Keeping it Real
RealArcade launches with 120 games (count 'em!)
RealNetworks, best known until now for their bloated media player, today launch a public beta version of their much mooted RealArcade gaming service. This allows you to download or stream games from Real's servers, ranging from the usual mainstream tat like Hearts, Poker and Mahjong to entertaining 3D accelerated titles such as Super Bubble Pop and Monolith's bizarrely named mecha combat game Tex Atomic's Big Bot Battles, exclusively available through Real. There are even a couple of massively multiplayer games - a baseball management sim and a fantasy strategy game called Evernight.
Many of these more complex games will cost you between $10 and $20, but you can download free demo versions of them all to try before you buy, and the service also offers demos of traditional retail games and shareware titles from independent developers. RealArcade itself is free to download and surprisingly painless to install and use, with all of the games available to read about, purchase, download, install and launch from within the client software. Full games can weigh in at anything up to around 40Mb, but there are plenty of smaller games for those of you still stuck on analogue modems. Well worth a look, if you can ignore the constant Pentium 4 adverts!