at what point do you draw the line for "retro"?
And what category does the PS2, Wii, Xbox, Nintendo DS/3DS fit into? They aren't retro, but they're not really "modern" either
Edit:sorry about posting 4 times, it kept telling me that it had a correction error
In my view, systems without an HDMI output or which default to a 4:3 aspect ratio are retro. But I don’t expect everyone else to share this opinion, and that’s totally fine. 🙂
That's actually a great distinction.
The first version of 360 didn't have HDMI tho... While some versions of GC had digital video out, and PS2 could do 1080i with some games.
PS2 defaults to 4:3, digital out can be things besides HDMI, and the vast majority of 360 consoles sold had HDMI out. If you want to draw the line elsewhere, no big, do your thing, there’s no one True answer to OP’s question… but your comment feels like whataboutism to me and adds nothing of value.
Adding factual information about (potential) retro consoles in a retro gaming community adds nothing of value? Okay then.
Thats basically my demarcation point too.
If something can output a format a modern tv can upscale with no issues using a connection type it has then it’s not retro.
Anything that has component or hdmi output and can do 480p/i or better is just old, not retro.
Even simpler, if it was designed to work with a CRT television because that is what the vast majority of people had at the time.
Fun to think that someday if USB C finishes to eradicate HDMI/DP they might become the sign that it is retro... Look at that! They had a dedicated plug for the video signal back then :)
Agreed cause this before ps3 and 360 which is how I see it also
That is a very interesting take. 4:3 games do have a certain retro feeling to them!
I would consider anything pre-PS3/Xbox360 as retro. Anything after is old but I'd still consider them modern games. Aside from graphics and scale not much has changed since the PS3 era.
I'm relatively with you there. PS5, Xbox Series, and Switch are the current modern consoles. When I was 12, we got a gamecube while it was current gen, and considered N64 to be somewhat retro already, but SNES was firmly retro- or 2 Gens back. I think it's reasonable to not think PS3 and 360 are retro, but older than that surely is. PS3 and 360 games don't lag behind modern games by the same leaps and bounds SNES to GameCube did. But PS2, Xbox, and GameCube are all still in the pre-HD Era. For that reason I'd make the rather radical suggestion that Wii might be considered retro already, since it remained an SD console while it's contemporaries were HD.
Two generations, so the 360, Wii, and PS3 are currently the cutting edge of retro.
I am reminded of the huge arguments on RGVC on Usenet when people started discussing NES games in the mid-90s. Since they were two generations old at that point (PS1 and Saturn having just launched), they were grudgingly allowed. I think that remains a good barometer.
I'm at the age now where I know deep down the Wii is retro, but I don't want to accept it.
I would almost say anything that doesn’t require an internet connection to work with 100% content could be considered retro at this point.
It's a moving target. For me, I would say anything older than about 15-20 years is "retro" and anything older than 30 years is "vintage."
Anything that does not get made anymore is classed as retro is it not?
That's where I currently draw the line. Unfortunately, there's a perception that obsolete is not necessarily retro. Typically, a machine that was just abandoned (ie the Xbox One) is not considered fashionably retro... just old.
Things were a lot easier back in the 1990s where the line was more easily drawn. Everything before the video game crash was retro; everything after was modern. But time marched on and the 21st century arrived, and the rules changed. Now even game systems with polygons are retro! Now even game systems with hyper-realistic graphics, like the Xbox 360, are retro! I feel like Danny Glover. I'm getting too old to keep track of this shit.
That's just one generation ag... oh
It still doesn't feel like anything on the XBox 360 and maybe even the PS2 is retro in the same way that older games are retro. In the Xbox 360 era games had already settled into conventions we are using to this day.
Hell, GTA 5 and Skyrim have been released for the XBox 360 and they keep being rereleased remastered with no significant gameplay changes to this day.
But SNES? PS1? That's a whole different world.
Retro is everything you were in to when you were 12.
I guess it really just depends on you and what you experienced, or were too young to experience.
Im sure younger zoomers see those systems as retro, much in the same way we saw NES as retro in the early 00s.
For me its hard to consider PS2 or Xbox as retro. That era was the first time I had disposable income as a young adult, living at home. And I think experiencing them as an adult, to me, makes it feel like these systems are still very new and cutting edge... even though theyre very much not anymore.
My own personal line in the sand is what Wikipedia calls "the sixth generation": Sega Dreamcast, Nintendo Gamecube, Sony PS2, Microsoft Xbox. They're "retro" to me. Starting from the seventh generation, there was a noticeable bump in the ability for systems to churn out relatively-realistic graphics, with the PS3 and Xbox 360 leading the way, and the Wii embracing its delightfully-modern cartoony style.
My line is at the transition from 2d to 3d mostly.
2d is retro. Early 3d is like the awkward teenage years. Everything since Xbox 360/PS3 is modern to me.
Yup. Initial 3D games were, let's just say awkward.
Strictly speaking, the two co-existed long before 3D became the vogue on consoles; Revs is a proper racing simulator in 1984.
To me, GameCube and PS2 are retro. Wii is getting there, and god, I feel old. Had to convince myself to put down "GameCube" instead of "N64".
I have a simple definition, hardware is retro if it's no longer being produced, software is retro if it's no longer beind sold
EDIT: posting this here because I can't seem to respond to a kbin user below, the message never goes through:
I like the theory, but is the original Legend of Zelda retro?
Cause Nintendo puts that up for sale every new game console release. But that is one of the original adventure games from 1986.
Digital releases muddies the water somewhat. But, as far as I know, Nintendo doesn't issue the original NES cartridge anymore -- so it's still retro for me
So never heard of GoG huh?
Anything that can be emulated on a PSP is retro to me, because that's where I emulate most things
In my POV, anything past the current generation - 1(so current gen + previous gen), it is considered retro Xbox One X? Not retro. Xbox One? Not retro. Xbox 360? Retro.
Agreed. As much as it pains me to say my primary console from college is retro, it's been almost two decades since then (:
That's when you look at yourself and say "damn im getting old..."
20 years is considered vintage if that helps.
Wait... So ssbm is vintage? Oh gosh, time sure is fast
20 years is vintage, yes.
I've been playing a vintage game for 2 years and i didn't even know? gosh
What classifies as Retro... Hmm... The last retro consoles would have to be the original Xbox, PS2, GameCube and Dreamcast.
Xbox360, PS3, Wii would still be in that middle ground of not quite retro but not quite modern either. They won't exactly be retro, atleast for me, till 2035-36 at the latest.
I don't know about the 2035 part, but I completely agree that that's the last retro generation
For me I’d say retro is Gen 6 and below, but specifically including the Dreamcast and PS2, but probably excluding the Xbox, and maybe GameCube.
The Xbox was the first console with internal storage built in and both the Xbox and GameCube used shader pipelining aka modern GPU architecture. Basically, I feel if shader compilation is a requirement for emulating it, I don’t consider it retro.
I feel like gc is retro because it had weird conventions. Weird ass controller. Weird controls. Xbox had started to settle in with modern standard schemes. Especially for things like fps and tps.
True, and it’s why I’m on the fence about GameCube. It’s kinda retro but kinda not. The weird controller and small disc sizes make it feel retro, but it has modern-ish dual stage triggers, and a PowerPC architecture with a modern GPU design, double precision floats, OOE compute.
Meanwhile the PS2 was still weird, included the PS1 chip, and mostly just had a massive fill rate to make up for its shortcomings.
How I like to see it, going backwards on the timeline (you can tell mine was a PlayStation household lol);
Anything before that is Prehistoric.
I see as retro as everything that's unsupported (doesn't get new official games, hardware isn't sold) and emulateable.
I mean, yes sure SNES feels "more retro" than a PS3 for sure, but games in 8bit or 16bit style are still made today. And after the sprite-based consoles, there is no clear cut anymore.
I suppose you could make a cut at shader support, i.e. after PS2, but then then the OG Xbox is between worlds then and spoils the generational difference.
Someone suggested HDMI, but the first iteration of X360 didn't have that, while older consoles like GC can be more easily retrofitted.
So, either the cut-off is between sprites/16b and 3D/32b, orrr... Just the support.
Well I suppose it's what you define as retro. To me Retro is an era, unmoving in time, after years have past and the PS5 becomes as old in age as the PSX is now, then do we consider the PS5 retro? What of the PSX then? Or do we move on from "modern" as a current(in this hypothetical) standard? Post-modern, neo-renaissance whatever the new terms we use end up being.
I called Nes retro back in the ps2 era
lol, that's fair enough.
I just remember going to GameStop back then and the nes games were in the retro section, but 2 get 1 free.
Loaded up on a ton of nes and genesis games that I never got to play.
GameCube, PS2, and Xbox are now retro since Xbox Series X and PS5 are out.
When PS6 and Xbox 5 comes out, Xbox 360, PS3, and Wii will be retro.
Anything with a capacitor about to blow. Seriously get rid of your clock capacitor xbox collectors!
I would argue that retro is individual. Depending on when you grew up and which games you played back then.
The way I see it based on what was retro 20 years ago, something becomes retro when it's 20+ years old. In the 90's, stuff from the 70's was retro. In the 2000's, 80's stuff was retro. Now in 2023, stuff from the 2000's is technically retro.
But by pure dictionary definition, anything older than current stuff is retro. Memes from just last month that aren't relevant anymore would technically be retro, by definition of the word.
By pure dictionary definition. something new that's made to look old is retro, not things that are actually old.
Imitation is just one kind of retro. Actual old stuff is also retro. It also means to go backwards, or regress.
Don't just go by the singular definition Google gives in their dumbass blurb. Look in an actual dictionary.
I'm not interested drawing a hard line at a year or system. Something is retro if it feels old.
Once upon a time PS2 was new but now it feels old (and looks garbage compared to new games) so it's retro.
~15 years is the arbitrary cutoff that feels right to me, despite how old it is continuing to make me feel
Personally, for me PS2 era and older is retro for sure. There is a clear distinction where many PS3 games share similar feeling with modern games, while my PS2 ones feel from a past time. We also still had things like memory cards, altrough obviously not all consoles in that generation do. Still, I would put generations on one line, as most console games where ports of the same game across consoles of the same generation, so then that's the last generation with these kinda old ways of storing. PS2's gen is also the last generation console games where completely different from PC, and in my childhood gaming up to then wasn't mainstream but a nerd hobby, causing it to have a very different community. With the generation of the PS3, all of that changed to modern standards.
PS3 and DS I'm a bit in dubio about. Whenever I feel bored with modern games, PS3 and my (3)DS are on the list of "old" consoles I grab back to (together with PS2, PS1, and recently GBC/GBA which I'd consider retro for sure). On the other hand, at least half the games released on it are games I still play on my PC as "modern games". DS is extra hard, as I barely distinct between 3DS as DS in my mind, unless it's using the GBA port for stuff. After all, I play them on the same console and the transition was quite smooth between the DS models making it not feel like a huge gab, unlike the PS2 to PS3. But at the same time, early DS is much older than late 3DS, which I would consider too new for sure.
Anything after that, modern for sure.
(One of) the biggest tech sites in my country uses "at least two generations old" as definition, making PS3 the last retro generation currently. I like it because it fits my usage, but as said I'm a bit in dubio about actually calling the PS3 retro. It doesn't feel old fashioned enough. I mean, that would technically make Skyrim retro. But that's definitly one of those games that are in my "modern gaming" list on PC and Switch...
I can at least personally attest that PS3 is currently the newest gen where people either think you're awesome for buying it now because they get the fun of old stuff, or stupid because they think the old stuff is crap and only the new is cool. For that reason I would agree to allow it on retro places, as modern gaming places just wouldn't appriciate it at all while people who are already into older stuff do on a somewhat regular basis. But that doesn't make it truly retro per se, and it really should take over or be all you use.
Hmm... An interesting thing I've noticed is a lot of people seem to put the DS and 3DS together in their head as if the difference is minimal, but I've tried them both (tough i only own a 3DS) and it feels to me like two entirely different experiences, like the jump from NES to SNES, hell, we went from the largest games on the DS being <1Gb to the largest on a 3DS being almost 4Gb
It's something I never really understood...
Well, I also have both atm. Altrough I need to admit my DS Lite is only used as GBA console and for stuff that requires the GBA slot because of weird accesouries (like Guitar Hero On Tour).
I think it's because of that. I play the old DS games on my new 3DS. And while the games did improve, the games on 3DS still wheren't that advanced even for most of the time it was alive, since it laster quite long. So it easily feels more "backwards" than "last gen”. I also don't see as much difference between them as the jump from PS1 to PS2 to PS3. Or the jump from GameBoy to DS serries, and 3DS to Switch for that matter. For the most part, the different DS' feel more like different models than different consoles.
While the 3DS was released in 2010, the DS is only 6 years younger releasing in 2004. The hardware isn't thát far apart. And while the last game for the 3DS was released in 2021, that still was made for at that moment 11 year old hardware (and by now 13 year old). And while the size of games may have quadruppeld between the first DS and the last, 4GB games where nothing in 2021. They bassically kept making games with restrictions of old hardware longer, rather than having a huge improvement.
@InkstainTheBat most people draw the line at about ~3 console generations ago. So now anything in PS2 era and under is considered retro. As people get older, and console generations are longer (see: Switch, PS4) it tends to get a bit messy.
I think of "retro" as pixel-based and early 3D games that were sorta killed during the PS1/Saturn/N64 era.
Once we get into more advanced 3D / Polygonal games (PS2/GameCube/Xbox), it's a different era; but it's not due to the visual shift alone, but the design philosophy and craft/code itself. I would consider them "modern" and point to series like Zelda as an example.
Games like WindWaker feel more connected to Breath of the Wild than it does to Link to the Past or even Ocarina of Time. And I think the same goes for series like Mario, Metal Gear, and so on.
I'm not really sure I consider anything retro? Old tech ends up still getting supported, just by indie hobbyists. But outside of that I guess XB360 and below since it's not being produced anymore.
Personally I classify everything older than 30 years (in video gaming) to be retro-gaming i my mind! So even the first Pokémon games are retro to me :)
2023 - 30 = 1993. If your year of reference is this, then most SNES games would not be considered "retro". Pokemon Green was only released in 1996.