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RETRO
ISSUE 378|COMPUTERSHOPPER|AUGUST 2019
the playground wars of old. One
platform that is unlikely to appear
any time soon, however,isNintendo.
The Japanese publisher has long
been protective over where its
games appear and it has done a
sterling job in placing them on as
many of its own platforms as
possible,making ever more money
from its old games.
Nintendo guards its IP so closely
that it even recently filed a
takedown notice against amodder
who spent seven years porting
Super Mario Bros to aCommodore
64 (see ‘News’,below). But with so
many other platforms and titles to
go at, that shouldn’t pose aproblem formost
gamers or,indeed, forAntstream.
Cottam notes, “Antstream is all about the
challenge.Wework hard to make the games
more engaging through unique multiplayer
challenges. It’s amuch more social experience.”
CREATINGACOLONY
Certainly ‘social’ is an aspect of the service
that Antstream is keen to promote. It will allow
gamers to try to get ahigh score in agame or
challenge players to completeaboss rush and
show off their achievement to others. It’s a
wayofre-creating the feel of an arcade at
home and, while it’s been used by others in the
past, notably Nintendo with the NES Remix, it
will give afresh spin to those old classics.
“Wewanted something that represents
community,collaboration and strength,”
Cottam says.
“The challenges really make Antstream
stand out as we work hard to make it amuch
more social and engaging experience.”
One of the benefits of such amoveis
being able to potentially widen the appeal of
the service awayfrom the hardcore retro
gaming community.
“Nostalgia plays abig part in keeping
retro popular,but we are seeing alot of
younger players enjoying retro games,”
Cottam explains.
“There is also acertain kind of cool from
playing the games that are the foundation of
everything we playtoday.”Even so,Antstream mayeventually seek
original, exclusive non-retro content as
time goes by,particularly if publishers ‘do
aDisney’ and decide to go it alone in the
future (Disneyhas pulled its content from
Netflix in order to set up its own streaming
service,called Disney+).
Fornow,however,it’s about looking back
and enjoying the games of yesteryear while
keeping one eyeonthe present and another
on the future.
“Weoffer alot of value to content owners,
and we work really hard to make it easy for
them to work with us,”Cottam says.
Antstream will be available on Windows,
Xbox, Android, Amazon Fire TV and Mac, with
an iOS version pending Apple’s approval.emulator.Whether or not he
decides to createunits for
others remains to be seen, but
lots of Amiga fans would
undoubtedly love one.
CONNECTA
SPECTRUMTOA
VGAMONITOR
As we continue to wait forthe
release of the ZX Spectrum
Next (www.specnext.com), it’s
good to see some new hardware
forthe original Speccy.
Created by Goran Radan, ZX
VGAJoy lets you connect the
8-bit computer to any CRTor
LCD VGAmonitor and, while it’s
asizable add-on, it supports
seven screen modes, boasts a
Kempston joystick interface and
has areset button, too.
Radan says it’s not asignal
convertor,rather it takes video
data directly from the CPU to
provide clear pictures. It also
works with any Spectrum model,
which means you can pop it into
the back of aSinclair or Amstrad
versionwithoutanymodification.
Find out more by going to
zx-vga-joy.com,from where
you’ll be able to buy aunit
that’s shipped from Germany.
Depending on the postage
option you choose,itwill set
you back around €70 (£60).16-BITPROGRAMMING
LANGUAGESETFOR
RETURN
In late1988,
developers François
Lionet and
Constantin
Sotiropoulos
worked on a
programming
language forthe
Atari ST called
STOS BASIC
forMandarin
Software.Theyfollowed it up
acouple of years later with
AMOS forthe Amiga.
Both were popular with
developers and helped the public
domain and shareware scenes for
the computers to flourish. Now
Lionet has been working on
AMOS 2for modern machines,and it comes with abonus for
anyone who worked on an
original project.
As well as
planning a
modern AMOS
3D with WebGL,
Lionet says the
software will
understand past
programs written
in AMOS and allow
developers to
republish them,
which is sure to bring fresh lifeto
past gems (as well as some
terrible stuff, we’d imagine).
“Theywill work everywhere
on everything thanks to the
magic of JavaScript and HTML5,”
Lionet writes in aPatreon post
that aims to raise moneyfor the
project (tinyurl.com/378retro2).➡Challenges are issued forthe games
to allow players to competeagainst
one another and give them another
reason to play