Games that are now retro as of 2023

The Ugly One said:
Something is retro if your parents enjoyed it. The 10 year mark is a little too quick. When I was a high schooler in the 1990s, stuff from the 1960s and 70s was retro. Stuff from the 80s was just lame and uncool.
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It's kind of trippy but this is dad rock now that people in their early 20's roll their eyes at.
edit: song unrelated, I posted the clip as a reply to @Maskull because it's funny how hostile it is towards what sounds like the listener/buyer of the record. Dad rock!
 
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I guess that makes Skyrim retro now.
Oh wait, never mind. Bethesda re-releases that game every year at this point.
No need to make a new game if you make people buy the old one again.
 
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Retro gaming is anything before Super Mario World (1990), which popularized if not invented the concept of "100%ing" a game for some kind of token reward, as well as using a save file to retain progress in an action game. The SNES also introduced shoulder buttons and arranged the face buttons in a cross shape at cardinal points that presaged the now-ubiquitous "twin stick" control configuration. Optical disc media followed shortly thereafter. Circa 1990-1996 would be the modern age of video games.

I wouldn't consider anything with shaded polygons to be a "video game" any more than I'd consider a self-driving electric car to be a new kind of train.
 
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"Retro" is like "classic rock". It is not a floating term. New media will not age into it eventually. It doesn't matter that Nevermind is much older now than Led Zeppelin IV was in 1991. Nirvana will never be classic rock, and no video game made after the turn of the millennium will ever be a "retro" video game.
 
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MrTroll said:
"Retro" is like "classic rock". It is not a floating term. New media will not age into it eventually. It doesn't matter that Nevermind is much older now than Led Zeppelin IV was in 1991. Nirvana will never be classic rock, and no video game made after the turn of the millennium will ever be a "retro" video game.
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Some retrogamers have started referring to 8-bit and 16-bit eras as vintage gaming. The phrase "vintage computing" seems to be taking over from "retrocomputing" as well. I use these phrases as it removes ambiguity.

As for the word "retro", many dictionaries define it as "imitative of a style or fashion from the recent past". or similar. That's why those shitty suitcase record players and current year boom boxes are described as "retro" by the people that sell them. Classic rock is a music genre in and of itself. Whilst I agree that Nirvana doesn't fit the classic rock genre, I respectfully disagree that retro is a genre in the same way classic rock is.

Here's something that's thunk-provoking: the Raspberry Pi 400 is considered by some to be a retrocomputer. Why? Because it's a computer in a keyboard, just like the wedge shaped computers from the mid '70s through early '90s i.e. it's imitative of a style from the recent past.
 
Pissmaster said:
As well, the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One are now considered retro video game consoles.
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Christ, i didn't need this stark reminder of my own mortality today.
whatever I feel like said:
I still have trouble accepting PS2 era as retro
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Same. I still remember the discussions about how PS2 isn't retro yet i had on /vr/.
12345 said:
This isn't about games being retro as it's about if gaming is fun anymore or not.
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That's the big one. Gaming fundamentally changed in the last two generations and more often than not i wonder if i am growing out of the hobby or if modern gaming is just shit, kinda like that Principal Skinner meme. I think it's 'bout time for me to go on a big retro binge, maybe i can rekindle the spark.
 
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Pretty sobering that Pokemon X & Y is 9 years old.

Anyway, what's with all the bitching about "not on muh supernintennys not on muh dreamcasts". It's like all those old farts who complained about everything past the 2600 era being "impure".
PS2 games are completely different beasts to your average modern game. How many phone games are even remotely comparable to a DS title?
Fuck it. Most XBOX 360/PS3 titles were made for a completely different environment to today (and WII games were *decidedly* stuck in the past)
 
I think what really makes something retro is something is something being cool because it's old. Having an Atari 2600 and a pile of games was not cool in 1988. It was cool in 1998, though.

Is having a PS4 considered cool by the kids these days? What about an Xbox 360? I could imagine that having anything PS2 era and before is cool with today's youth, but I wouldn't know first hand.
 
The Ugly One said:
I think what really makes something retro is something is something being cool because it's old. Having an Atari 2600 and a pile of games was not cool in 1988. It was cool in 1998, though.

Is having a PS4 considered cool by the kids these days? What about an Xbox 360? I could imagine that having anything PS2 era and before is cool with today's youth, but I wouldn't know first hand.
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My nephews have no interest in older games and definitely don't think they're cool. Might just be them, or it could be a generational thing. I thought the Atari 2600 generation was interesting as a kid, of course it wasn't as good as my N64 but I liked checking it out. They just don't think that way though.

Today kids are spoiled for choice. Most of us just had a small selection of games growing up, but even the biggest collections back then are dwarfed by what's available now. An infinite number of free mobile games, tons of free games on consoles, plus subscription services means they don't need to look back even out of curiosity, let alone boredom.
 
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Hugger Brother said:
that OP is violence. it fucks me up that there are adults out there whose treasured childhood gaming memories are shit like Halo 3 and xbox Minecraft
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I figure that's more of the people who are into gaming because it's no longer niche or for losers/virgins. Much like how several years ago some organization did a survey about "the best videogame storylines." You know what made the #1 spot; Call of Duty: Black Ops... suggesting that it's because they surveyed current year retards who were all about current year things.

Wesker said:
I think that's correct. There's some PS2 games in particular that look really good for coming out really early into the PS2 lifecycle that don't look ancient at all.
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Soul Calibur 2 holds up amazingly well. Metal Gear Solid 2 feels a little heavy on the air-brushing/light glare, but still looks good, and Metal Gear Solid 3 looks better because everything doesn't feel as airbrushed.

As for Retro; while people use "console generation" and the like, which is about 10 years or so, I consider 20 years or 2 of the console generations to be retro. Because it's one thing to have a little brother or cousin or something like that, where you're 16 and they're 4, and they're like "Oh yeah, I remember this when I was little." As opposed to "Nigga, you weren't even born when this came out."
 
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Kheapathic said:
I figure that's more of the people who are into gaming because it's no longer niche or for losers/virgins. Much like how several years ago some organization did a survey about "the best videogame storylines." You know what made the #1 spot; Call of Duty: Black Ops... suggesting that it's because they surveyed current year retards who were all about current year things.


Soul Calibur 2 holds up amazingly well. Metal Gear Solid 2 feels a little heavy on the air-brushing/light glare, but still looks good, and Metal Gear Solid 3 looks better because everything doesn't feel as airbrushed.

As for Retro; while people use "console generation" and the like, which is about 10 years or so, I consider 20 years or 2 of the console generations to be retro. Because it's one thing to have a little brother or cousin or something like that, where you're 16 and they're 4, and they're like "Oh yeah, I remember this when I was little." As opposed to "Nigga, you weren't even born when this came out."
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Console gens are more like 5-7, so two gens is 2010 max to 2016 min. Obviously 2 gens doesn't cut it anymore.
 
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The whole of idea of retro is less relevant with digital distribution and games that are intentional throwbacks. Papers please is retro? Ok... I can download that off any digital storefront and play it on my PC. Just like I could in 2013, but yes I guess its retro now.
 
I cannot consider anything past a certain point retro. PS3/360/Wii era still looks too similar to games coming out today for me to consider enough change to be so... and the PS2 era only just sneaks out of that. No games will ever be retro again, they will just be old.

and no, this has nothing to do with that list of 10 year old games making me feel like my grasp on time is slipping and they just came out recently and the grim reaper is standing right behind me as a growing sense of my limited mortality creeps ever more into my mind. Surely not.
 
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ShitLurker said:
If I can emulate it, it's retro, hence the Switch is retro, check mate atheists!
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A cursory glance at a Google search suggests 2-7 is the average age range of when people start playing video games. So in 5-6 years there will be "Switch was my childhood" comments to make us feel nice and old.
 
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