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

[Manga4life]

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.

[NayusDante]

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.

[Collector_Gaming]

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

[treismac]

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.

[exit]

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.

[treismac]

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.

[Yago]

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.

[Rickstilwell1]

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.

[Icarus Moonsight]

I tend to think the distinction is best exemplified by a games gameplay type and/or visual style rather than a hardware/platform cutoff.

[Sunnyvale]

I tend to think the distinction is best exemplified by a games gameplay type and/or visual style rather than a hardware/platform cutoff.

This. Hardware differences and style differences have shown this to be true.

[Leo_A]

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).

[Sanriostar]

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.
Get me my Geritol and Whiskey tumbler, and fill it to the top, won't 'cha?

[Sabz5150]

Uses Li-Ion batteries and runs for twenty hours: Modern.
Uses AA batteries and runs for 50 minutes: Old School.

[substantial_snake]

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.

[Richter Belmount]

playstation 3 and blu ray discs

[retroman]

i would say Dreamcast is pushing it, but anything before that

[goatdan]

If you're asking for "retro gaming", that's tougher. For me though, Classic Gaming got a great definition in 2001 that I use to this day. And, it's what we use as the official definition for the Midwest Gaming Classic... I need to tell a short story though.

We were having a lot of trouble trying to figure out where to cut off the 2002 show. We wanted to do a "classic" gaming show. There was the feeling that classic should be anything 2D or earlier only. Then, there was the feeling that it should include newer systems like the Saturn and PS1. Another school of thought was making it 8-bit and earlier.

I decided to ask my cousin, who was about eight at the time, what he thought was a classic game. After a few moments of thought, he very earnestly said, "Sonic Adventure for the Dreamcast." I had to ask, why that game -- it wasn't that old? His response was that it was an older game (to an 8 year old, a 2 year old game is quite a long time...) and that he always had great memories of coming to my house and playing it.

I realized *that* was the key. A game is classic when the person playing it has great memories of playing it that makes it classic. It doesn't matter if the game just came out, if you have fun playing it in a way that it will be truly memorable, then that is a classic game.

I still use that definition to this day. Classic is in the eye of the beholder, and instead of trying to pick out exactly what is and isn't a classic, let's celebrate what everyone thinks is a classic, even if it appears to be modern to us

[WelcomeToTheNextLevel]

We're six years and another generation on.

I would now consider the 7th /128-bit/PS2 generation classic. That means the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube. The Dreamcast has long been considered classic.

This generation, the 9th, started around 2013.

Sony has the PS4, Microsoft the Xbox One, and Nintendo the Wii U and Switch.
(The Switch has been out for almost a year and no PS5 / Xbox whatever's-next has been announced yet. I think it's safe to say that they're not coming till 2019 or later. I would guess 2020 or 2021)

The previous (8th) generation is dead.
PS3 was discontinued October 2016, Xbox 360 April 2016, and Wii is an interesting case.

Wikipedia says the Wii Mini is still in production, but I haven't seen Wii-anything on sale at GameStop, Wally World, etc, and (https://www.statista.com/statistics/...console-sales/) says that no Wiis were sold after March 2016. No games have come out for the Wii in America since November 2015, with the exception of two Just Dance installments.

Still, I wouldn't call it classic yet. Classic, to me, is generally when a system is two generations out of date, or has had no new games for five years.

The last USA PS2 game was FIFA 14, on September 24, 2013. But in its case, this is a system that peaked in the 2001-2006 era, and its last good year for games was 2009. It got a dwindling trickle of shovelware, cheap licensed games and watered down sports updates from 2010-2013. I would say it was right around 2014 or so that the PS2 went classic. At that point, the current 9th gen systems were out, the 8th gen systems were on the decline, and the PS2 hadn't got any A titles in five years.

For the original Xbox, it had Madden NFL 09 on August 12, 2008. August 12, 2013 seems about right for the time it went classic.

The GameCube's last game was (surprise, surprise) Madden NFL 08 on August 14, 2007, which gives us a date of August 14, 2012.

[jb143]

Classic, to me, is generally when a system is two generations out of date, or has had no new games for five years.

But the term "classic" doesn't have as much to do with age as it does with quality.

Classic: judged over a period of time to be of the highest quality and outstanding of its kind.

So Super Mario Bros 3 would be considered a classic game. Super Pitfall, not so much.

Though the original question was about systems being considered "retro" or "old school". I personally have a hard time putting anything post 16-bit in that category, though clearly I wouldn't consider PS2 or GameCube "modern" systems.

[AceAerosmith]

"Old School" and "Retro" are games that you looked back on nostalgically, play when you're older, and realize they really weren't that good.