What generations are considered Retro?

I'd say anything pre-6th gen.

6th gen on internet gaming, dual stick triggered and bumper button based controller were standard, and a lot of the games still look fine if displayed on a proper screen.

What do you guys think?

I dunno, but I feel like GCN/PS2/Xbox era feels pretty retro now and they came out 15-ish years ago. So maybe a rule like 15+ years old is retro? I was thinking about using "generations", but generations are becoming ambiguous now and don't have a predetermined lifespan.

Regardless, those generation of consoles is my answer.

I define it as being anything that came out at least two gens prior to the present, so gen 6 and earlier.

I don't know.. I count 16 bit (SNES) and before for retro!

for me its everything before 32 bit craze snes/gens is where I draw the line

In my mind, it's pre-gen 6. Most of the good games from that era still look good and play well.

But in reality, probably anything over 10 years old.

^^^ Pretty much this. ^^^

I still think of PS1/N64 below as retro, which is weird. It really should be bigger by now. :P

I guess PS2/Gamecube and Xbox would be retro, right?

@jumpaction:

NES-PS2.

Whenever I think of retro games, I think N64/PS1 and earlier but since PS2/GC/Xbox are already 15 years old, they're going to fall in that category pretty soon.

Sadly, PS2/GC/Xbox gen and before is what I would consider retro. I feel old.

This is how I view it too.

@PSP107:

Yeah, that sounds right to me. :)

Man... I feel old. Video games are moving so fast!

Wait so the PS360 are retro once The Switch releases?

To me retro is Pre-PS1/N64, before 3D games basically, when it was mostly 2D before titles like Mario 64 and Zelda Ocarina.

I think N64/Saturn/PS1 fit the retro tag mainy because they were early 3D consoles from a game design standpoint.

SNES or before.

I currently draw the line after the Dreamcast. I consider the Dreamcast and anything older than that to be retro. I don't feel ready to classify PS2/Gamecube/Xbox as retro just yet.

I'm not completely sure why I draw the line after the Dreamcast. Maybe because it marked the end of an era for the two gaming companies that I grew up with since Sega never made another console again after Dreamcast and Nintendo never had a console that was considered "cool" again after the N64. After that, the two newest players in the console marketplace, Sony and Microsoft led the industry.

Probably anything that is older than last gen is considered retro.

I'd consider sixth gen games retro enough, might depend on game but generally. Funny too since seventh generation with the introduction of online game stores for Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii, we'be seen a flood of both retro games in forms of re-releases of classics, as well as indie games that use a kind of retro aesthetic design choice. Even now we see games like say Broforce that use classic 2D presentation with simple pixelated presentation in world, characters, and using modern technology to push it kind of a hyper presentation unseen in older games without substantial framerate drops and game slowdowns. Or heck, Shovel Knight might be the best and well know example of such design choices.

To me, it's anything beyond the previous generation. so anything pre 360/ PS3/ Wii, which means I'm old as ****.

I'd say this is in line with my views on it.

Anything before the Sega Saturn.

5th generation and before that

I'd define any system older than last gen to be retro at this point. So Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox, and Gamecube, and GBA are all retro.

Yeah, gen 5 is where I start seeing things as retro. Not even sure why lol.

There is no universal definition.

To me there are next gen (Switch, Scorpio?), current gen (Ps4, xOne, WiiU, Vita, 3DS), last gen (Ps3, x360, Wii, PSP and NDS) and everything before it is Retro.

I always thought of 16bit as retro but honestly it should change to include the 32bit/64 bit era now.

Imo, 6th generation and below I consider retro.

My opinion would be from 8bit era to ps1. Right before FPs became the norm

Because Gen 6 is secretly like the 90s, it never went away. Just like the 00s were a slightly updated 90s, gen 7 and gen 8 outside of some minor exceptions, were just more of what we were getting from gen 6, and then 3D Gaming stopped evolving. The business model changed, the inside baseball stuff was modified for quality of life changes, but core concepts? It's all shit we already had.

The return of 2d games was the saving grace of gen 7 and 8.

Only thing we dropped from gen 6 was swinging chandeliers for platforming. Not gonna lie, for a brief second of replaying DMC4, I did miss those things lol

Iv been playing video games since the early 80s, for me anything N64 or older is retro.

Agreed, this is how I have always thought about it as well

lol, this whole post is right on the money.

5th gen and before for me.

@brah4ever: Coolyfett would say Gen 6 and prior are all retro legacy systems. So PS2, Xbox, GameCube and Gameboy Advance and older are all retro.

@Coolyfett: yep basically what i was going to say. man i feel old.

Now I think about it, not sure. I think subconsciously, I thought of pre SNES 2d and Game Boy as retro, so 8 bit really.

I think of "Retro" as 'Retro hard'. Everything after that is still pretty much accessible and playable.

I suppose in my mind, old and retro weren't the same thing. I mean many indie games are SNES standard.

So I don't know.

Like what sort of 2d games did you think did that.

Did 2d really go away? There may have been less platformers I guess on 6th gen consoles. I think the PC has always had incoming 2d games of some sort.

There has been some interesting developments with 2d I think. So they take old concepts and make use of the newer technology, like more capable CPUs and physics engines. Trials and Trine come to mind, but I can't say a lot about Trine, I haven't played it too much.

I wish I had a NES back when it was the new thing. Because now those games are very hard and difficult to get into. I gave up on Mega Man X on the SNES after a while. I enjoyed it and liked the charging of weapons and the mechanics, but the NES Mega Man games are something else. I was suprised that even Ninja Gaiden on the NES had good mechanics, and I think it's better than the Shinobi games.

On a related note to the sentence I put in bold, while I'm still yet to be convinced of the 8th gen, 2d games or not, I think the 7th gen is one of the best we've had, I mean I'd say 2d games made it even better, but 'saving grace' seems... idk. But for me, current gen is a bit disappointing. I think the 6th gen, while good at the time, is over rated. Outside of a few games, I don't feel like I'd go back to it. Yet I could imagine I'd be more likely to go back to almost any other gen to try games.

Don't get me wrong I like plenty of games in gen 7, but Gen 3-6 (and in contrast, I think Gen 5 secretly sucks) I could say we made dramatic steps forward in terms of where gaming was going, and gen 7 we maybe flirted with big advancements and then it outright stopped. Which is now an issue in gen 8 that's become less and less excuseable. Because we get plenty of good games, but I can't think of the last time (besides VR) where we had a game that felt really forward thinking or inventive in the 3d space from anything else we played.

As for the return of 2d, it's because fundamentally we created a market during gen 5 and 6, where because all the heavy hitters moved on to 3d gaming, a lot of quality 2d was some obscure ass PC game or handheld stuff. The beauty of last gen was besides just getting a Rayman back and Nintendo trying some 2d platformers on a console, we also got things like Super Meat Boy and Braid. The former being just a tightly designed video game (an excellent one at that), and the latter being a type of game we really didn't get in 2d's heyday. It sort of pointed out, hey there were still a few more ideas left in that well. Plus because of the simplicity 2d allows, you don't need a monster team on the project. 3d by its very nature is complicated. Which has led to some bitchin rogue-lites, games like FTL, or dope nostalgia trips like Shovel Knight. And then you get some more inventive action stuff like Hotline Miami, 2d stealth games like Mark of the Ninja and Gunpoint, and the Rainbow Six planning phase turned into a 2d top down game in fucking Door Kickers (which is rad). For whatever reason, the gaming industry barely recognized "hey, all this horse power will allow us to do stuff in a 2d game we couldn't do on the snes n genesis"

Having the indie space have a bigger spot light and come into its own last gen and this gen, has more or less carried this industry the last I want to say about 8 years. With no middle market, and entire genres dying off in the 60 dollar space, the independent side had to pick up the slack, and it did. And now we're seeing even more diverse and bigger projects, with things like Kerbal, Planet Coaster, Cities Skylines last year. I don't think we'll ever get an indie equivalent of GTA any time soon, but it's baby steps.

And yeah man true genuine classics don't age, I'm a staunch believer that "aging" is a bullshit concept people use to apologize for games that actually weren't that good. Reality is that short coming that is now bothering you was always there, you just didn't care as much because

A: You were a kid
B: It was considered revolutionary and/or pretty, so you gave less of a ****

But stuff like Mega Man? That game is still fucking satisfying, even the punishing nature of having to restart levels if you die to the boss 2 or 3 times.

I would give the PS2 era another Generation before they become "retro" though I shouldn't necessarily say you're "wrong" either.

Seems context dependent on age rather than something fixed. To a 20 year old, an N64 or gamecube will hold more nostalgia value as it will probably be their first console they played as a child.

For someone such as myself, from Europe (where these systems where popular) it's the Master System and the beloved Game Gear.

I like your use of words 'Dope' and 'Rad', lol :-P.

When it comes to, 'do games age?'. I think they can, like a lot of the early 3D games aren't easy for me to go back to. I'll play Jedi Outcast and Academy, still, but I don't think I could play the original Jedi Knight games for example. I didn't get to play them at the time. That said, I could still see myself enjoying some N64 games. And I have this thing for the first Tomb Raider game. I don't know if it's nostalgia, but I'd rather play that, then TR Anniversary.

I think some 3D genres that constantly evolve don't aways age well, like first person shooters or some racing genres. Like I wouldn't go back to the old Toca Racing series. I don't think it's true all the time, like I've been going back to old Pro Evo and Fifa games, because the new ones are just pure sim now, they aren't fun to me, it feels like the older ones were almost a different genre of arcade football games.

I don't think 2d games age. They are always playable and as flawed and as good as they were when they came out. I've played through Super Mario World more times than I know, I have all the secrets in the back of my head.

As for Mega Man, mind I'm playing them for the first time now, but sections seem so tight with the timing, that I had to wonder at the time if they were meant to be passed. I forget how demanding 8 bit games were until I got the NES Classic Mini. Outside of Mario, the games are tough. But they say it has problem in that, the original was meant for a CRT Television and there is no lag with that. The average LCD TV isn't like that and you need to practically have perfect frame timing to play NES games. This guy did a punch out test, where he beat it on the Original NES, but struggled on the HDMI NES Classic Mini.

Yeah you might be right. It's definitely on the cusp. So I can go with 20+ years.

Anything pre-last gen is retro to me. Let's just keep it simple.

Pre PS2 and Xbox. Same for PC, pre year 2000

Very interesting but tricky question to answer. To some degree, I think retro refers to stuff that you can't buy new anymore at retail. So, that does mean Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 fit into the category (albeit loosely).

It's true that it is hard to think about that generation as "retro", but you know, the game industry moves pretty fast. I feel like it was yesterday that I picked up my GameCube at launch! But now it's definitely retro in my mind.

I guess there are degrees of retro too. I mean, if you're a collector, then picking up GameCube stuff is totally different than picking up NES stuff (for example).

Everything that is not current gen

For me it's the 70s and 80s consoles and 8bit computers from my childhood.

@HalcyonScarlet

What makes Gen 6 one of the best gens in that you had four developers with four very different consoles, literally each console had it's own batches of games and games types that made one another unique.

The developers were more risk taking, whereas today most of what we get are safe open world games and shooters, a lot of the devs (a lot of which are now dead due to the events in gen 7) were experimenting with various new IPs and game types.

There used to be multiple variants of various genres, racers for example. Today all we have is Forza and Grand Turismo (barely). This wasn't always the case, there were futuristic racers, rally, street racing, etc. Sports games, had multiple variants as well. Heck, even arcade games such as Power Stone, Fight Night, or Def Jam Fight For NY were doing well.

Online gaming became a standard on consoles and there were zero microtransactions or any garbage like that, the games worked just as fine as they do today, 16 player lobbies, voice chat, etc.

The offline portions of the games weren't butchered and hell a majority of games allowed you to bring online guess (up to 4, for free) with you, a feature that is now dead due to businesses seeking profits saying "have them buy their own console, their own LIVE/PSN account, and game!". A game launching online only back then with 6 maps (think Overwatch) would have been considered insane back then, but today it's common practice. $60 for a half game.

Japan and the west were firing out games out left/right, Japan is former shell of itself compared to the past.

RE4, DMC, Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, Ninja Gaiden, Phantom Dust, SoTC, Kingdom Hearts, Viewtiful Joe, Phantasy Star Online, MGS2/3, Metroid Prime, etc were just a few of the games they were firing out.

EA/Ubi firing out games like Splinter Chaos Theory/Burnout, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six 3, etc.

Midway, THQ, Acclaim (as well as many others) popping out games as well.

Microsoft actually made more than just Halo, Gears, Forza. They had Phantom Dust, Crimson Skies, Mech Assault, Fable, Project Gotham Racing, etc.

Today? We have 2 consoles which are literally interchangeable for the most part, PS4/X1 that are pretty much PCs and have zero identity since they lack exclusives and a Nintendo console, the Wii U that has been dead since it launched. Absolutely abysmal 3rd party on the Wii U, system was lucky to get 3 good games a year. When I look at the catalogs whether it be on the shelves for the PS4/X1, I see literally zero creative amongst these games, most of them are just rehashed sequels from last gen that don't really play much different. Most being open world, shooters, or sports and offering little to the gamer who wants a more arcadey experience with friends locally. Consoles used to be about sharing experiences with friends and family now they are these singular 1 player only devices with the exception of like Madden, 2K, and FIFA.

Game budgets rose extremely high last gen and on top of CoD 4/Wii casual craze occurring many devs went bankrupt and the developers which survived last gen became more risk adverse and prefer to do things that guarantee sales, sequels and studying what's "trending" in the media.

NIntendo is irrelevant and would rather fire out Yoshi Wooly World or another NSMB than take risk on a Metroid Prime or F-Zero GX.

Without the indie market, gen 7 would have faltered faster than it did (it died around 2011ish tbh) and gen 8 would be more than a joke than it really is.

Most of the mechanics from game controls to online play came from gen 6, just take a look at your controller for example.

Gen 7 killed the AA but market but it's for sure doing better this gen than it was last where literally 90% of games were a CoD clone or Gears grey/brown clone.