy as watching Netflix or
listening to Spotify.”ANTAND SPECS
Antstream became acompany in 2014 and, for
the past five years, the team –which now
numbers 20 –has been itching to perfect thesystem, which is finally ready to be launched.
Lending credence is Ian Livingstone,who was
the co-founder of theFighting Fantasygame
books and the ‘father’ofTomb Raider’s Lara
Croft, thanks to his 20-year involvement with
publisher Eidos Interactive.Livingstone is
Antstream’s chairman, while the founder of
TT Games, Jon Burton, is creative director and
the co-founder of Playdemic, Darren
Melbourne,isthe firm’s licensing director.
Some of the team have also written
emulators forthe Spectrum and BBC Micro,
created arcade versions of games such as
Midnight Resistance and even bagged a
Guinness World Record (an accolade that goes
to Jim Bagley, who used 15,824,610 bytesto
recreateDragon’s Lair in 2015, making it the
largest video game ported to the ZX81).
“Everyone we employisaretro game
enthusiast first and foremost,”Cottam says.
And yet Antstream can be cageywhen it
comes to some of the finer details of the
system itself.
Although Cottam says the service will allow
gamers to playtitles originally made forthe
Spectrum, Commodore 64, MSX, BBC Micro,
Amiga, Mega Drive and more,headds, “I can’t
share details on emulation due to NDAs
[non-disclosure agreements].”
There have also been questions regarding
lag –the delaybetween aplayer pressing a
button and the game reacting to it –but while
Cottam says “reducing lag is very important”
and adds “our streaming tech is very well
optimised forretro games”,hewon’t divulge
the ins and out of the technology being used.
“I can’t go intoour secret sauce,” he says.⬆There are loads of classic retro titles, including Ikari Warriors, and as well as arcade versions, there are
those created forhome computers and consoles
⬆Just like Netflix, the homepage highlights
genres and groups games by those that are
trending or have special attributes