How would one define a retro or classic game?

[Lizard]

What do I mean by this? How could this be a question you ask?

Super Mario Bros is retro/classic! Well of course it is, so would be basically anything from the nes/snes era but so is PS1 and even PS2 now.

How old does something need to be to be considered a classic or retro game? How long until xbox 360 games are viewed as retro or classic games?

What is everyone's thoughts on this? For myself, I think anything sixth gen or older is classic, but for retro I honestly only hand that title personally to old Arcade games such as Galaxian.

Oh and finally the boss monster of questions; how do you rate an evolving platform such as PC? Doom is a PC game, so is Monster Hunter World. Both have technically been on the same platform. What is the age cut off of PC games? Should we rate PC game's based on what sort of graphics engines they used or cards that were needed?

Pre-3d accelerated games?
Post-3d accelerated games?
GTX 1000 series?
GTX 600 series?

What a mess!

[farqs]

I now consider many Wii games classic. The Wii itself is 12 years old and final support is closing, for example Wii Shop channel going offline next month. In fact, i just bought several gamecube and Wii games to share memories with my youngest nephews. They have a very different "flavor" compared to current Switch games. There really is an emotional, nastalgia feel to them. It is hard to quantify, but they give a distinct experience from today's offering; especially the Mii based ones.

[Broken Mirror]

Pretty much how I tend to go about it, too. Someone mentioned that there is a difference between classic and retro, with retro being current games made to look, sound and feel like older games. This would make Sonic Mania, Shovel Knight, etc retro games IMHO.

Although “retro” seems to be commonly used to refer to older games despite its common definition.

EDIT: Well the post right below this one also mentions this XD

[Lizard]

It's strange but I would almost consider the Wii Retro at this point, but not the PS3 or 360, with key word being "Almost" And I don't know why that is.

But for me I consider 5-6th Generation down Retro and only more Retro the older down you go, since the only decent places to buy them are, thrift stores, flea-markets, ma and pop game stores, and Ebay/Amzon/online seller.

The Original Xbox and PS2 are hella fun to collect for.

I can almost get behind this, I think the Gamecube is firmly a classic console but the Wii? It is way past ten years old at this point.

[Rusted Gold]

It's strange but I would almost consider the Wii Retro at this point, but not the PS3 or 360, with key word being "Almost" And I don't know why that is.

But for me I consider 5-6th Generation down Retro and only more Retro the older down you go, since the only decent places to buy them are, thrift stores, flea-markets, ma and pop game stores, and Ebay/Amzon/online seller.

The Original Xbox and PS2 are hella fun to collect for.

[Baron Baldric]

Retro: game that simulates being old, imitative of a style, fashion, or design from the recent past. "Pixel art"

Classic: cultural productions that reach a range of perfection, which should be taken as a model for being of quality, superior or more perfect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classics

In my opinion a game is a Classic when after several years it is still valid, if you can continue playing and having fun, if the game overcomes the technical limitations and transcends. But at the same time it does not look like what is in the market. Pixel games...... Polygonal games....... Voxel games + VR

[PriestTroit]

In my eyes, everything before Y2K is retro.

[aileron]

I'm pretty sure they meant retro is newer but meant to look/play as older vs classic which is actually old. Classic may not be the best choice of word though because as Yoshi mentioned it has a connotation of really good, put it in a hall of fame, etc.

... and if classic just means old then why couldn't as little as one previous generation be considered classic?

[DarknessFX]

+1 vote for: Retro = style imitation. Classic = timeless game, always fun.
Maybe the forums could be named like "New Releases" (only threads about current year releases), "Games" (everything else include vintages), "Vintage" (only threads about [current year - 10] games).

[Yoshi]

First of all, "retro" does not mean old, so this sub-forum really should be called "Vintage/Classic". "Retro" means it's something new that is in the style of something old. Shovel Knight is retro. Super Mario Bros. is vintage or classic.

The issue with "classic" for me is that a lot of people take it as a measure of quality as well. If Superman 64 were 100-years old, could it really be considered "classic"?

edit: I don't think it has anything to do with age. If you're too young to have an accurate historical perspective, then play older games to try to overcome that. Your ignorance does not change history.

[Omen Gaming]

As others have said it comes down to person preferences and age. I think from the way I see it you could describe anything older up to around 1990 as vintage, anything maybe up to about 2000 as retro and then maybe anything up to 2010 as classic and anything after 2010 as current though there are a lot of pre 2010 games people are still playing so unsure the classic category would really be needed.

Not the best explanation but this is kind of how I see it:

- 1990 : Vintage as it's pretty much the starting point for gaming and the revival after the video games crash of the early 80's
1991 - 2000 : Retro as these are the games the second wave post crash games that helped to revive and rejuvenate the games industry
2001 - 2010 : Classic because these are the games most of us will have played irrespective of the platform you played them on
2011 - 2018 : Current games

[Tech_0ne]

10 years is my cutoff point for retro.

[Trout]

How do I know if its a classic/retro game? If I tell you that Morrowind is one of the best RPGs ever made and you come back to me with anything like "it has bad graphics and I got tired of reading everything" then I know its now an oldie but a goodie. If you say you like pokemon but never played gen 1, same. Essentially, games that are simplistic to todays standards but thrived in their ingenuity is what I'd call retro gaming; like indie games that sacrifice graphics for gameplay (example, Terraria and FTL).

[Forge]

This really comes down to perspective. A young person born in 2000 might consider seventh gen consoles to be classic or retro, but a person born in the 80's wouldn't.

^this

imo, retro and classic are defined by your personal experience, and by evolution.

retro is actually a new game that emulates a "classic".

Classic is something two release generations old, or more.
That also generally lines up with personal experience as well.
Something you played as a seven or eight year old is a classic - to you - when you hit your late teens. Stuff from your teens is going to be classic when you reach your late twenties. And so on.

Some of us are old enough to remember the first pong games for our tv and when pinball machines started getting replaced with Gun Fight and Spacewar-Galaxy. Then a few years later the tech caught up and we started getting games like Space Invaders and Battlezone.

Classic depends on who you ask.

[Astraea]

Yeah I'm aware for PC's it's not as great to categorize it that way. I guess maybe you could say: look at the most recent OS it supports, if it supports -2 generations as the newest, it's retro. So a game that came out with support for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 would be retro, but Vista, 7 and 8 wouldn't. Something like that.