It's time to get depressed reading this thread!
this post was submitted on 06 Feb 2025
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For me personally, the “retro” is about period ending before “age of ugliest 3D”.
Tbh I tire of society and it's insurance of putting things in labelled boxes.
It means different things to different people based on their age and experiences growing up.
For me it's PS2 backwards.
I had this discussion (read argument) back on reddit a while back. And it's about 15 to 20 years or at the time people were calling PS1/N64 Retro during the PS3 era.
By my math systems like the PS3 and Xbox 360 are now "retro", at least for some kids. I defiantly feel dated when some kid shows up on a PSP thread going on about their Dad's old PSP. And it's weird to think that the Vita and 3DS are about to fall into that camp.
Anything designed for standard-definition CRTs.
Retro means new things that look like they're old. As in "looking backwards" for inspiration. Like pixel art. Prime example: VVVVVV.
I'm mostly being pedantic, but it's a pet peeve of mine that gamers (and only gamers) use "retro" wrong. Every other type of collector correctly uses the word "vintage" instead: Vintage clothing, furniture, coins, wine, etc. And they use "retro" to mean new things that look old, like retro clothing. Only gamers call vintage things "retro".
In my experience when I point this out, gamers just get mad. I don't understand that. But I'm kind of a language nerd who watches linguistics videos for fun. And yes, I know language changes and evolves, and words mean how people use them, and dictionaries are not prescriptive, etc., etc. It's still wrong, damnit! It's a niche use by specific group of people that confuses everyone else because of its wrongness.
It gets even worse, I more and more see the use of NeoRetro when "Games that looks and feel old" are referenced. We already have words for that, but the gaming scene seems to be fixated on the word Retro alone.
Oh, god. I had not heard that yet, but... Ugh...
20 years is a good cutoff, in my opinion. That puts the original God of War in retro territory, and I'm ok with that. I'm also ok with vanilla WoW (up to patch 1.8 or so) being retro. These things are old, we're getting old and pretending games from 2005 and before aren't retro is just wishful thinking.
/r/retrogaming's definition doesn't work anymore now that there are multiple generations that grew up with video games. Just because it doesn't feel retro to the 40 year old who remembers playing the PS2 as a teenager doesn't mean it's not retro. The PS2 is absolutely a retro console, and the PS3 is very much getting there.
Retro is a style and astetic as much as a function of time or technology.
Even mathematicians struggle with dividing things into precise and consistent sets and categories. Try to relax.
If it can purchase alcohol it’s retro
I used to be stricter with that. Now I consider retro any platform that are 2 generations behind (for the ones still active in the market). So PS3/360 and earlier.
Anything that isn't HD and on a console that's designed to be always online. So PS3 and 360 aren't retro to me, but Wii is, as are most portables prior to the Switch. It's not the age of the game that makes it retro to me, but its design philosophy. And of course any new game intentionally designed to look or feel old is retro, the original meaning of the word.
To me, "retro" just means something that is now only possible for consumption through the previous, now impossible or highly impractical, acquisition of said medium. PS3? Retro. 3DS? Retro.
This seems like a good line to draw. Does it play natively on current consoles? Not retro. If you have to use an emulator or pull out an older console then that’s retro.
If it can be emulated on a potato it's retro. If it's it's old but not trivial to emulate then it's classic.
2 console generations.
After PS3? modern. On or at PS3? retro.
Anything that needs to be played on a CRT.
So Gameboy isn't retro?
Playing Super Mario Bros. on Switch = "not retro."
Old games don’t need to be played on a CRT any more than modern games need to be played on an OLED/LCD flat panel.
Then how about anything that plays better on a CRT vs a modern flat screen? Older games were absolutely made with CRT artifacts in mind and look worse on newer screens.
They'll lag if you don't.
I'd say, at 50, imo anything 32 bit and below is retro but there needs to be a new name for the "old" stuff that is 64bit
Around 2 generations of consoles ago, or around 10 years, whatever comes "first".
10 years seems a bit short, that would mean Hearthstone, GTA5 and Sims 4 qualify.
Yes that's what I said. PS3 era games and at this point, early PS4 start yo qualify for me. Although still actively developed games aren't "fully" retro, clearly. I'm still on the fence about calling Bloodbkrne retro, for instance.
the ps3 is retro then?
Anything before the GameCube, PS2, and Original Xbox.
So PS1, Sega Saturn, and Nintendo64 and older are "retro."
The Atari 2600 and Colecovision are "vintage."
Pong and the Magnavox Odyssey are "antique."
What about Dreamcast? 🤔
Just “old”
Original Xbox, GameCube, PS2, Dreamcast - "old."
PS3, Xbox 360, Wii - "modern."
PS4, Xbox One - "previous gen"
PS5, Xbox Series - "current gen"
Nintendo Switch - "2015 smartphone"
But the PS3 / 360 are coming up to 20 years old. Hell, one of my adult colleagues was born after the 360 was released. Can they really be considered modern anymore?
"Modernism" is a term used to refer to art and culture from 1930s-1940s America. Searching for something like furniture or architecture in that style would mean you use search terms like "modern furniture" or "modern architecture." Can that really be considered "modern" anymore?
When the PS4 and Xbox One are no longer the "previous gen" I will be calling them "next gen," as that is the term most associated with those consoles. Even after the consoles were released and well into their lifespan they were still called "next gen."
I call future consoles that haven't released yet "upcoming gen" or "future gen" interchangeably.
Anything that came out when I was a kid or earlier is retro so anything pre 2000 is retro. Post is modern.
Anything that came out when I was a kid or earlier is retro so anything pre 1990 is retro. Post is modern.
Anything that came out when I was a kid is retro, so anything pre 1970s is retro. 80s or later is modern.
It goes on vibes. Historically I’d have said anything with an 8- or 16-bit CPU (NES/SNES, Megadrive, the surfeit of home computers before everyone standardised on beige-box Windows PCs). Nowadays I’d say anything slow enough to be emulated reasonably using present-day technology could be said to be retro, so PS2 would count. If video output is analogue PAL/NTSC, that probably also counts.
anything that came out before 2011
Anything that would make a kid today instantly say “ew, that old thing?” is retro to me. That includes everything up through PS2/Gamecube/Xbox to me.
Anything pre ~2000, graphics came on incredibly in the years at the end of the 90s start of the 21 century. The difference between FF7 (1997)
and FF10(2001)
is vast
Back in the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era the SNES and Megadrive seemed to be retro while the PS1 and N64 were just “old”. So maybe 2 generations ago is the start of retro.
I think it’s definitely a lot blurrier now though. The differences between consoles and the leaps between generations are less pronounced, and there are so many y rereleases and remasters now keeping older games fresh.
The fine line to me is when we started to shift from cartridges to optical media: Dreamcast/PS1/GameCube.
Stuff before ~2000 is retro. It's from the previous century after all.
I’d say stuff before ~2000 is retro. It’s from the previous millennium after all, and that seems way older than stuff from just the last century!
If I were in charge, retro would mean games from 5th generation and earlier.
Modern game design hasn't fundamentally evolved since the Xbox, PS2, and Dreamcast (Sixth gen) era. Pre 1998, 3D games were still figuring out how to take advantage of 3D, so they don't quite reach the modern era, but almost all modern games can be traced back to sixth gen.
Likewise, I would classify the early days of 2D the ancient era, which would be anything before the SNES and Sega Genesis (Fourth gen). The NES has classic games, but it wasn't until the SNES that those games were perfected into their modern formulas.
Microsoft, Sony, AMD, and NVIDIA are all betting big in AI so we might finally be entering a new distinct era soon. DLSS 4 is still blurry af, so we are for sure not there yet.
Any console that existed before me is retro. I started with the PS1 and N64 so those are modern and all the ones before are retro lol
Anything running 480i/p is retro. If it's higher than that, it's modern.