When Is A Game Considered "Retro"?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ม.ค. 2024
- Today I wanted to talk about whether a game is retro or not.
Follow Me: / kirotalks
Credits:
Footage -
LongplayArchive - The Last of Us, Punch-Out!, Mega Man 7, Star Fox 64, Super Mario 64,
Marvel's Spider-Man, Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic Mega Collection, Super Mario 3D World,
SpongeBob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom, Resident Evil 5, Dead Rising,
Kirby's Adventure, Jet Set Radio, Phantasy Star Online, Halo: Combat Evolved,
Star Wars: Battlefront
FCPlaythroughs - Pokemon Platinum
NintendoComplete - Excitebike, Mother 3
Music -
Cheel - Lazy Walk • Lazy Walk
Noir Et Blanc Vie - QuangerineCream • QuangerineCream
TrackTribe - A Night Alone • TrackTribe - "A Night ... - เกม
![[Full Episode] Hell's Kitchen Thailand EP.13 | 5 พ.ค. 67](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Uhzt_Oprgc4/mqdefault.jpg)
The retro isn’t about age it’s about the technical limitations and how they have evolved.
A good way to tell is by the “5 year rule”. If you get the best gaming machine from 1991 say a Mega Drive or SNES, and then compare it to the best from 1996, like an N64, the difference in capabilities between them is abysmal.
However, the best computer from 2019 still kicks ass even today in 2024. It’s this decrease in every step of the evolution that determines the retro-ness. There’s something similar in computer electronics design called “Moore’s Law. It’s not exactly the same but the same principle applies.
At some point in time, that “5 year difference” became “not that huge”, and that’s when games stopped being retro. To me, I’d say that’s somewhere between 2005 and 2010. I think that in 15 years time, these games will be called “vintage” or “classic”, but not really “retro”.
Agreed - its about the limitations these games have, and how these have effected the games production. You can make a modern ‘retro’ game, by styling it after say, some classic NES games, or even developing games for the hardware. Even Gamecube games arnt really considered “retro”, since these games werent limited in quite the same way previous generations of consoles were, in a way that actually helped Gamecube games become something unique.
You can identify a game inspired by old NES or Sega Genesis games, but not really by Gamecube or Wii or DS.
@@Big-Chungus21I agree with everything you said but the last line. I believe GameCube/PS2 and original Xbox era have a very distinct visual style that feels retro and could even be replicated. For example, how the old Tony Hawk games would slap actual photos of pro skaters faces on low poly models of them. If a game came out today with character models like that I would immediately recognize it as emulating that era of retro gaming.
I disagree. BattleBit(released 2023) remastered is a game designed as technically simple as possible so that it can be played on most computers. And indie games in general often choose to stylistically look retro while playing more like modern games.
That being said maybe indie games should be an exception
@@nuh-uhbro765 Even DS/Wii have their tropes, I don't think I've seen many wii stylized games (probs because the graphics were often seen as a compromise to the functionality of the wii), but DS stylized indie games are a big thing especially with JPGs like there's a Wii (especially nintendo first party mii content) and DS respective feel. Later generations (and even us probably) will be able to tell the subtle differences between these last two console/graphics generations, I mean from a literary deconstructionist take you already can, for example the capabilities of an RTX2080 vs an RTX4080 raytracing is more capable, 4k/8k gaming is stable, and we're starting to see more activity being rendered realtime (I'd say the 2020s games look like what Cyberpunk 2077 ushered in, more life, more detail rendered on screen all the time) and from here doing some mental gymastics you could compare present day Cyberpunk 2077 to GTA V and see a clear cut difference in how those games operate on what scope and how detailed. I will say it's easier to objectively see differences between generations when some level of realism is the goal, because those games are pushing hardware limitations in a tangible/observable way. It's hard to measure stylized games (unless they're uniformly stylized in the console generation) because there's so many other variables that don't place it within a timeline (like how in game dev the "toilet/bathroom" trick is a constant variable injoke of gauging a games ethos) also this lack of constant variable is partially why if you think about the abstract of Minecraft it's timeless, even though if you think about when you played Minecraft 10yrs ago it's in timespace as "retro". Even then Minecraft 10 yrs ago and Raytraced Minecraft are night and day, but overall the game industry carrying around carcasses of IP as "games of service" really muddies things when the last iteration within a game is wiped away/built upon.
@@malhawkeye6427 even if it’s “as simple as possible”, the worse laptop from 2023 is way better than the best computer from 1996, so it’s not the same. I meant to talk about the technologies that existed back then when video games and the internet were starting to blow up.
If u skip 5 years in gaming, the jump becomes less significant every time. From 1991 Sonic, to 1996 Mario 64, and then 2001 gta 3, 2006 call of duty, and so on. Today, the best PC from 5 years ago is still quite good and can play all games with mid or high settings.
You can’t say the same about any console from the “retro” era, even a 1 year gap is probably pretty significant for such machines. A retro system that is “just” 5 years older than another retro system is an obsolete fossil by comparison. There’s something similar happening with the actual designs of microchipsets. “Moore’s law”, look it up if u want.
To me that’s where “retro” ends and the modern era of gaming begins. Minecraft, LOL, and all these other games are “classics”, but not “retro”
To add to your point about games “looking more retro” I think the less huge graphical leaps in between gens also plays a big part. The shift from the SNES to the N64, or especially the PS1/N64 to GameCube/PS2 saw HUGE leaps in 3D graphical improvements. Since then, we’ve seen less leaps and more subtle improvements in graphics, which is why I think it’s hard to see a lot of 10+ year old 3D games as retro. They still LOOK to modern, despite being over a decade old.
The fact that a game like Demon’s Souls can be remade as a flagship launch title for PS5 suggests this. It’s the equivalent of remaking a SNES game for the GameCube, which basically never happened.
I was just about to say that
Totally agree. Someone who had a PS1 in 1995 would look to super mario bros, which was already a decade old, in a much diffrent way that we today look do GTA V for exemple
@@justinc.5591 PS2 and Gamecube still feels retro to me. It was the last generation when memory cards were standard and wired controllers.
@@mariowalker9048I mean they're about to be 24 years old, they're *definetly* retro at this point.
I think the era clasification is the best one.
Games up to PS1, debatably PS2, feel like they were starting out, technology was clearly a major roadblock when developing. From PS3 onwards, it's clear that technology stopped being such an issue, the indie market started to be recognized as a thing and internet connection became standard.
th-cam.com/video/Eyq18JefBgY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=mBLKrrvsgL6R7g2N
I think what makes "retro" its own kind of vibe stems from a mix of what stuff from a specific generation defines it and your personal experience with them.
For example, when i replay games like Super Mario World, i do feel a bit of nostalgia for them but not like they're "old". They're just part of my childhood.
My Club Nintendo magazines however DO feel retro to me because of how quick things changed since the late 2000s thanks to social media and how much more convenient it is to just upload or watch gaming news online nowadays. So it's almost like holding my own time capsule, even though the new issues got discontinued circa 2020.
A memory that feels close yet distant since it'll only be tangible to me and the other few lucky folks who were there to enjoy it till the end of time
th-cam.com/video/Eyq18JefBgY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=mBLKrrvsgL6R7g2N
To me i can understand some games 10 or older being retro with a huge exception. If a game is still being actively supported then it looses its retro status until it stops being supported for a while IMO
no. absolutely not. a game that is 10 years old is more "classic", not retro. after it reaches 20, THEN it becomes retro. games like Half Life 1 and Day Of Defeat, anything that is on or before PS2 and Xbox are retro now. saying "oh this 10 year old game is retro" is just wrong
Not even anything. Just the early 6th gen. @@bionicseaserpent
@@TheBcoolGuy well it is about the time it takes to become retro now. its close enough you could confidently call it retro when its 18-19 years old. but after 19 its DEFINITELY retro.
20 years regardless of how you feel about it. The word "Retro" implies recent past.
For me, retro games are classified by the look, sound and feel. Thinking about how VGM used to be comprised of individual sampled sounds, and the gradual to using live music, although not exclusively. Taking into account consoles, visuals & music could actually help us to classify video games, and this is something I’d love to do using a machine learning model.
I think part of the reason a lot of people struggle to define what is and is not retro is because of indie games. You look at recently released indie games from 2023 like Sea of Stars or that uses pixel art and compare it with a realistic 3D game from 15 or so years ago like Metal Gear Solid 4, and you have to ask which game really looks older?
Also you have older indie games like Cave Story that use pixel art and try to look retro, and then you remember that Cave Story was released in 2004 - 20 years ago! It makes the idea of 'retro' seem like more of an aesthetic than something tangible and definable.
Yeah retro is probably more if s stylistic choice as realistically the onto food way of defining age in terms of games is by console power. And even then Nintendo makes it funky
I think nowadays retro games can also be defined by the old aspect ratio on the TV (4:3). I know even back then some games did have widescreen support, but most games didn't. So I'd definitely consider PS2 era games retro now because of the old aspect ratio.
What about Xbox games with plenty of them being 12:9
In PAL regions, our games ran at 3:2 or 16:10 if you don't want to be fancy about it.
Like the GameBoy Advance.
So 4:3 being retro would mean that PAL games were never retro.
For reference, our Dreamcast, GameCube, Xbox ran at 720 × 480P as opposed to the NTSC standard of 640 × 480P. Because PAL always had a higher resolution until HDMI became the standard.
I didn't mention the PS2 since we had NTSC 640 × 480(though most ran at 512 × 448 upscaled because the PS2 is weak sauce) AND 50Hz most of the time. So we got the worst of both worlds with that, and I decided it wasn't worth mentioning.
7:57 is the take I agree with, it feels weird to lump in games and consoles from just prior to 2004 or even 2009 in with ones from the mid to late 80s, classing them all as retro
th-cam.com/video/Eyq18JefBgY/w-d-xo.htmlsi=mBLKrrvsgL6R7g2N
So in 2034 will ps4 be considered retro? I think anything older than 20 years becomes retro, at least to that generation
Retro for me is an aesthetic brought together by visuals, sound and game feel. Lunistice is an indie that came out in 2022 but looks gorgeously retro. I also love the bloodborne demake.
It may be silly, but I'd bookmark the Dreamcast as the start of "modern games" & anything before it's release in North America to be considered "retro games". I think the whole era thing makes the most sense, because theoretically yeah, gameplay itself really stopped in innovation after the 6th gen, not to say that's a bad thing but to say we entered a different era of videogames. The 6th generation was the first time graphics were good enough that nobody had imagined they could be that good or get any better, & it was the first group of systems that could do things prior consoles really couldn't. The only thing that's really evolved since the release of the Dreamcast & the start of the 6th gen is graphics. I didn't really grow up with the 6th generation, but to me it truly doesn't feel that long ago, especially with major consoles like the Wii being essentially a beefier GameCube & also being the hottest product while I was growing up. Handhelds also retained the same graphics as the 6th gen until the Nintendo Switch, which also shows the 6th gen has basically become the standard for videogame consoles & we've just been perfecting it since.
Retro in terms of the general timeframe according to Wikipedia ranges between 20-30 years old and little fun fact, GameCenter CX a Japanese video game show that got its start in 2003, goes by a 20 year rule where a video game system must be 20 years or older in order to be featured. In 2021, the show started covering PS2, GameCube, and GBA games so this year in 2024 they should be covering DS games.
In 2024 they can review half life 2
Then I'm officially a Retro gamer from this year on.
I loved the GBA/DS/GCN era (early 2000's), I wasn't too much into the Wii/Wii U/3DS era (late 2000's), but boy, were handheld consoles amazing! Knowing the consoles I love are now Retro makes me feel old
Half Life is absolutely retro, as the entire Source Engine is as well. Have you seen how it looks lol. @@TheUnitAce
@@David2073the Wii being older now than the N64 was back when I first got into retro games as a kid is what really hit me. My favorite console as a kid is now older than the cool retro tech I liked as a kid. I'm experiencing retro consoles now that I played all the time when they weren't retro at all.
Wikipedia can be edited by anybody.
I agree most with the time period theory. We still call the same style of clothes "retro" clothes, we don't start calling skinny jeans "retro". When a new game that takes elements from "retro" era games, like 2d platformers or collectathons, they feel more retro.
Retro is becoming less as an indicator of how old a game is. It's more about a game with mechanics and gameplay from a bygone era. For example, I would consider arena shooters such as Quake and Unreal Tournament as retro compared to say Call of Duty even though COD is 20 years old now. I feel that retro games are now classified as "they don't make them like these anymore" if that makes any sense. Games with a timeless feel don't really feel retro as compared to games with outdated mechanics and gameplay
It partially makes sense. Because video games that are inspired by video games considered "retro" are made quite frequently.
Also, why would a video game with a timeless feel not be considered retro? I mean, you could consider at least a couple of Mario games released in the 80s and 90s to be timeless, yet I wouldn't argue they're not retro.
My personal take is that retro gaming faded away when the power of the consoles became far less significant constraints on game design.
Well Quake that was for PC then looking from design perspective similiar to modern games and is still retro.
I think it is more about technicall state.
even tho the graphics are nice, we're still incredibly limited by technology when it comes to physics, ai, etc.
it takes a generation and a half to make a state-of-the-art game now.
so there's room for improvement beyond graphics; the physics, the ai, how we develop games...
it's also inevitable that we'll end up with full-body VR like ready player one. obviously that's still science fiction at this point, but there will come a day when people don't want to play games "on a screen".
@@billjones642 I don´t thing so with that VR part. Even if you solve all technicall aspects like heavy VR, lag in tracking, expensive body scanning, controller can´t simulate bigger objects ...
Still with this all solved VR have some disadvantages as motion sickness, need big room for moving etc.
It will like part of gaming but not all of it.
Widescreen monitors also give you imersion without VR problems.
Really glad I found your channel. You're a pleasant respite that helps my day. Thanks
What really drives home that you're playing a retro game is when you run into one of the many design decisions or features that you'd just never find in a modern game. About a year or two ago, I played through Kid Icarus on the NES and realized how long it had been since I'd needed to write down a password. People still make games with pixel art (although some of them are trying to look retro on purpose), but I don't expect long unintelligible password strings will ever make a comeback any more than I expect that we'll ever see a new console packaged with a controller that only offers a D-pad for movement.
It’s all a mindset thing, really. It’s all due to when you grew up with games. The Wii is a system I grew up with, but I also watched Classic Game Room. That show started in 1999 with a review of an N64 remake of Robotron 2084. At the time, that was modern. Nowadays, it’s not. It’s also a matter of how the game is designed. Something like a GameCube platformer feels retro enough to me. Metroid Prime feels continually old, not really retro. And Halo, which came out before Prime, is a game I recently played ON ORIGINAL HARDWARE and still it feels somewhat modern to me.
It’s all about mindset. About game feel. About genre. About the person themselves.
It’s a cop-out, but there is no one retro. It’s all about how the player feels about a certain game.
The game has to feel and look retro not all games that are nostalgic are necessarily “retro”
0:20
you're confusing nostalgia with retro
in this context, retro means games that released on old hardware. Nostalgia means having memories of existing media (example, some people might say they have nostalgia of Breath Of The Wild and Super Mario Oddysey)
the word retro implies things from the past, not even necessarily from a particular era. I personally don’t think he’s confusing anything, I think that the way the term is used allows for freedom of definition & subjectivity.
until the semantics of the word “retro” change, this conversation will probably continue as it is.
Is Minecraft nostalgia now
I do think you have a point, 20 year old hardware is Retro hardware, so any game of the 360/PS3/Wii would be retro in 2025.
@@doncorleone1553 considering that it has been available since the '90. Yes
@@doncorleone1553Well it has been out since 2009/2010
the fact that LittleBigPlanet can be even CONSIDERED retro is absolutely mind blowing.
I was in elementary when LBP came out, I am 23 years old now! lol so it's nostalgic/ retro for me
LBP 2 was my absolute favorite game of all time, I played it constantly as a kid. Realizing how old it and LBP1 are make me feel like I'm 50 LOL
@@MeloniestNeon SAME.
I don't think you can consider seventh generation home consoles and their respective games retro
why is mario 64 ds 20 years old i need help
I think retro is clearly a gradient of some form, Pong is more retro than Atari Adventure, which is more retro than Sonic the Hedgehog, which is more retro than Luigi's Mansion, which is more retro than Call of Duty: Black Ops, which is more retro than Hades
I'd say a game becomes "retro" when the original version of that game is at least 2 console generations behind, but more realistically it's 3. I don't think it's based on the length of time. By that point backwards compatibility for those sorts of games would be out of the window for the most part, the tech used to support the game has come a long way to the point where they're just not comparable and there's a universal nostalgia to be felt for the games on those consoles. If we look at what exists now and go back 2 gens, the landscape would look like this:
Sony - PS3
Sony handheld - PSP
Microsoft - Xbox 360
Nintendo - Wii
Nintendo handheld - Nintendo DS (if we're calling the Switch a handheld)
If we go back 3 gens, it looks more like this:
Sony - PS2
Microsoft - Xbox
Nintendo - Gamecube
Nintendo handheld - GBA
If you ask me, 3 gens before really solidifies just how much further gaming has come no matter which starting point you choose to go backwards from. 2 gens back there's at least some room for debate. As an example, no matter how you cut it, going 3 gens back from the GBA leads you to a time before the original Game Boy, and that's CERTAINLY retro at that point.
I think the term “retro” conjures up images of games like Mario 1 and Pac-Man and GB Tetris, so calling a PS2 game retro just feels wrong at first. But enough time has passed and games have evolved enough since then that 15-20 year old games can definitely be called retro.
All PS2 games are absolutely retro by today's standards. I mean, the PS2 is more than 20+ years old today, and on top of that most PS2 games - especially ones that aimed for "realistic" graphics back in the day - have aged poorly from a visual standpoint. I mean, just look at GTA 3 or GTA San Andreas. Great games, but the games look absolutely terrible in today's day and age.
FUCK THAT MEANS MARIO 64 DS IS RETRO
HELP
Mass effect 1 is retro?
@@ecstaticwooper368yeah obviously it is look at that game and it's hardware
@@xTheParadox99yes
new to the party but i love this presentation style, having the public conversation on the topic to then *become* the video is a very complete picture, there's so much value for me here in seeing other peoples different takes and get the same spotlight with eachother, it feels like breaking the echo chamber
Good job kiro! Love these dives into these topics
I think a game becomes retro when it becomes outdated by today's standards. Now, what a game becoming "outdated" means is up to personal opinion.
Nah. Retro is closer to 20 years.
I agree
Facts
I’d say about 2 generations ago or about 15+ years
I agree, my favorite retro game is Hello kitty: Dream Carnival
@@Meaartisifythis shit don't even have a Wikipedia page, what is this bruh 😭
NES/SNES era are now vintage, PS2/GC are retro. lol
Pretty much
What about Intellivision and the 2600?
@@chobies5383 antiques? lmao
The Era thing (8:00) and the "Once a game turns 10 years old it automatic turns intk a Retro game" are My Favorite Defenitions of what a Retro game is
I personally consider a game/console as retro whenever it turns 20. And this might sound weird, but even if a console is retro, that doesn’t mean the games are. For example, I’d consider the GameCube to be retro but not Paper Mario TTYD, for now anyway.
That's the best way to describe it. Like, PS2 had friggin Fifa 13. That's not even nearly retro, compared to a game like Ratchet & Clank
@@Adeyum64in fairness the FIFA games in general don't feel old but that's because none of them are that significant of improvements anymore
I'd argue TTYD is retro because what shit definitely looks old like idk something about it is off, it doesn't help that it's a 4:3 game
@@illford6921 I mean, it turns 20 this year anyway
I think we just need to move up the tiers a bit;
Retro can be from 00-05
Vintage can be the 90s
Ancient can be the 80s.
Also I think the fact that with the advancement of online discussions and the fact that old games are constantly being talked about, games that used to feel old no longer do.
L
I think that last perspective is the one that I agree with even though I didn't realize it until now. I only really do see games from a long time ago as retro. I mean I grew up in the '90s so I'm very nostalgic for the SNES and the N64 And I also have some nostalgia for the Genesis and PS1, but honestly sometimes I don't even feel like retro is like anything from before the PS1. Especially since growing up in the '90s that all seemed so new and fresh with the N64 in 3D.
I'm just glad these "retro" games aren't necessarily forgotten. They need more remakes, too!
I think a lot of people are just in denial that 10 years should be considered retro because of the 3D aspects mentioned in the video. Even if a game still feels modern, all 10 year old games are retro in one way or another. I will say also that I feel the general rule of thumb is to consider the last major update as the pseudo-"release date" when talking about modern games, making Minecraft for example "only a few months old" considering 1.20 vs if Minecraft stopped updating at 1.7.4 which then would be considered retro. Another good example is how Mario Kart 8 doesn't feel old because of MK8DX and it's most recent DLC from just a couple months ago vs say Forza Horizon 2 which just feels ancient even though both released in 2014.
Tbh, the last "Retro generation was the N64/PS1 era. After that id just consider everything "modern". The shift from the 5th gen consoles to the 6th gen consoles was a shift in to the paradigm weve been in ever since. Basically, i would just consider all those games you stated as being "old modern games"
Maybe it’s my nostalgia talking but I feel like Super Smash Bros Melee was kinda the culmination/last hurrah of gaming during the retro era
very nice video. as it went on i realized that I also have no idea what makes a game retro
If you thought that was weird, Adventure Time is 14 years old and there are still people who think it's relatively new. That series was old enough to release games on consoles such as Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, and PS3, as well as multiple flash games that used to be on CN's website. The series came out back when stuff like Hulu and TH-cam were in their infancy and season 4 of SpongeBob SquarePants was still seen as recent. Even some movies that released the same year as AT like Toy Story 3 and Despicable Me got PS2 games late in that console's lifespan. What's even stranger were things that were 14 years old back then and how they were treated. Like you said in the video Nintendo 64 games were featured apart of the Wii's retro titles. Also Dexter's Laboratory was airing for a while on Boomerang (which was initially meant to be a channel for "Retro" cartoons that lost their relevancy on CN, until the mid 2010s) , with Johnny Bravo, Cow and Chicken, I.M. Weasel, and The Powerpuff Girls also airing on the same channel. The following year would have TeenNick introduce a 90s block that includes Hey Arnold! as one of it's shows.
Length of generations is a factor too. The 7th/360/PS3 generation was VERY long and had significant overlap with 8th/PS4/One. 360 launch titles id consider retro during the 8th gen as many were either ports of previous gen games or only a small leap in fidelity, with almost no differences to gameplay philosophy, Call of Duty 2 or R&C Tools of Destruction come to mind. While later titles in the generation feel like they're borderline next gen games, Halo 4 or Destiny comes to mind.
Gens from older generations were shorter so they felt like they got older faster, and in a way they did, the 90s was breakneck for innovations.
I believe one issue is when we lump all the generations together under one word (retro). We should come up with new terms to better define what era of retro gaming we're talking about.
My brother and I talked about it and we had different solutions. He came up with more descriptive terms, like "3D retro" (describing the time period we're we went from 2D to 3D), or "HD retro" (when HD was the main evolution).
I went for terms that borrowed from history and pop culture, like "proto-retro" (everything before the 80s) and Golden Age retro (most of the 90s).
I agree with the last point as seeing them as an era especially when you see a game like shovel knight, cuphead or sea of stars being tag with the word retro on their steam page or being marketed with that word in mind
Damn I really love this channel
Any games released before I was born (2004) have a kind of retro feel to me.
i definitely agree more with the idea that we reached a point where retro doesn’t work to describe old games. i personally can’t see anything past ps1 as retro
I think a "retro era" is how I've always thought of it, without really thinking about it. For me, the 32-bit era - when games made their first steps into 3D, but were still largely following the same design principles as earlier generations - is the point where it still seems clear-cut. The PS2/GameCube/XBox generation is where it starts to look blurry to me, and I don't really consider PS3 or XBox 360 games retro at all, even after so many years passing.
For me to think of something as "retro," it's as much about design philosophy and the landscape of the industry around the games as it is about their actual age. The industry changed a lot with the rise of widespread Internet access, and game design changed as games became more widely played by broader audiences. Both of these shifts came to a head at the advent of the PS3/360 generation.
About the "Retro era" bit at the end... Most eras are very hard to pinpoint the exact boundaries of. I'd say that the only eras or ages we can definitively pinpoint an exact starting year are the Age of Exploration (1492), the Industrial Age (1830), the beginning of tanks and end of cavalry (1915-1918), the Space Age (1957), and the Information Age (1990), as those were mostly fairly recent and were huge revolutions, and even then the former two I'm not too sure of.
Going back to the gaming topic, anything "released 2000 or earlier" would be excluding Paper Mario and Conker's Bad Fur Day, for example.
I guess indie developers classified retro games as sprite base because a lot of indie games that are sprite based those developers call them as retro inspired games like Shovel Knight, Undertale, Cave Story etc
I feel like Retro is almost a signifier of the type of hardware the game is meant to be played on rather than the time it released at.
For this example, I'd say that if the system has composite cable output and can be played on a 4:3 CRT TV, like the Xbox 360 or Wii, then the system is pretty open-and-shut "retro" since it still falls in line with the type of setup most people probably had for both their Genesis and brand new Xbox 360 for the longest time. While the Wii and 360 still both have modes for playing in 16:9, they have a foot in the door of the old ways for the most part.
It's a period of flux where it was a mixed bag of hardware, before things became more standardized. While that means a 2013 game could technically be "retro", there's not much to do except maybe attribute a different phrase to it like "retro-millennial" and retroactively (ha) draw the line there before cutting the "retro" part off entirely by the XB1/PS4/PC gaming days.
my guess is because videogames have come a LONG way from 2000 to 2010, but from 2010 to 2020, there wasnt as much improvement, so they look and feel just like modern games we play a lot today
I’m pretty happy to classify games as being retro as soon as they turn 15 years old. That’s just about the time it takes to go through 2 console generations. That way, a game won’t be classified as retro if it came out during the previous generation. It’s a benchmark that just seems to work out pretty well for me. Going by my own rules, anything that came out in 2008 or before would be retro right now, and knowing what games are included, I’m satisfied with 15 years.
So Fallout 3 is retro? GTA IV? Mirror's Edge?
i never thought of the term "retro" but i did though when its a time to call a game an old game and figure its about 10 to 15 years
May your year be filled with happiness and good health !
For Minecraft specifically, I'd consider Minecraft version 1.0.0 "retro". Just not the newer versions. It's pretty specific to Minecraft though since it allows you to play on any version of the game.
Classic is 10 years, retro is 15, and ol' school are 20
Still, who really decides what is what...
For me, asteroid on atari and SMB on Nintendo feels like two different eras, but it was only 4 years between them...
Asteroid was 81, and SMB was 85...
I remember having this thought on my mind years ago, using 10 years as a measurement on what is retro, when I suddenly wondered that if Sonic Colors is considered a retro game since it was old enough to be someone's childhood game growing up. I had that thought again recently with the Sonic Boom show and games.
I think retro is more 15 to 20 years old. When I grow up with the Wii I didn’t think the n64 was retro but I thought the snes was old
Semantic Satiation is a term for the phenomenon where when a word is used so much it loses meaning.
This is what i felt with this Retro doscussion.
assuming the thing that defines wherever a game is considered retro is the system leaps, functional/expanding homogeneity between design philosophies and the general age of the player. for something like the NES/SNES games from developers like konami and capcom might have made some games more difficult to justify the price of entry and to minimize returns. with console specs; some companies had to take up strategies to figure out how to make a game work in a 3D space, from things like directional movement, depth to more technical things like object/geometry culling (or specialized stuff like Sony's sound memory).
on the graphical side, 16 bit is just more detailed and marginally less restrictive than 8bit games, though stuff like slowdown still exist. with 8 and 16 bit consoles, i doubt there was much comparative differences between them both that made one console stand out unless there was larger differences on a fundimental level (NES, Master System, Turbografix?). the Sega Saturn's release and Sony's entry introduced vastly different ways how a CD game can function. Square-Enix pioneered FMV video which arguably enriched them a lot. 32/64 probably got a bit chunky. PS2 probably a much more graphically-intense PS1. but then you had the emergence of the internet with the Dreamcast. before Microsoft came chugging in with XBOX Live.
I'd probably say that by the time the PS4/Xbox Series came out, every game is either more graphically-realistic, has internet elements, or is a live service game. any nuances between individual console manufacturers are diminished to a severe degree; and the only thing they can tout is stuff like storage capacity, teraflops or whatever buzzwords. the only outlier is Nintendo, but that's only because their franchises are generally held to themselves and they don't consider remaining too far up to date with console specs until the kinks are sorted out by other console manufacturers+devs. (say, the Unreal Engine).
Other than that. the final thing could be the storage medium+price and the secondhand market. you could probably get Mega Drive games pretty cheaply in the early 2000's. or even PS2, Xbox and 360/PS3 games. longer-supported games, as well as working on later consoles just makes individual games more gougy by larger chains. Gaming is probably more of a Network or Movie business now. instead of console exclusives, you might have manufacturers (or epic) pay developers. or just be SONY and buy Evo. think it happened with FF7R, and street fighter in the past.
I like to think of retro as us taking a retrospective of gaming and it being more about the advancements. We consider NES -> SNES -> N64 -> Gamecube as retro because there were massive leaps in technology between console generations. I remember thinking NES games were retro when my dad got a SNES as there was scrolling backgrounds and a lot more colors, but when I got an N64 I thought all those 2d games were old because we now had polygons, and then when I got a gamecube I saw N64 as messy and unrefined because games could finally look "real". I don't think we'd consider PS3, Wii, or Xbox 360 as retro as there wasn't a huge jump in tech to the next generation, yeah we could render more and textures were nicer but games leaned more on the artistry then the tech. The idea of retro may become a thing of the past as current generations have much less of a leap in tech with Playstation and Xbox releasing incremental upgrades to their consoles instead of 1 big jump every decade along with games constantly getting updates despite being decades old. I think the only way we'd see the previous and current generation as retro is if the next generations had massive changes along the lines of going 3d. Maybe if VR becomes the new standard of gaming then the idea of games where you control the character from a 3rd person perspective will be seen like how we see 2d sidescrollers as retro.
I think "retro" is much more about the look / feel and the technical limitations of the game. I think the whole "retro" label made a lot more sense before the PS3 era, when games started looking more homogenized. When you say a game is "retro", you mean it has a certain look, it controls in a certain way, and it plays in a certain way. In my opinion, you can call Shovel Knight a retro game - but because "retro" has too much of a time connotation, we use "retro-inspired". As such, I think retro is at most up to GameCube / PS2, and then you get the era of "retro-inspired", if anything. As you mentioned, Mother 3 feels retro - that's because it's a game released for the GBA, which was a fairly limited console in terms of power.
I feel attacked by the thumbnail. That aside, love hearing your thoughts on topics like this.
This is a very interesting topic which I have the same question about. Persona 5 is a game that isn't considered retro but it released both on PS3 and PS4 at the same time, and the PS3 is considered a retro console by many
Please don't call p5 retro! I'm not ready for that yet lol.
@@PhantomileFinn I didn't call it retro
@@demosneokleous4877 Sorry my bad I read It wrong lol. It's crazy it will be considered retro one day though. It's nuts it's about to be 7 years old worldwide.
I believe when a game is considered "retro" is less of a set amount of time, but more of a spectrum. Not every game ages at the same rate, Some quicker & some slower. Like @zjzr08 said, even in the GameCube & PS2 era the SNES & Genesis were considered old. However, more modern titles like GTA:SA, Fallout 3, Bioshock, & others are considered Old, but not retro. I also believe that games can "Feel" more retro. This also effects the aging of games. I predict that Cuphead will be considered retro in about 15 years, whilst a game like Super Mario Odyssey will probably take about 20 years to be considered retro.
I agree with the retro being an era point.
The word seems attached more to the 80’s and 90’s more than the 2000’s maybe that’s because a lot of gamers now lived through 2000’s and beyond but not as many are from before then.
I would suggest nostalgic to be the more apt word to describe the games that are 10+ older (from a couple game gens ago with style from their time). Maybe this will become how we refer to that period and we’ll have a new word like how retro seems fixed on a time period?
Never would've thought that the games I've played over the years. Will make me feel super nostalgic nowadays, amd it still does today.
6:15 I was gonna comment this before finishing the video haha. Literally yes, thinking as retro as being about time instead of being about advances and evolution is a really bad perspective.
for me i think 'retro' is more of an aesthetic or time period than something continuous. the last SNES game to be released on a physical cartridge was fire emblem thracia 77 in 2000, then just a year later luigis mansion and super smash bros melee would get released on gamecube. i would be a lot more comfortable calling fire emblem 'retro' than those early gamecube games because i think gamecube games already look pretty modern to be honest. when game developers make a 'retro' style game, regardless if its now or in 10 or so years, its probably not going to resemble a gamecube game, but an atari, nes, or n64 game
i think a better word to use here is 'classic'. cars for example actually have a legal threshold for what can even be considered a classic. depending on the state its usually 25 or 30 years (1994-1999), which sounds pretty fair for me personally, though you could make the argument that for video games it should be about 15 years since cars have been mainstream for about twice as long as video games have been popular
For me "retro" isn't the age but the time period, when those retro classics were firstly released and I don't care if some of those have been constantly re-released, I consider retro to be everything released up to 5th console generation and pc games released before year 2000
I tend to think of games that come on cartridges as retro and games on discs as more modern. I also really feel like games on say PS3 aren't retro because they use Blu-ray discs, HDMI, have patches, DLC, microtransactions and online multiplayer, all things which we're still commonly using today.
I believe it's all on looks and feel. NES, SNES, and N64 era games feel retro, and you can make that same feeling. Minecraft is a truly good example of making something feel retro by looks and feel. I suppose in 10-20 years some flash games will look "retro" and people will replicate that style.
There are so many Minecraft clones out there, so I'd guess you aren't too far out with that theory.
I feel like we are reaching a point where whether a game is "retro" shouldn't depend just on how old it is, but also how much the industry has innovated and improved since it released. Part of the reason many 10 year old games don't really feel retro to us anymore is because they still hold up so well both graphically and in regards to gameplay, the industry has struggled to improve since then with the biggest innovations being almost entirely visual. The next big leap that might cause such games to feel old enough to be considered retro might be for stuff like VR to reach more mainstream accessibility and appeal. Basically, the experience doesn't feel outdated yet, so we don't see them as retro.
In short, I'd say that 10 years is a pretty decent number for a game to begin to qualify as retro, but to truly be retro it also needs to feel like an outdated experience when compared to what's current. If it could release today with minimal changes and still hold up it's not retro, just old.
Definitely based upon the technical limitations. PS2 and Gamecube as mentioned took such a gigantic leap forward compared to anything in the past, and why later installments of their libraries along with those of the Wii and PS3 dont feel that dissimilar to what we have today. Games in the 90s followed different trends overall, while those we play today haven't changed their core formulas much in the past ~20 years (excluding the extent pay-2-win and the capacity for online gaming, which were both well-established in the industry by 2004 with WoW and Maplestory respectively)
I disagree with Minecraft being considered Retro now.
Haha you're OLD
@@matthewrease2376Minecraft is literally my same age
Yeah dude 12 is old
Game classification for me:
If a game was released today, by modern gaming standards, how well would it do?
If the game would make sales released today, it is not retro.
If the game would not make many sales released today, it is retro.
If a game is not retro but is old (7-10) yrs+ it becomes a classic.
If a game has had many releases within the franchise but is not retro, it is also a classic.
A legendary game is a game that has been out for 5 or more years and is still widely played (at least a couple hundred thousand active players).
You can also have a legendary game in a franchise, which is not the same as a generally accepted legendary game. A legendary game in a franchise is categorised by a slightly smaller playing proportion (15% of the franchise fanbase, roughly) for a franchise that has had at least 5 main story releases (not spin-offs) since the game came out.
Important note: aging on games can vary as it will often vary if the person is still playing a game, for example someone who still plays 'minecraft' would not call it a classic as they have seen the latest releases, but if you ask them about 'og minecraft' aka earlier versions, they will agree that those earlier versions are classics. A new version is the same as a new game in the franchise, but as we call each version the same name (we don't call it 'minecraft version 1.0.0', we just call it 'minecraft') it is harder to differentiate between versions than something with specific releases like fifa (we don't call 'fifa 15' 'fifa', we call it 'fifa 15'
I think this set of rules nicely categorizes games for a majority of people to agree when I say a game is retro/classic/legendary. I've never had anyone say a game is in a lower category (for example nobody says a classic game is retro, or a legendary game is classic), but I occasionally get people saying a game should go up a category (these are often fans of the game and believe that their game is the one true game to play, they are delusional).
The most reasonable explanation in my opinion is when a game is two console generations old. Like I would consider ps3 and xbox 360 retro but nothing beyond that
A retro/classic video game to me is something that has longevity. We will always have older games but not all will ever be considered retro or classic.
If we ever came out with a retro selects collection of games, we would have games like mega Man, crash bandicoot, Zelda, Mario, sonic 1-3 and final fantasy V, VI, IX.v
I thought the same on pandemic where I was playing smash ultimate and started feeling nostalgic about smash 3DS.
After hours of thinking, I came to the conclusion that the "retro" label is subjective, games are just games, made on different eras and different platforms, "retro" is just a concept made up by the people. So, everyone has a different idea of what's "retro" or not, as there aren't clear rules, or anything.
On the other hand, we have stuff like game genres, whereas we know which genre a game is because despite "rules" for each genre not being explicitly said, we know how they work, so we can define what's a platformer, a racing game, a shooter, a moba, a fighting game, among others. The same can't be said about a game being retro or not, as the game devs have never acknowledged their games as retro.
If we’re going by the 10 year rule, that means things like the sims 4, Portal 2, and Mario Kart 8 are all retro games. Damn
I like that you pulled comments from the poll and id like to expand on mine saying that to me retro implies something that came before so if your game is the most recent one that cant be retro for example paper mario became retro the moment bug fables came out because its basically the same game but with modern qol and handling upgrades and the same with something like jet set radio and bomb rush cyberfunk
I consider retro to be about 2 gens ago or about 15+ years ago
I agree with how the game feel makes them retro or not. Though alot of game from 6th/7th gen still hold up suprisingly well compared to modern games. So they are definitely old enough to be called retro, but it still feels weird to put them in the same category as super mario world or kirby superstar.
I find “retro” to be more of the vibe you get from playing a game, mostly when it feels old. I agree with whoever said that it’s in relation to how much gaming has evolved since then. A GBA game feels retro because we can see how much portable gaming has changed an improved since the 2000s. However, GameCube, PS2, as well as early 360/PS3 are only just starting to be considered retro because the 3D landscape is evolving so much.
Another viewpoint could be that a generation is “retro” whenever a mass number of people begin to get nostalgia for an older generation from their childhoods and thus the retro gaming market expands a lot for that generation. Looking at it this way, a game or console from 3-4 generations prior to the present generation would start to be retro. So today’s 9th generation finds the 5th and 6th generation to be retro, which checks out.
Even though I played some GameCube games when I was young, I still consider these retro. They're very playable but overall feel kinda old. I'm just dreading the moment when games like Mario Kart Wii and Mario Galaxy are considered retro.
They already are by anyone younger than you
Retro gaming has other connotations to consider. "Simpler games from a simpler time" being my go-to. Something that also adds to retroness is pop culture present in a game: Duke Nukem is a classic example. Finally, consider the age/generation that made the game and the core attributes they used in game design. Is the ultimate goal of a game to earn a high score? Probably retro.
Imo when you consider all of this along with hardware standards and prevailing trends, it goes something like:
Retro Games: 1978-1994
New Millennium: 1995-2011
Modern Games: 2012-Present
I avoid using the term "Transitional" so as not to imply that era was a means to an end: I largely believe modern games are far more akin to retro games in their predatory, anti-consumer, gambling lite practices than those from the new millennium era. This corresponds directly with the mid-2010s push to normalize nerd culture for market appeal. This push worked, but the quality of games has diminished drastically generally because of it. I anticipate this trend will end within three years.
I feel the opposite about Mother 3 and Dead Rising.
Mother 3's spritework and gameplay have held up fantastically and the game could easily have been released today, as proven by games like Eastward that take inspiration from it.
Dead Rising's animations, character models and lighting are all distinctly early HD, because they're more detailed than the PS2 but don't reflect light realistically like modern games. Animations are a lot more complex now, where games will use an entirely different animation set for your character when you're in combat.
I think that's a big thing people overlook! The 7th Gen, especially early on has a distinct feel that is immediately noticeable if you're accustomed to it.
I think most people who get hang up on the term "retro" are younger people who grew up with the 8th gen onwards as their only system - a lot happens in game design outside of the obvious graphical changes. It's why modern retro throwbacks still don't feel 100% like games of the era they're mimicking either.
I'm definitely with the idea that retro is more about there have been a significant leap technologically speaking. I feel like technological advancements has slowed down over time so the gaps of what can be considered retro (to me) are larger than what they used to be.
I think trends have a big thing to do with retro gaming because of the fact that some people were followers of certain game genres because the pathway was paved by others, the same way you only really see platformers as retro because of the era it came with.
If retro “look & feel” is the standard, then polygon era spanning from n64 to start of ps2 can definitely pass the eye test, along with the limited controls/mechanics lending to the blocky look (giving it an older feel/exp.).
Growing up w any of the consoles after tht era, at least for me, makes any one of them retro to the degree you enjoyed them for gaming. ps2 and some wii games look “old enough,” but even an ACII or Left 4 Dead gets the retro stamp just bc they were fun growing up .
Man, little big planet is 15 years now!
The Gaming landscape hasn't changed that much for the Past 10 Years.
In the early 2000s, that was another story: The landscape evolved quickly
and due tho that even a 4-Year-old game could feel Retro back then.
We have to take into consideration that the differences between the early generations were massive, technology was evolving with inmense speed, nowadays, theres little to no drastic distinction between 8th to 9th gen, that would explain the feeling around the early 2000s regarding the the mid 90s being retro.
I think the reason that it’s harder to see 10-year-old games as retro today compared to in the past is because of how far we’ve come along in terms of graphical fidelity.
For example, the leap from Xbox the Xbox 360 was huge while the leap from the Xbox one to the Xbox series line of systems didn’t do much for graphical fidelity, opting to focus more on reaching 120 fps. therefore, the Xbox one and PS4 don’t really feel retro because they’re pretty similar to what we have today
I understand the point of this video and in some aspects I agree with you... But I don't have any problem acknowledging that yes, GTA V, The Last of Us, Dota 2, Skyrim, etc. ARE retro games. Same goes for pretty much everything released before 2014.
I agreed with the last thought about eras. Category every few consoles generations on their own era, would better represent the video game history . Specially cuz many new games are "retro inspired", mimicking not only NES, SNES and Genesis style, but now are starting to go for N64 ands PS1 as well.
I think the age of the person answering the question about what is retro is a part of the equation. As a 46 year old gamer who has been playing since Atari 10 years isn't retro. I've been playing Warframe for almost 10 years. 20 years ago I was still 26 and games then seem not as far off from the tech we have now. They were all still 3D, disc based games, with soundtracks and eventually voiced dialogue. You go back to Atari, NES, SNES, Genesis it was nothing like what we have now. Unless you have a independent developer intentionally making a game to ape that time frame. On the flip side no matter your age I feel like a lot of people feel nostalgia for certain things from the memories they have of it and that time in their lives then. Nostalgia has no needed amount of time. D.E. recycled an old mission tile set one time for a new update. And boy that nostalgia kick in for me for something that was removed from the game only 4-5 years ago.
i consider retro before 2000 too and nice video man 👍🏻
That’s a pretty trash opinion lol
@@MadPaperMario💀
I'm curious how post 2000 releases on pre 2000 consoles fits into this. The N64 and PS1 were both getting regular releases after 2000
Great vid and question to be asking! I like the idea of retro as an "era" for older consoles. It doesn't make sense to go purely on look and feel. By those standards, Undertale which came out in 2015 would be considered "retro" before Grand Theft Auto V which released the same year
i'm a fan of the "retro era" take. i'd imagine it's from the start of video gaming in general up to about the 6th gen. that could easily change with the person but thats how i see it
To me, games from any time period I didn't grow up in feel retro. Since I first started playing games probably around 2006-2008, anything before this time period feel retro to me.
Here’s how it goes in my mind
Vintage: before 1979
Retro:1980s-1995ish
Classic: 2001-2010
Anything else is either old or new because the difference is more that of feel than year or tech, though tech often helps feel