Moog Muskie

You’re right. I looked into it some more and you seem to be right that Retro is indeed referring to the style, not the age. Forgive me for the long comment, my intention was only to express my subjective opinion about whether something is retro or retro-styled. I feel very weird calling old games that I thought of as retro “vintage” now, but I guess I have to; I’m going to have a lot of people thinking I’m calling it the wrong thing now. I guess this subreddit should more accurately be called Vintage Gaming, but I have no idea how it would be possible to shift the entire “retro” gaming community’s perspective on what makes a game retro or not.

And by wrong I mean unlike everybody else in the world.

Well, in Victoria, Australia, I think my incorrect understanding is very common, because age being the determining factor of what makes something retro is basically what I’ve been taught from childhood. Everyone I’ve ever met who I’ve had conversations about anything retro with, appear to think very similarly to me.

When people are calling modern things they know are modern “retro”, I think it’s just a simpler form of saying “retro-style”. I mean, when I’m talking about modern retro styled things that aren’t videogames, I personally say “retro-styled” myself; and I consider that to be what people also mean when they call modern things “retro”.

For games, I have to disagree that Retro can also mean games that look old. Again, I consider these to be “retro-styled” as well, not “Retro”, which to me indicates its actual age. VVVVVV isn’t retro, it’s retro-styled. Alwa’s Awakening is an NES style metroidvania game released in 2017, designed to feel exactly like something that could run on real NES hardware. Then in 2022, they actually did just that; they ported the game to real NES hardware and released it as the “8-Bit Edition”. To play it, you either need to flash it on a cart and play it on a real NES, or simply emulate it on modern hardware. In my opinion, this game isn’t retro at all; it’s “retro-styled”, even if you consider the fact it released on an actual retro console.

I consider GameCube/PS2/XBOX to be undoubtedly retro. So anything Gen 6 and earlier. To me 16-bit era and earlier is just “more retro”. Gen 7 I think is arguably technically retro, but it just doesn’t feel retro to me.

I mean, 360 & PS3 games still feel like they’re just modern games with less detailed graphics, and the Wii feels kind of like part of the Wii U era to me; and that association with the Wii U makes it very much not feel retro. But any games released before Gen 7 feels unique compared to modern games, therefore giving that feeling of being retro.

In regards to what feels retro to me, I personally consider Gen 6 GameCube/PS2/XBOX and everything older to be undoubtedly retro.

I think that the Gen 7 Wii, PS3 & Xbox 360 should technically be considered retro now due to their age, but personally generation 6 and earlier is what feels retro to me.

Oof. Unless that’s the only Switch game you play, you are going to have a hard time realising that Switch emulation isn’t far developed enough yet for you to play a lot of your games without issues and just throw away your real Switch. Plus, Nintendo’s takedowns of Yuzu and Ryujinx last year massively slowed down development.