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Thread: So, what do you consider to be "retro" or "old school" gaming?

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    Default So, what do you consider to be "retro" or "old school" gaming?

    So, there is always the ever-long debate about when systems can be considered "retro" and what counts as being "old school" within the gaming community so I figured I'd start a thread to see what the members of this community recognize as retro. With that said, when do you guys think "retro" gaming ended or what generation of systems would you say was the last to be considered classic gaming systems? For me, I'd say the golden age of gaming ended with the PS1/N64 because that's when current day gaming went from being fun and accessible to being flashy and over the top with realism. The Playstation and N64 produced some classic games that people still remember fondly and play to this day, it seems like the PS2, XboX, and GC came along and took the fun out of gaming and decided to "jump the shark" so to speak with how games were produced and marketed.

    It seems like video game ad's are no longer what they used to be whether it be in print or on television and it seems like people aren't going to look back and remember the past 10 years of gaming as a fantastic era when compared to the previous generations. But yeah, for me I'd say classic gaming ended with the PS1/N64 and even though some of today's games are fun and easy to get into it just seems like as a whole gaming will never have that "feeling" that it once had back in the day.
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    According to forum rules and accepted practice, the "Modern Gaming" forum is for PS2 onward, so everything Dreamcast and earlier counts as classic.

    That's the DP definition, and there have been many arguments over it. DC is technically in the PS2/GCN/XBox generation, so I'd push it over to Modern, but meh.

    My PERSONAL definition of "Classic" would probably end with SNES, and maybe include the Jaguar. Aside from performance increases, not a lot has changed from PSX and Saturn, where we got multimedia and high storage capacity at-launch (not in add-ons). Once you get to the social/mainstream features introduced with the Xbox 360, I'd say that we're in Post-Modern gaming, but that's just me.

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    how about this as a rule of thumb
    pre 2000 = Classic
    2000+ = Modern :P

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    Here is a rather simplistic rule of thumb I like to use:

    Cartridges = retro
    Disc = modern*

    *I have never heard of handheld gaming. Scrambled letters and numbers like PSP and 3DS are meaningless to me.

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    playstation 3 and blu ray discs
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    Quote Originally Posted by NayusDante View Post
    According to forum rules and accepted practice, the "Modern Gaming" forum is for PS2 onward, so everything Dreamcast and earlier counts as classic.
    You mean everything Neo Geo Pocket Color and earlier counts as classic. NGPC came out after the Dreamcast in 1999.
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    I tend to think the distinction is best exemplified by a games gameplay type and/or visual style rather than a hardware/platform cutoff.


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    Quote Originally Posted by treismac View Post
    Here is a rather simplistic rule of thumb I like to use:

    Cartridges = retro
    Disc = modern*

    *I have never heard of handheld gaming. Scrambled letters and numbers like PSP and 3DS are meaningless to me.
    You see that would work if it weren't for Sega CD, Turbo Grafix CD, 3D0, Sega Saturn and so on. A lot of the CD based consoles are mostly CD drive add-ons, but to the few that did fall under disc based, things aren't so black and white.

    I would say at this point, anything anything before the PS2 era would be considered retro, but that will surely change soon once the PS2 is finally obsolete for a few years.

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    My personal line of thought is classic gaming is everything other than the current generation of systems and the generation before that. So GBA became a classic system this year and the GameCube will enter classic status next year, for instance. And manufacturing has to have ended, which is why I wouldn't of considered PSOne as classic, even with the release of the PS3, until very recently (Thanks to many reprintings of games).
    Last edited by Leo_A; 11-22-2011 at 12:48 AM.

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    I'm probably the Get off my Lawn type:

    I still consider Pre-crash to be considered "retro"; a mental relic from the RGVC days.
    There's now systems considered old and classic by others that weren't even out when I started collecting.
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    Uses Li-Ion batteries and runs for twenty hours: Modern.
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    Two generations back = classics

    I go by this general rule because once you stop seeing major retailers stop selling a product it tends to fall away from the general gaming conciseness. Their are always special exceptions like the dreamcast and the various failed early to mid-90's consoles simply because their time at the forefront was so short. Also console relevance time frames tend to fall within 10-12 years and thats about enough time for many gamers to grow up and look back on what they played when they were kids as classic.

    This was how my friends and I defined classic consoles even when we were growing up and I always thought it was kinda a universal thing when they seemed to go by the same rules here.

    32-bit gen (16-bit still relevant) = 8-bit classic
    PS2, GC, XBOX gen (32-bit still relevant) = 16-bit classic

    And so on and so forth.

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    Anything not in the current generation is classic to me. Yes, even Xbox and PS2. I consider "modern" to be the current systems.
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    Quote Originally Posted by jonebone View Post
    Anything not in the current generation is classic to me. Yes, even Xbox and PS2. I consider "modern" to be the current systems.
    I agree with this. Anything that is hitting that "decade mark" and is last gen would place it in a "classic category".

    While I have been a classic gamer and grew up with the NES, that does not mean that the classic game systems should only be the ones I grew up with. As time moves on, so will the the games that people grew up with.
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    Quote Originally Posted by exit View Post
    You see that would work if it weren't for Sega CD, Turbo Grafix CD, 3D0, Sega Saturn and so on. A lot of the CD based consoles are mostly CD drive add-ons, but to the few that did fall under disc based, things aren't so black and white.

    I would say at this point, anything anything before the PS2 era would be considered retro, but that will surely change soon once the PS2 is finally obsolete for a few years.
    You're right. I am universalizing my experience as a gamer. Other than the Turbo Duo that I regrettably* returned quickly after being dissatisfied with it, I never owned any retro gaming CD players- they weren't part of my gaming reality. I did own a Saturn, but I forget entirely about its existence until someone mentions it or I think of its splendid Saturn Bomberman, so there you go.

    * I damn well hope that I used the money from the return on something kick ass, 'cause I'd love to have the Turbo Duo now.

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    I dunno. I guess you can refer to like the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision, Oddyssey and Vectrex as historical gaming? These systems I consider Retro or classic gaming. Nor will I ever consider anything else as classic gaming for the reason these are the systems that started it all. They were there in the beginning. Nothing else deserves to be listed in the same class as these systems in that time period. Just my opinion that don't mean jack anyway lol.

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    Retro/old school and classic to me are totally different in my opinion.

    I'd consider retro games at most 8bit or prior. Classic would be anything, as of right now, 64bit or prior.

    To me, retro isn't ever going to define anything beyond 8bit. It's where I started my gaming experience so it, to me, was when gaming first started. If I was older and started gaming earlier with my main console was the 2600 or something else, then I'd probably say that it would be retro and anything beyond wouldn't be.

    Classic doesn't define a beginning for me though. It's anything that could be considered archaic to todays standards.
    Everything in the above post is opinion unless stated otherwise.

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    Quote Originally Posted by kupomogli View Post
    Retro/old school and classic to me are totally different in my opinion.

    I'd consider retro games at most 8bit or prior. Classic would be anything, as of right now, 64bit or prior.

    To me, retro isn't ever going to define anything beyond 8bit. It's where I started my gaming experience so it, to me, was when gaming first started. If I was older and started gaming earlier with my main console was the 2600 or something else, then I'd probably say that it would be retro and anything beyond wouldn't be.

    Classic doesn't define a beginning for me though. It's anything that could be considered archaic to todays standards.
    I'd agree, 8-bit era feels like the Bronze Age of gaming to me, while the Iron Age would be the Genesis/MD up through the introduction of the PS2. Calling everything more than 10 years old "retro" is like saying that something that happened 65,000,000 years ago and something that happened 200 years ago were both "ancient history". Classifying things as either one or the other just seems too simple to get the stuff credit.

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    I think i have seen this asked before on DP somewhere,retro or classic to me is any computer or console from the begining (which in my case is late 70`s - early 80`s like the Atari 2600) upto and including the Sega Dreamcast.Anything after that like Ps2,GC,Xbox is not,i hear people say that a machine is retro after 10 years but i am not sure about that.
    I think it depends how old you are too.

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    If the default controller for the system at launch only had a d-pad, it's retro. (NES, SNES, Genesis, etc)

    If it had a stick or a disc or paddles or something else pre-d-pad, it's vintage. (Atari, Intellivision, Pong, etc)

    If it had a d-pad and a single analog stick, or the default controller had a d-pad but a later controller added a stick or two, it's semi-retro. (N64, PSX, Saturn, Dreamcast)

    If there's a d-pad and two analog sticks or motion controls, it's modern. (Xbox, PS2, GC, Wii, 360, PS3)

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