PC Games : when do they become "retro"?

[Swaain]

A question that has been bugging me lately : when do PC games become "retro"? I know this retro-forum is very console-centric (which suits me just fine!) but surely there are "older" PC games that would fit in nicely? What would your criteria be :

- Year of release?
- OS? Say : written for DOS, Win95/98, older MACs, etc.
- Software / compatibility (eg., unplayable on Win XP)?
- Hardware / compatibility (eg., unplayable on dual-core machines?)

I'm very curious to see what how you guys feel about this one!

[charlesr]

They become retro when I can play them on my PC

[kernow]

quake / quakeworld must be retro by now.. .... or is it?

[Swaain]

Good one, heh. I know you're joking, but does that mean you're in the "hardware camp" then? If so, how big should the "hardware gap" be?

[eastyy]

year of release i would say comparison to what console was around at the time of the games release

[Swaain]

quake / quakeworld must be retro by now.. .... or is it?

It's more than ten years old now, so I'd say it qualifies. But can we pinpoint why exactly? Is it just a matter of time? Because that's not necessarily true when we talk about "retro" on consoles, I think...

[Swaain]

year of release i would say comparison to what console was around at the time of the games release

That sounds intuitive, yes, but ultimately it means that you conceive of "PC game history" in terms of "console game history". It works on a forum like ours, because we'll know - more or less - what you're talking about, but is it really legitimate ?

[crazymadone]

mibbe not so accurate but another way you could look at it is format -
floppy > CD > DVD etc.

[Swaain]

mibbe not so accurate but another way you could look at it is format -
floppy > CD > DVD etc.

So for you : retrogames on PC = games that were originally released on a support that is not a DVD?

I think it's a good idea actually. Your suggestion places you firmly in the "hardware camp", but it also provides a solid and intuitive framework for thinking about "generations" of games.

[tom-nook]

It's bad enough trying to figure out what console stuff's retro or not

I'd say something's retro if it could be played on a pc that had less processing power than your mobile

[eastyy]

i always consider retro for consoles the previous generation


well i suppose then you could consider retro for pc games all the games that are before direct x 8 or something like that

[Swaain]

i always consider retro for consoles the previous generation


well i suppose then you could consider retro for pc games all the games that are before direct x 8 or something like that

Yet another good suggestion... Hm - I'll have to give it some thought, however . How would you describe Direct X as such? Is it a hardware interface library (if something like that even exists? I'm not technician...)

[eastyy]

well from what i can gather direct x is just something to make the communication between hardware and software....and for each direct x it adds new features to take advantage of the newer hardware

you could argue as well that while consoles got more powerful you could then take into account graphics cards as next gen or 1st gen

like the voodoo 1 2 3 then the geforce and radeons upto the now geforce 8800

[Rebelli0n]

Looking back there does seem to be distinct eras in PC gaming, but their borders are so fuzzy and vaguely defined.

One way to look at PC retro, is to focus on when games from a certain era stop just 'working' on the contempory OS of the time, without some substantial effort on the part of the user (which for example should put system shock 2 as retro).

It doesn't matter if other games from the era do work flawlessly (as theres always going to be a large body of games that probably do), as long as a notable number of big games from that time are no longer immediately compatible without a patch/lots of fiddling. I'm not suggesting this as an actual practical system mind, just thinking aloud.

Doing it by Direct X version isn't such a bad idea actually, as that does seem to be the closest thing to a generational leap the PC has these days. As a hardware abstraction layer/API, Direct x defines the overall characteristics of the hardware it'll be interfacing with. It's also used quite a lot in the gaming press, Crysis and DX10 are heavily linked, with crysis being positioned as the reason to upgrade to a DX10 card, as was the case with HL2/doom3 and DX9.

[Swaain]

I understand your line of reasoning (and I find it tempting), but what to do with :

(1.) The fact that DirectX is Win95 + only? What about Dos games, for instance? Is that only one "generation"?

(2.) Wouldn't reliance on DirectX releases leave us with a very impractical number of generations ? I mean : as far as I know, DirectX 1.0 was released in 1995; we're only twelve years later, and we've already had version 10 released. And that's not counting all the variants!

(See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX#Release_history)

I wonder if it would make sense, from a technical (programming) point of view, to group them as follows :

- ... -> up to DirectX 5.2 ('95-'98)
- 6.1 -> 8.1 ('98-'01)
- 9.0 -> 9.0c ('02-'07)
- 10.0 ->... ('06->...)

It would definitely be more practical than 10 "generations" on 12 years, and it could be coupled with shifts in supported hardware. I don't know really... that's really just the DirectX line of reasoning. I'm sure there are people with suggestions that are both more practical & intuitive.

The point being, of course : do we need / want a practical & intuitive definition of a PC game "generation", or a technically correct one?