What is a "Retro" Game? (or...when?) 

I feel like saying a game is “Retro” is like saying a game is “Nostalgic” It’s very subjective and hard to nail down.

As a kid born in the mid 2000's, I'd also like to add on that you'll likely consider any game made before you were born as retro lol

I love these “defining vague and terribly unhelpful gaming terms people throw around like they have no meaning” videos

Stop making me feel ancient my man

One thing that I want to bring up is that generational advances become less obvious over time, the leap between the 4th and 5th gen from 2D to 3D is definitely more impactful than the leap from the 7th gen to the 8th gen. Due to this it takes more time for a gaming generation to feel retro than before. This is also why the DS feels retro while the Xbox 360 does not, the technical capabilities were much lower and the machine therefore "feels" older

The idea of the ds being considered retro is a scary thought

I consider N64 and older retro as a game development rift between old school game design and modern game design. That really started cementing itself in the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox era. N64 and PS1 make it because they were still trying to figure things out and fight the hardware when it came to 3D design so those games often don't fit in the modern framework.

On a similar note, Nirvana's _Nevermind_ was released in 1991 - 30 years ago. 30 years before _that,_ in 1961, The Beatles… hadn't even released an album, yet!

I think this made me realize that we can't really compare the passage of time. Technology is advancing so rapidly that what we consider retro between 2000 and 1980 is a whole other context between 2020 and 2000

Imagine a time where people make burly, neckless protagonists with chesthigh walls to crouch behind and lots of brown environments not because of corporate committee design but because it's retro 🤣

Video Game Generation Era Classification List: “New” Gaming Consoles - 0-9 Years Old “Old” Gaming Consoles - 10-19 Years Old “Retro” Gaming Consoles - 20-29 Years Old “Vintage” Gaming Consoles - 30-39 Years Old “Antique” Gaming Consoles - 40-49 Years Old PS5, Xbox Series X/S (New) Nintendo Switch Lite (New) Nintendo Switch (New) PS4 Pro, Xbox One X (New) PS4, Xbox One (New) Nintendo Wii U (New) Nintendo Wii (Old) PS3, Xbox 360 (Old) Xbox (Retro) Nintendo Gamecube (Retro) PS2 (Retro) Sega Dreamcast (Retro) Nintendo 64 (Retro) PS1 (Retro) Sega Saturn (Retro) SNES (Vintage) Sega Genesis (Vintage) Sega Master System (Vintage) NES (Vintage) Atari 5200 (Vintage) Atari VCS (2600) (Antique) Atari Pong (Antique) Magnavox Odyssey (Antique)

4:24 "We don't see developers going out of their way to emulate this style." A Hat in Time disagrees

30 years old and still have my OG xbox, N64, Gamecube (with gameboy attachment), and Wii.. this video made me realize I may be more of Antique gamer now, surpassing retro lol

I think in general "Retro" can be described as being 3 generations behind the current generation of consoles, NES games were retro around the gamecube era, PS1 was retro during the era of the PS4 and now original Xbox games are seen as retro

Sometime in the future there's gonna be people that want one of those retro Xbox Ones and PS4s

I consider anything made primarily for CRTs to be retro.

As someone who grew up playing the Gamecube when it came out I would consider anything before the HD era to be considered "retro" but I can see some people arguing that it goes past that.

My mark for retro is 15~ years ago. Gamecube, PS2, Xbox are all retro to me now

There already is a wave of ps1 inspired retro horror games.

The Berlin Wall was up for 28 years, and came down 32 years ago

People are making throwbacks to the PS1 early 3D. Dusk, Ultrakill, A short hike.

With regard to video games and their hardware, retro is actually something that is at least 2 generations old or whose software and hardware are no longer sold and also no longer officially supported on the software side. So that's a Nintendo Wii, PS3 or X-Box 360 retro. A WiiU, PS4 or X-Box One, on the other hand, does not

I’m in my 40s. My first gaming experiences were on the Atari 2600 when I was a child. Retro gaming is constantly evolving IMO. I would consider it a generational thing. Say the Xbox and PS2 would be what I considered retro by today’s standards. The 360 and PS3 would be too new as of yet to be truly Retro. But who knows. I have my PS3 to buy the PS1 JRPGs I missed out on in my early adulthood because career reasons. $10 for Suikoden II is much better than $400. I still have to go through my old cartridges and replace the batteries in almost all of them. Crazy times.

The DS is most definitely undeniably retro, Hell, as of recent, I've come back to my old DSi and realized the last time I used it was like 4 years ago and I played it then to get nostalgia about when I used to play it 9 years ago

Nostalgia never occurs if you never stop playing or doing something

When I was very young, I loved playing ratchet and clank on the ps2, but looking back on it, that wasn't what I remember most fondly of my childhood. I remember the ps3, wii, and ds as the consoles of my childhood, the ones I've had and played for a very long time, and about a year ago I bought a copy of Driver: San Francisco off of ebay because I was nostalgic for when I played it when it came out back in 2011. So yeah, my nostalgia trips are definetly hitting the hardest for that generation, the late 2000's, the earliest time I can clearly recall.

I was under the impression, that "retro" means something new, using an old style. So, NES Super Mario isn't retro, it's, classic, perhaps. Anyway. I've used a rule of thumb, if a mid-range PC can emulate a console, it's retro. Caveats apply, some never systems are easier to emulate than older ones, like 360 vs Saturn. And Nintendo using somewhat less powerful hardware than it's competitors means, that Switch is getting to that "emulates well on a PC" bracket...

If rising worth is a faktor, I shiver in fear, because that means the Wii and Nintendo DS are beginning to be retro!

as a video game collector who was born in 2002 I personally qualify anything that's 20 years or older to be retro heck the Japanese show GameCenter CX recently added Gamecube and Gameboy Advance games to their lineup as they now consider those systems to be retro which is pretty interesting to hear although I believe there's multiple factors for something to become retro and not simply the passage of time, it's just that us "retro gamers" like to keep it simple and give cut-off dates

"Whatever's experiencing a nostalgic resurgence" makes the most sense as a definition to me. There are specific counterexamples, like how "retro-futurism" is a specific aesthetic, but it seems like an effective enough guide. The graphical styles of games doesn't make as much sense considering the rapidity of iteration in the earlier years, which has certainly diminished since perhaps the late 00s. An important lesson is that visual design is always more important than pushing new tech; at some point we'll have every lighting technique and dynamic volumetric destruction simulation and it will once again be a matter of making something people want to play rather than baiting preorders with shiny prerendered promotional material.

I grew up with NES, I’m 38, this video made me feel older and more ancient than squeaker could accomplish.

This made me feel so very old. Also, your music slaps and I don't see enough people mention it.

considering that visible improvement in game graphics has slowed down and become more subtle over the years, it's really hard to call consoles such as the xbox 360 "old" or "retro" when the technology still LOOKS relatively new, and most importantly does not affect the kinds of games that are available on it. With that in mind, I usually draw the line at the time console games started focusing on online multiplayer. Maybe one day people will be drawing their "line" at whenever VR becomes widespread and affordable.

It felt really weird opening up the browser on my Wii U and realizing just how much time I spent on it as a kid. And then it dawned on me that the Wii u came out 8 years ago when I was 11.

An important distinction regarding 3d "retro games" from the ps1 and ps2 era versus the 2d era of gaming is that the technology allowed for a much more realized result for the developer to produce their gaming concept. That's why you see these games getting remastered to modern graphics, rather than new games paying homage to those graphics. 2d games are much more stylistic, while a 3d game in the 64-256 bit era just doesn't stand the test of time when you have the option to play something with graphical fidelity that shares the exact same mechanics in a 3d landscape.

I think an important factor in this that you aren't considering in this video is the large jumps in technology. While it's true that Xbox360 was released in 2005 which is 16 years ago, the jump from 2005 to 2021 in technology is relatively small compared with the 16 year jump from 1989 to 2005. To me "Retro" isn't the amount of time that has passed it's the technological gap and games from an earlier technological era. Xbox360 games barely fit that bill no matter how long ago it released.

Really good video, I think it's the 4th or 5th of yours I've seen in a couple of days before finally subbing. You're right there's no clear answer and the PS4 example at the end is excellent to demonstrate that. Personally, I think it may be easiest to say something 2+ generations old is Retro, I haven't thought too much about Antique that may be it's own topic. Could be as simple as 4+ but I'm unsure if that works.

Interesting perspective, especially as it's becoming more common to remaster/rerelease games on next gen hardware. You get waves of nostalgia for a game like Last of Us: one wave for its PS3 release, one for its PS4 remaster (the way a lot of people first experienced it), and presumably there will be another wave for this PS5 reremaster that's in the works. Not to mention something like Skyrim, which has seen a thousand different editions...

Something someone said once regarding retro vs non-retro in video games has stuck with me ever since. Because of this I define a console or game as retro if it was released at least 15 years ago and two generations ago. So I would, as of the time of writing, consider the entirety of the seventh generation (e.g. Wii, Xbox 360, PS3, etc.) and earlier to be retro. The DSi and systems like it are somewhat trickier as they contain improved hardware and their own set of exclusives, but I think it could also be considered an iteration of the DS hardware. This makes the most sense to me personally as during the seventh generation I probably would have considered the PS1, Saturn, and N64 retro consoles. I think it helps to realize that retro still has value. For example, some of my favorite games are older than me -- some by a good bit. If the game still brings enjoyment, it still matters. As an aside, I wouldn't mind a PS2-styled retro throwback game. 😂

The idea of Christopher Strachey 's Draughts for the Manchester Mark 1 being ancient is scary for me. Obviously because I was there for its 1951 presentation as the first "technically completed" "video" "game". /s

these outro jams are becoming my favourite part of these videos

I'm born in 95, and as something of a Videogame collector I think the Wii is the newest retro console. This mainly comes down to the technology used, it looks older than PS3 and X360, but also video outputs. My current screen doesn't have an Analog video input. So I have to convert the Wii into a digital HDMI signal to play my wii games on original hardware (barring Wii u). And that's kind of where I currently draw the line. How much effort is it to set up currently. I could give a PS3 to a random person and they could just use it. But with the Wii it takes effort. A willingness to read into conversion and line doubling and lag etc. To me that's the effort line.

I’m 20 and I feel nostalgic about Halo 3. Just wait until today’s kids feel nostalgic about Halo Infinite.

it used to be pretty clear cut that anything before 6th generation was retro. yes, they were still standard definition games, but they were 3d with relatively smooth graphics. now we're throwing age into the mix, but i don't think the age matters as much as the technology involved.

Your example of the '11 year old kid when the ps4 came out' really hit me as I was 11 when it came out, now in 2 weeks time ill be 19 and have been working my job for 3 years and since done my GCSEs (UK) and currently on the verge of passing a plumbing course at a local college

I was born in 2001 and my first experience in gaming was playing one of those consoles that had a bunch of old nes games already installed into them that my parents bought me. Now those old games give me a sense of nostalgia remembering the good times playing Contra with my dad as a kid.

Really imo any game that’s more then 25 years old should DEFINITELY be considered to be retro. Right now the N64, PS1 and Sega Dreamcast are becoming retro. You can tell because of more interest with them, Nintendo switch online adding the N64 and more and more reasons. GameCube will also be retro soon. I can’t imagine when the wii will be retro… not that I had one lol. “The Wii is retro” AHHHHHHHH “The WII U is retro” AHHHHHHHHHHHHH

To sum this up: GOD I FEEL OLD AS DIRT!

I grew up with the DS and PS3 as a kid and when I turned 20 just this past year I bought some old games I used to play because of nostalgia, and it still hit me hard when he said the DS could be considered a retro console

The reason it feels so off to call games from 2007 retro even though games like mario world would be considered retro in the same time frame I feel is innovation games haven't changed nearly as drastically since 2007 as they had from 1991 to 2007.

This channel deserves infinitely more subs

To me at least, it is safe to assume that once a game or game system reaches (at minimum) 15 years of age. It is now technically “retro”, as most system and system games aren’t being produced and sold to consumers, and successful emulation systems begin to become more common.

I always thought something older than 15 years is definitely retro. Older than 10 is arguable. I never thought of something being retro based on anything else other than how old it is. I'd say "retro games are any games that are older than 10 to 15 years old".

:) 9:30 makes me feel glad for still updating it not only since it's the basically the household m.o. for playing Blue-rays and DVD's even if it's losing relevance to streaming

the ps3 being 'retro' is sending me for a loop because i didnt get a ps4 until 2019, my family has had our ps3 since '09. It still feels like a new thing for me. I'm 14 and a half

To muddy the waters even more, is an old game that's still getting updated considered retro? The oldest game I played frequently growing up was Garry's Mod (2004), and it's still getting updates 16 years later.

I think "retro" gets it's charm and appeal from nostalgia, which is more personal. For me at this time, I draw the line at the 6th generation of home consoles (ps2, Xbox, etc)

I like that, due to games being a new media yet have been around for half a century means we get to see gamers get old. specially since tech is progressing a lot it can make a 20 year old feel old and a middle age dude ancient.

As someone born in the early 2000's, the PS2 and the DS played a huge role in my childhood and the childhood of almost all my friends, now we are all around 18 and 19 and we are all nostalgic for those systems

i love your content and support you moving over to Whimsu, but I would suggest better branding from KnowledgeHub to Whimsu. Like even having similar colors/basic art styles could go a long way to getting people over from KnowledgeHub

As someone who was born in 2001, I grew up primarily with the 7th generation of consoles. The consoles I had as a kid were a PS2, PS3, a PSP, a Wii, and a DSi. Those are consoles that I'm nostalgic for, and will always hold in high regard. But I cannot fathom them as "retro" consoles. For me an example of a retro console is a Genesis, or an N64. Mainly things that peaked before I was born. Things I didn't grow up with and didn't have the chance to play.

I was born in 2008 and I consider everything before the XBOX360 as retro. Even though the 7th gen released before I was born, I played those consoles at friends houses and with my family. My first console was 8th gen (Wii U). So I consider the DS, PSP, PS2, OG XBOX, and Gamcube, along with everything before that, retro.

Not just graphics, many "modern" games use design philosophies that were established in the 2000's, so if graphics aren't as drastically different as they once were, only design can make a game feel "retro", but since games still use the same design that doesn't happen. Games on the ps3 and x360 are only going to feel very old once we have a new standard, that could game design but i think it will be VR, if that becomes the standard, any other games will feel old within a few years.

A 20 year delay is reasonable for retro for me. Having technological advancements become smaller with each generation makes the latest retro thing feel increasingly less old though. I may have played destroy all humans when I was 4, but I can also play it in 4k with backwards compatibility and it doesn't have a particularly retro feel to it compared to a game that is only 5 years old. Pixels, low poly, and cartoony platformers by default feel more retro to me. I struggle to imagine a day where people will specifically try to recreate the look and feel of a ps3 or even late ps2 game because they just don't look or feel that different.

It's two generations back. NES games in Gamecube's Animal Crossing was wild and unexpected. So today, the 360/PS3/Wii/DS/PSP era is now "retro" I'm in my 30s and I have big nostalgia for my college days playing PGR3 on the 360 and Loco Roco on my PSP.

I'd say "retro" is anything that's 20 - 25 years before the current year, and anything before that is more "antiquated". this is based on the fact that i can't get 20 year old PC games running/working properly without external tools or mods (the original Deus Ex being my main example).

A throwback to something that was popular and fell out of fashion at some point, the older games themselves are vintage (if they are high quality, otherwise they're "just" old) Antique is generally something 100+ years old and of high quality for its time or in general

Personally, I’ve always seen anything at or before the PS2 era as retro, the PS3 and newer are “modern”, HD graphics, network connectivity, online gaming, movie streaming, all that stuff is there.

This is a great video at making me feel bloody old. Reminds me of a conversation I had with my mum the other day and she mentioned that she was born 18 years after the end of WW2 and I laughed and said that would be like me saying I was born 18 years after the moon landing. Then did the maths in my head and realised that I was indeed born 18 years after the moon landing.

i like this video, but you forgot one thing: homebrew. as kids end up growing up, they find their own box to be useless, because you want the next best thing, but what if your useless box, wasnt useless anymore? thats where homebrew comes in. you can "backup games", customize your menu, cheat, emulate other boxes, and even turn it into a media center. hell, kodi started development as a media center. 3ds systems shot up dramatically because of homebrew, you can use discord on it and basically do anything you want with the thing. even switches that have bugs that arent patched still sell more than normal because you can run android and linux and emunands on them. hell, i own a hacked vita and i use it as a daily driver, knocking out even the switch because ps3 level games are one "backup" away because i own a 128 gb sd card and an sd2vita, and its compact formfactor makes it easy to carry around while also giving a servicable way to watch youtube, and movies. i'd call a console retro if its hacked easily (no "you need x firmware, or soldering required", more like "you need to have a pc, and the console", needing a game is pushing it but ill allow it) and discontinued. i would by definition call a xbox a retro console because its easily hacked, only requiring a dongle and a game, but not the xbox 360 because its still used for media centers, and its impossible to hack without cracking open your box. id guess you could call it "not official" but retro gaming isnt inherently official. if these companies could have their way they would probably lock down the older consoles and make you play the new ones, or pay some fee to use it. plus not to mention that you probably bought your retro console on ebay if you didnt get it in its lifecycle. but yeah, i think homebrew is a overlooked thing, and i hope more people can find it out and take place in it.

I was born in '02, and I grew up with, what at the time were about 10 year old consoles from the 32 bit era, so I consider those and earlier retro. I have so much nostalgia for n64 and ps1, but they're getting really expensive these days.

So by this definition the 1st Generation, 2nd Generation, 3rd Generation, and 4th Generation are all Antique, The 5th Generation and 6th Generation are Vintage, and the 7th Generation is Becoming Vintage, and of course all of these are called Retro, especially the 5th, 6th, and soon 7th gen. I predict the 8th Generation will become Retro by 2025-28, as by then someone who was between the age of 6 to 12 in 2012-2017 would be a young adult by then. Someone who is 10 now and somehow has a PS5 will likely find it retro by the time they are 20 in 2031. The Vita,3DS,Wii U,PS4,and Xbox One are approaching their 10th anniversaries in a year or two meaning that they will likely sky rocket in price and eventually become vintage enough for remakes of 8th gen games to happen.

2005 kid here, I generally consider any game console before the PS2/Xbox generation as retro.

Honestly i've always considered 'retro' to be more of an aesthetic than a time period. You can have a retro game made this year, if it implements elements of the zeitgeist of a non-curent era.

Personally, everything said here, except I'd put the eras count to the year that the console stopped being made, or the last game to be officially made for the console. That helps accound for long running systems.

I was never a part of the snes, nes, or atari generations but my parents were and we all had those games growing up. Needless to say I'm very nostalgic for them despite technically being a late n64 era kid.

I would also argue that retro invokes a distinct style and since gaming in 1985-2005 went through so many more style and hardware changes that retro feel is easier to differentiate than the all 3d, etc etc hardware and style of 2000-2020

To me, retro is when technology has pretty drastically improved since the creation of the thing in question and the limitations that influenced its development are no longer present. Games designed to be retro aren’t retro because they’re not facing the same technology limitations that retro games usually had to design around. All 2D Mario games play pretty much the same, but the newer Mario’s aren’t retro because they don’t have to be designed around the limitations of the hardware.

When it comes to consoles (including handhelds), my own vague definition for "retro" is anything older than the previous generation. That would make the seventh generation consoles (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii) the newest of the retro consoles. PC gaming is a whole other kettle of fish. Maybe anything 15 years and older? 10 years? 20?

I agree with your definition/unit of measurement. But it definitely feels like there was a leap in game design for the PS2/Gamecube era that we haven't fully left yet.

My favorite example of this is that the Wii (2006) is as old to us now as the SNES (1991) was to the Wii when it came out.

One could also apply the rule that a console could be called retro once it no longer has a section in most GameStops, but no sooner. This means that the current generation and the previous generation are never retro (upon which most people would agree) and that there's a delay between when a new console releases and the oldest non-retro console becomes retro. This also seems to check out in that people didn't suddenly start calling the PS3 a retro console the day the PS5 launched.

I’d consider ps2/GameCube era and before to be retro because at that was a time before online multiplayer was widespread. The consoles booted straight into the disc and not a menu if there was a disc in it, and all games had to be physical because downloading games wasn’t a thing yet.

I was born in 1995. The first console i ever played was the Sega Saturn. My neighbor also had a NES and Genesis. Sometimes we played his Super Nintendo too.

I think "retro games" will eventually become like "classic rock". Classic rock used to refer to any rock music made 20+ years ago, but as time went on it became a term to refer specifically to music of the 60s and 70s mostly. "Retro games" will probably have a similar evolution.

I feel like people underrate how much gaming has changed since the DS, Wii, 360, PS3, and PSP. The 8th generation of consoles lasted longer than most, and there are definite differences in the way games are designed now For example, microtransactions and even DLC in non-F2P were controversial back then, F2P itself was a controversial model, and a multiplayer only game that wasn't an MMO was nigh unthinkable. Now all those are almost more normal than games that don't have those things.

The way I see it is that there's current Gen, then there's last gen and everything before that becomes retro

Xbox 360 and Ps3 are for sure retro. 2005/2006 was a long time ago. People wont accept it because the graphics and gameplay still hold up and the fact that they lasted so long as the main consoles . Over 15 years ago .

I mean, that's curious, I'm 15 and I grew up playing the PS2, so I actually consider it to be Retro, but some more experienced gaming enthusiasts wouldn't say so. Loved the video, great work!

If anyone wants to have an amazing "Retro" collection for cheap start collecting 360/PS3/Wii/Wii U games. They are new enough that they can be found at any gaming shop or even thrift stores but just old enough that the price has plummeted. Don't wait 5 years to start collecting for the 7th generation cause the collecting competition will be much higher by then.

It’s almost like dating generations of humans like late gen xers and early millenials worshiped the 8 bit era and Atari before that where later millenials worship the snes up to GameCube era and probably early zoomers worship the GameCube to probably 360 generation. Every 20 years a old console generation hits the retro nostalgia age and is brought back into the light.

Yeah, most of this makes sense to me. The exponential technological increase during the 90's with video games complicates things, but in general I'd say "retro" can't simply mean the last decade because we're talking aboot less than 10 years. Like, think about it, you wouldn't call anything from the 2010's retro, especially early in this decade. So it has to be at least two decades away in general, with 90's video games being a special case. Vintage is more about the state of preservation, but I think you need to at least be a classic to be vintage, and classic definitely means at least 25 years old. Antiques? Video games haven't been around long enough. Antiques are on the scale of centuries. Books and furniture are antiques, video games are still comparatively brand new, and the emergence of the "retro games" culture in the mid-aughts was the actual literal first wave of stylistic recycling. Imagine being around the very first time someone decided to start wearing fashion from 20 years ago and deciding there was ever a time when "antiques" existed. Just sounds ridiculous.

I love the Genesis-Saturn era so much

i was born in 2002 and got my first video game device in 2011. it was a nintendo ds. couple of years later i got a wii. no i'd consider everything up to the ds retro and everything startig with the wii modern. but i don't think currently modern games will ever really have a mainstream retro market since most of them require online functions and servers to run. those will all have shut down in 10 years

Weirdly my online gamer friends range from 20’s to 70’s and I’m 47… the first Atari was my OG game system.

Maybe, we could argue that due to the way technology in game developing has advanced, with graphics and mechanics not being so different from each other in the recent generations of consoles, (games hold up more time this days), as well as the increasingly popular practice of re-realising recent games for new systems, the amount of time needed to pass for a game to be considered retro is increasing compared to how it was in the past.

I'm 36 but a lot of what I consider retro is changing. I consider PS2, Dreamcast and Gamecube retro etc whereas it didn't really enter my mind in the past. There's a bit of a resurgence of PS1 era style indie games with low poly graphics i've taken a liking to.

One day I will open up an arcade called “stuck in the 2000s” and it’ll all be considered retro by that time.

that one part where you said that peoples nostalgia of these things could then also become nostalgic later on is honestly kinda true. i was a preteen in the early 2010's and never grew up with an NES, SNES or genesis etc. (because that was before i was born) but around this time was when i got introduced to the internet and would see so many people online talk about old games that i never knew about and watching retro game reviews on youtube. Because i had so many fond memories of watching other people talk about this stuff, a lot of the iconography and music from so many old games have become nostalgic to me from other people's nostalgia. i definitely feel that most strongly with megaman, seeing him all over the internet in the early 2010's has ingrained the franchise in my mind as THE retro game icon and despite only recently did i actually play megaman for the first time, the series feels somewhat nostalgic to me just because of that association driven solely by nostalgic nerds posting memes, fan videos and remixes that i saw and was influenced by as a growing 10 year old.

As guy born in 2000 that grow up with Famiclone, PS2 and X360, anything before NES is retro for me.