Xbox Game Pass is a fantastic service, offering a massive library of games for a monthly subscription, including new releases on the highest tier, Game Pass Ultimate. Game Pass has a massive lineup for 2025, including one of the best JRPGs from 2024, but a recent addition to the service has added over 50 games. Those games are Activision classics, although probably older games from Activision than you might have expected. The new collection is called Retro Classics, marking a collaboration between Xbox and Antstream Arcade. Here's what you need to know about the new collection.

What's included in Retro Classics?

The new collection includes classic games and a community-focused wrapper

Retro Classics is a collaboration between Xbox and Antstream Arcade, and serves as a sectioned-off version of Antstream Arcade, a paid service that allows you to stream over 1,000 retro games to your console. Retro Classics features a limited collection of Activision-published retro games, ranging from MechWarrior 2 to Pitfall. These are true retro titles, so don't expect anything from even the original Xbox, as most of these games are older than that. These games are played via streaming, requiring a short load to connect to the service before you can start playing, but it was, at most, around 15 seconds for me. While you can jump straight into the games, with save states available to save your progress, there are also regular tournaments or short challenges you can jump into and compete for a high score. Retro Classics is available on both Xbox Series X|S and PC via the Microsoft Store, for members at any tier of Xbox Game Pass. If you are on a Game Pass tier with cloud streaming, it's also available on TVs and phones.

An interesting collection with more on the way

Xbox has already committed to bringing more games to the collection

The collection of games here is quite interesting, given the limitation to Activision's published games. There are sections for a number of consoles or old PCs, although the number of games in each category varies wildly. There are categories for the PlayStation, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and Atari 2600. There are also publisher categories as well, with Activision and Sierra sections. The collection has just over 50 games to start, with games like Commando, Grand Prix, and Kaboom! as a few examples. The blog post specifically calls out 80s and 90s games, which everything included so far falls into. More importantly, the announcement also says that Xbox has more games planned for the service, with an aim to have over 100 games total, double the current amount. No timetable was given for the new games to be added to the service, but expect more in the future. Xbox did not say if those additions would be included in the bimonthly Game Pass blog posts.

It's cheaper than the base Antstream Arcade service

A smaller selection of games, comparatively, but it's also included in the subscription

Since Retro Classics is a smaller selection of games from Antstream Arcade, it seems only fair to ask if this is a better deal than that service. The short answer seems to be yes, but it depends on what you want out of your retro experience. Antstream Arcade costs either $40 a year or $100 for a lifetime subscription on consoles, but there are over 1,300 games, with new games being added to the service on a regular basis. Game Pass costs $11 a month for the console-only version or $18 a month for Game Pass Ultimate, which includes both console and PC access. There are over 300 games on Game Pass already, with more day one releases coming all the time, like the recent addition of Doom: The Dark Ages. Now, if you really want to be able to stream over a thousand retro games, Antstream Arcade seems like a decent deal, but otherwise, a Game Pass subscription seems like the move.

These games being streaming and not downloadable sucks

Getting an emulator running on the console itself doesn't feel like a big ask

While Xbox has done some great work with backwards compatibility in the past, Retro Classics isn't a perfect solution. Nintendo offers a similar collection of retro games on Switch 2, but tries to emulate them directly on the system for the best possible experience. Comparatively, streaming these classic games is not as great an experience as it would be directly emulated on the console. While Xbox has excellent cloud streaming compared to most gaming services, the streaming does have a few small hiccups. There are small loads to get into games as the service connects, which is relatively short, but it adds up if you want to bounce around between different games. In addition to that, there were some small hiccups in the service, resulting in lag or missed frames during my time playing. It only happened twice in about an hour of gaming, which is pretty smooth all things considered.

But it's relatively well-done, and it's better than nothing

We should ask for more from companies, but sometimes you have to take what's offered

I firmly believe that consumers can and should ask companies to do better, and if you think getting old Activision games through streaming instead of direct emulation is worth getting upset over, more power to you. For me, this streaming set-up works well as a way to jump in and try out a bunch of old games, most of which I have never played. I won't notice lag or short loads if I'm just booting up Pitfall to see what it feels like in the year 2025. If that quick in and out sounds like you, this is a totally serviceable way to do that, especially if you already subscribe to Game Pass. If you want to play these games to completion, there are save states to make that easier, but you might be better off setting up an emulator on a PC or handheld. If the choice is between not having Retro Classics on Game Pass and having it, I'm all for having even more games available to me.