We have modernism and also post-modernism that are tied to a specific range of dates. I’m wondering if people feel the same way for “retro”
Retro marches on and on with the passage of time. There is no clear cutoff; it’s whatever is old enough for you to not just be able to buy and run it. Blink and you’ll miss how people start calling GTA V retro…
256 colors and below. 32 bits and below. Synth music or speaker only.
I don’t think it’s either. I think there were certain phases that had a distinct style, and we had huge jumps from phase to phase. Atari to NES to SNES to N64 to Playstation 2 to Playstation 3 were all gigantic. But then PS3 to 4 was, to me almost unnoticeable. Same to PS5. Wii to whatever modern Nintendo thing is also probably not gigantic either IMO.
I have a tough time calling PS3 retro because of that, even though it’s pretty old now.
For me, the cutoff is with the introduction of HDMI. The Wii is the final retro console, and the 360 and Playstation despite being concurrent with the Wii are the start of the second age. The video format isn’t actually the cause so much as it’s emblemic- the Wii was one last hurrah for colorful arcade-y games while the PS360 really calcified the modern cinematic RPG FPS model that rules AAA single-player games to this day. That was also the first generation where nostalgia became a moneymaker, with things like the wiiware Mega Man games. Before that, nods to classic games weren’t uncommon, but this was the start of games whose entire point was to be a nod
I would argue it’s less the cable and more the resolution.
480i is retro. 720p is where it changed. 1080p? Definitely not retro.
Retro means modern games that remind you of old games. Like Shovel Knight or UFO 50. There’s not really a time limit to that. Shovel Knight is quite old now, but the graphical style it copied is even older, so it’s still retro.
Obviously, I’m sort of joking, but y’all do use the word “retro” wrong. You’re talking about vintage games, not retro games, and yes, I will die on this hill. Gamers are the only people who don’t know the difference between retro and vintage. Everyone else gets it right: car people, clothing people, furniture people, sneaker people, jewelry people, etc.
Actually, in the car community the terms “antique,” “vintage,” and “classic” can all describe the same car depending on who you ask, the make and model, and when it was built. Even where the vehicle is residing can change it.
No vehicle class for “retro” exists, though there are “retro styled” vehicles, which is what you appear to describe.
The makes sense, like “retroactive” meaning going back to. In that case, maybe retro gaming means to go back to games that you have played in your childhood? Words are used by people and sometimes they don’t make much sense.
It’s probably supposed to mean 20+ years old. But next year IDK if I’ll be able to call Mass Effect and Crysis “retro games”
I’m damaged by vocabulary outside of gaming so for me “retro gaming” always sound a bit weird.
I’m used to retro being a newly produced item that mimics an older style - a chair produced in 2026 that looks like it belongs in the 1960s f.e., compared to vintage being an item that is at least 20 years old and an antique being at least 100 years old. My teacups will officially be antique in two years and it feels kinda cool.When speaking of games I’ve just accepted that retro either means “from my childhood” or “old” depending on how the speaker feels about it and that “how old” usually differ from meaning “at least two console generations old” to “20 years old” to “The era of my childhood, forever and ever!”.
Gamers are the ones with the damaged vocabulary. Everyone else know the difference between vintage and retro. ;)
Vintage emoji right there. Or wait… is it retro because the font is modern?
It’s going to vary for everyone, but retro basically just means old stuff, so it’s always a moving target.
When I was playing the NES, games like Pong and Donkey Kong and Pac Man felt retro. When I was playing the N64, NES games felt retro. Nowadays, PS1 and N64 definitely feel retro to me. I don’t think I’m ready to call the Wii retro yet, but I know most people probably accept it as retro now.
Anything older than the 3rd rerelease of skyrim obvs.
The painting is called “children’s games” by Bruegel (1560) btw if anyone’s curious. My favorite snippet is this one right here
It’s still a pretty popular game in modern day Turkey called “Uzun Esek”
For me, retro is two generations ago. But I’m no authority on this matter! :)
Console generations, engine generations or human generations?
gamecube isn’t retro, n64 is
Nintendo 64 is next gen.
Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 can be considered Retro, and by that extension all the games from its era. Both released about 20 years ago, discontinued 10 years ago and since then 2 generations of new consoles appeared. But games like GTA 5 that are developed, re-released and sold to this day, I wouldn’t consider that game to be Retro. And that’s one of the problems with evergreen running games.
I think there are two related concepts that the same word gets used for.
One is the sliding window of things that seem old. I’d put that around 2 gens ago - just long enough for things to go out of print/leave retail, lose media focus, and have adults remembering them from childhood.
The other idea encompasses the foundation era of game history. I think of that as the time when games harshly constrained by the available hardware, with the chunky pixels, chiptunes, low-poly models, etc. I’d cut this off at or after the PS360Wii gen. That’s about when tech returns started diminishing, and it’s also when the internet started strongly defining design and business models. But everyone looks at it a little different.
Still, the concept of video games is just a baby. There are humans alive that played some of the earliest ones. Maybe centuries from now people will look back fondly on the era where you owned game hardware at all, or didn’t control them with your mind.
I’d say games from the 5th generation of consoles and before are absolutely retro, while games from the 6th and early 7th generation are in a weird zone where they’re not exactly retro, but not exactly modern either.
IMO, I’d say modern gaming started in earnest in 2011, or possibly even 2010. When you think about it, console generations used to average about five years before 7th gen and the recession of 2008, so if the recession didn’t happen, I feel like 8th gen could’ve started around that time.
