The 'What's Retro to You?' Contest!

[hudson]

Are you so young that a retro game to you (I mean what were the first games you played) is something like Gears of War? If so, let's hear about it and make me and other feel even older!

Seriously, I'm just interested to know. Try and be honest. No judgement here. I just like looking at gaming from all angles sometimes. I still hope there are gamers in Japan that import crappy EU games thinking they're the coolest import gamers in Japan

Retro to me is Jet Set Willy, so I know I'm not going to win this special contest.

Join in no matter what age!

[Colin]

First videogame I ever played was Pong, or at least a Grandstand brand rip-off of it. Man I loved that thing on my little portable black and white TV. Yes, I'm old.

[Brad]

Same here. Pong variant on a Grandstand or similar, can't remember exactly. Then Atari 2600 with Space Invaders, Combat, Superman and Phoenix.

Actually, I didn't answer the question fully. PS2 era, back to Grandstand type X-in-1 consoles with RF out only usually.

[Cepp]

It's anything up to and including the PS2 era for me. 8bit-32bit is what I think of when I think retro though. Alex Kidd to Ridge Racer...etc.

[Colin]

Forgot the other half of the question, for me proper retro is PCE, MD, SFC, NEO and what went before. Though I wouldn't disagree anyone saying from the systems directly after them up to and including the DC were wrong, it's just the 16-Bit era and back will always be the golden age to me.

[Asura]

I consider everything up to the PS2's era to be retro, but it isn't about age - I consider gaming to have shifted significantly in the 360 era to the point where by the time the 360 was in high gear, gaming was basically identical to how it is on the PS4/ONE, despite the (disappointingly minor) visual improvement.

Basically I don't feel things have moved on particularly since technical stand-outs like MAG, Mirror's Edge or Assassin's Creed 2.

Conversely, PS2/GameCube gaming was still of that mindset of box, disc, shop - insert disc and play. No updates, no posting **** to Twitter that no-one cares about, no metagaming. In that respect it was the same as the Megadrive era.

[kryss]

First videogame I ever played was Pong, or at least a Grandstand brand rip-off of it. Man I loved that thing on my little portable black and white TV. Yes, I'm old.

Mum's old Bingo game machine, which included a squash version and doubles version of Pong.

[Leon Retro]

I think many young gamers under 25 will look at PS2 games like God Hand as "retro", so part of retro gaming is focused on things feeling old. For me, PS2 games don't have a retro vibe - they just feel like modern games in a lower resolution. I see "retro" as pre-2000 hardware & games that really do look and feel different to modern era games. I don't think a Game Cube game like Mario Kart: Double Dash! has the retro feel and charm of Super Mario Kart. There's something quintessentially retro/old-fashioned about 8 & 16-bit games that I think defines them as what most retro gamers feel is truly "retro."

So, people over 30 will have to get used to people calling Game Cube, PS2 & Xbox games "retro." But maybe some young gamers would also say really old-fashioned 8 & 16-bit games are the definion of "retro." Whatever the case, I think people will always go back to old games and many will call them "retro" just because they were made many years before whatever is current.

[Colin]

Asura touched on it, and it's a fair point. Anything where the games for the system could just be stuck in the machine, played and enjoyed is now retro. That kind of thing just seems like a lifetime ago now.

[charlesr]

It does seem like that [MENTION=9865]Colin[/MENTION]. Look at Rallisport Challenge 2 on the Xbox. It just worked. All the content was there on the disc. The online worked. There was no need for patches. They got it right first time. It was worth buying the disc. SLRallyEvo had a 6GB patch day one. Great game, but it's still broken in several niggly areas. So what's the point in buying the disc? May as well just get it online. Retro for me moved along as more formats came out, but then stopped at the xbox / ps2 / GC / DC era.

[MENTION=13863]speedlolita[/MENTION] you are probably best placed to win this

[QualityChimp]

It's a good question, [MENTION=4957]hudson[/MENTION], and I regularly wonder if I should post my 360 and PS3 gaming updates in the normal or retro versions of "What have you been playing this week?" threads!

I see retro as a combination of two things:
1. Not widely available as new stock in retail shops
2. Represents items from a bygone era, clearly definable

So an XBox 360 game isn't retro, because I can still buy games in shops and it's not a bygone era, because it's still a valid gaming platform.

An original XBox is retro, because you can't buy new games in high street shops and it's from an era where online gaming was in its infancy and the graphics set it apart from modern games.

I tried to apply the logic for other retro things such as clothes.
You could buy a tie-dye grunge shirt from the 90s, shell suit from the 80s and flares from the 70s and I see them as retor because they are from eras of fashion that have passed.
You might be able to buy a pair of flares brand new, but they are 70s-style, rather than their own new style.

Like 8-bit pixelart games are popular. They're new games, but done in a retro-style when the graphics were limited by hardware.

I can't remember first getting into games, but it's around Pac-Man, Atari 2600 and similar, so around early 80s.

[hudson]

Another interesting view, [MENTION=10111]QualityChimp[/MENTION]. I agree with your unavailable in store theory.

[Nu-Eclipse]

360 and PS3 are still currently having commercial games released for them. They cannot possibly be classed as Retro machines right now.

[Strider]

Having worked on retro magazines for nearly 15 years this is my view of it.
First and foremost the majority of people tend to associate retro with their youth, as a result it's impossible to pigeon hole because it's a term that means a completely different thing to each person.
We used to use a 10-year rule. The reasoning behind that was that consoles typically had a lifespan of 5 years before the next came out, meaning 10 years effectively spanned two generations (another point many people use as in, it's no longer available to buy).

Going forward, I think many people will define the 16-bit age as the golden years of retro gaming. It's certainly not where all the innovations were, but it represented the best graphics of the 2D period and more refined control mechanics. Something which the PS2, GameCube and Xbox would once again define in the 3D era. As the vast majority of today's games journalists are opposed with how pretty things are, it leads me to believe that 16-bit will be looked back at as a massively important age.

It's also worth noting that we're all getting older and as good as some 8-bit games are (particularly arcade games, or those with arcade-like gameplay (Uridium, Wizball, Jetpac etc) they simply won't be given time by later generations. I know lots of people who don't give a **** about games like Elite and Mercenary because they look rubbish and play like wank today (their words not mine). There aren't lots of very old game journalists around either as they move on to better paying careers, meaning those who were there at the time can't give a balanced viewpoint. You see it in videogame reviews all the time, so this is perhaps a more worrying aspect of the hobby going forward.

Everyone says a good game is great, regardless of visuals, but I don't think it's something that everyone can look past. I can, but then, it's my job.

From my own point of view retro stops at PS2, Xbox and GameCube.

[gunrock]

[MENTION=164]Strider[/MENTION], nice to hear the rationale from someone in the press specifically aimed at Retro gaming.

I think [MENTION=10111]QualityChimp[/MENTION] nailed the "not readily available" feel that I have. However, you can't call the OG Xbox retro, I mean, would Halo CE be "retro"? I can see that ray casters like Wolfenstein or Doom would be retro and that stretches as far as Turok and Goldeneye, but Metroid Prime is in no way retro.

8 and 16-bit definitely retro, Pong which was originally running on non-semiconductor hardware is possibly an ancient artefact that is a precursor to retro gaming.

My first games were probably playing on a mate's Bintone pong ripoff. After that was probably seeing Space Invaders in a pub and watching the attract sequence over and over as my Dad disapproved of putting money in to machines (as he saw it as a gateway to fruit machine addiction!)