Yesterday marked the surprise launch of Xbox Retro Classics for all tiers of Xbox Game Pass, allowing players to dig into a list of over 50 Retro Classics games from the 1980s and 1990s that are all based on Activision-owned IP.

I've been checking out Xbox Retro Classics ever since it dropped yesterday, and I'm pretty impressed with it so far! There's a good number of games spread across Atari, Amiga, SNES and even a PlayStation 1 title in there, and for me, the latency has been extremely minimal - to the point where I'd never know I wasn't playing these games natively.

That's where the caveat lies, of course, as Xbox Retro Classics is based on Antstream Arcade's cloud-based technology, meaning that if you can't get access to a good and stable internet connection, you may run into issues with lag, latency and possibly not even getting access to the service at all. I'm running on a great connection and it's been pretty much perfect, but a particularly bad connection could make it not worth the hassle - even for "free".

As for those games, we're talking classics like Pitfall, MechWarrior, Commando, Police Quest, H.E.R.O, Grand Prix... the list goes on and on. They're all presented in their original form (to the point where MechWarrior 2 even asks you to insert a PS1 memory card), and they all play just as well as I'd expect, albeit with some surprisingly long loading times in certain situations. They also come with more modern features like save states, online leaderboards and an ability to remap the controls.

What I particularly enjoy are the challenges. Most Xbox Retro Classics games feature specific challenges (like surviving for as long as possible without getting hurt in Pitfall 2) that can either be tackled solo, against an Xbox friend of your choice, or against the community at large. When you win, you get points towards earning new profile pictures, as well as XP for levelling up your profile. Nothing crazy, but it's neat to have the ability to challenge your friends to these classic games (K1LLEGAL, you destroyed me in Beamrider! I'll beat you at Tennis though.).

I'd say the vast majority of titles feel suited to being played on an Xbox console, but there are a few exceptions. Mainly, it's the point-and-click stuff that's a bit of a pain on a controller, and unfortunately there's no mouse support for Xbox Retro Classics on console. You could always just play these on a PC instead (the service is also included with PC Game Pass), but it's still possible to get by with a controller if you really want to. Microsoft says we're getting more additions to the library soon as well - to the point where the list of games will double in size - so I'm hoping for a few more modern titles, especially from the PS1 era.

Ultimately, Xbox Retro Classics comes with the same benefits and pitfalls that Antstream Arcade does on Xbox. Yes, it's a great program for reliving some classic titles from yesteryear, but it's also a streaming-only service that'll undoubtedly put some Xbox fans off. The big difference in this case is that Retro Classics is free for all tiers of Xbox Game Pass, so you won't find much complaining on my end - I'm having a great time with these games right now! However, I'm also cautious about the future of backwards compatibility and hopeful that Xbox won't lean too much into cloud-based offerings vs. native downloads for the next Xbox console and beyond.