I have a theory that what we refer to as retro doesn’t advance by a year every year. In the same way words like “antique” and “vintage” bring about specific time periods and aesthetics, “retro” does as well. I’m just pulling a number out of my ass here, but say it’s like every three years that go by one year is added to what we call retro. That would mean it would take 15 years from the time we begin viewing SNES as retro to view PS1 as retro because they were released five years apart. So, if we say PS1 is retro now, that would mean we began to view SNES as retro in 2009. This sounds right, maybe? It’s hard to put myself back in that time period, but I definitely would’ve called NES games retro in 2009, but SNES it’s harder to say.
This methodology is flawed because of “retro” is tied to an aesthetic or time period then at some point nothing new will ever be considered “retro” and we’d eventually begin using a different term to refer to things from later.
A good example is “oldies” on the Radio. Nothing newer is really entering the group of songs we consider oldies.
In the same way words like “antique” and “vintage” bring about specific time periods and aesthetics, “retro” does as well.
In my opinion, “retro” gaming is a misnomer and “vintage” is more fitting for what people usually mean. Retro is something modern or recent made in an older style. Actual old stuff is “vintage”. So a game like UFO 50 is actual retro gaming; of course the definition gets more fuzzy when you look at ROM hacks that don’t even work on the original hardware of the base ROM. But if you buy an original old console and play the games from back then, that’s not really retro by the original definition.
I have a theory that what we refer to as retro doesn’t advance by a year every year. In the same way words like “antique” and “vintage” bring about specific time periods and aesthetics, “retro” does as well. I’m just pulling a number out of my ass here, but say it’s like every three years that go by one year is added to what we call retro. That would mean it would take 15 years from the time we begin viewing SNES as retro to view PS1 as retro because they were released five years apart. So, if we say PS1 is retro now, that would mean we began to view SNES as retro in 2009. This sounds right, maybe? It’s hard to put myself back in that time period, but I definitely would’ve called NES games retro in 2009, but SNES it’s harder to say.
This methodology is flawed because of “retro” is tied to an aesthetic or time period then at some point nothing new will ever be considered “retro” and we’d eventually begin using a different term to refer to things from later.
A good example is “oldies” on the Radio. Nothing newer is really entering the group of songs we consider oldies.
In my opinion, “retro” gaming is a misnomer and “vintage” is more fitting for what people usually mean. Retro is something modern or recent made in an older style. Actual old stuff is “vintage”. So a game like UFO 50 is actual retro gaming; of course the definition gets more fuzzy when you look at ROM hacks that don’t even work on the original hardware of the base ROM. But if you buy an original old console and play the games from back then, that’s not really retro by the original definition.
However, I’m well aware that this ship has sailed