Retro isn’t a number. It’s two disconnects. There is always something new - innately distinct, previously implausible, promising of future trends. When new things change enough, stuff that existed beforehand becomes old - tangibly dated, behind the times, automatically uncool. When that new stuff in turn becomes old, the old-old stuff becomes retro - distinct from merely out-of-fashion, illustrative of shifting perspectives, capable of being judged on its own merits.
This is why it’s possible to make brand-new games that are still “retro games.” The indicators of a particular era no longer feel poor-quality or unpleasantly limited once they’ve lost direct comparison to modern novelty. Low resolution is a style choice now that it’s plainly not performance-related. Limited color is an affectation. 3D can be taken for granted, so games doing it badly are doing it on purpose.
I say all this to argue: the 360’s not retro because it’s not even retro. It’s just fucking old. The last big disconnect was in that era. GTA IV looks like an upscaled PS2 game and GTA V still feels like a mid-budget PS5 game. PBR shading, local lights-- I don’t think GTA V specifically had screen-space reflections, but it was definitely A Thing by then. Volumetric fog was in PS3 launch titles.
Christ, even retro-as-a-style has its inflection point in the 360 era. Cave Story was a big fucking deal. XBLA gave small indie games a taste of revenue. GBA homebrew shifted neatly to shoving emulators on PSP.
It is increasingly difficult to make any game that was unprecedented ten years prior. The toolkit gets wider and wider, but even a sudden massive increase in rendering power wouldn’t allow much that we haven’t expertly faked. VR would be different if anyone starts buying it. I feel like the PS4 came and went without any distinguishing features whatsoever. (I don’t even remember if it was the bold black rectangle or the italic black rectangle.) Contrast this with how Super Mario Bros launched against an Atari that boasted several sprites, and then the NES’s last official game was on shelves beside Tekken 2.
The counterargument to this might be that anything without live-service gacha bullshit is now old. In which case… burn it all down and start over.
Retro-as-a-style used to be the ONLY meaning of “retro.” It was something new that was made to look old. When it comes to games it usually just means “old” now. I personally consider the 360 and PS3 to be not retro because the general conventions of how they control and the way they were online and capable of getting updates is pretty much identical to today. They’re old, all right, but other than having less polygons and post-processing effects they’re not different enough from the games of today, as you said. The Wii is something of an anomaly and different enough that I’d consider it retro.
Retro isn’t a number. It’s two disconnects. There is always something new - innately distinct, previously implausible, promising of future trends. When new things change enough, stuff that existed beforehand becomes old - tangibly dated, behind the times, automatically uncool. When that new stuff in turn becomes old, the old-old stuff becomes retro - distinct from merely out-of-fashion, illustrative of shifting perspectives, capable of being judged on its own merits.
This is why it’s possible to make brand-new games that are still “retro games.” The indicators of a particular era no longer feel poor-quality or unpleasantly limited once they’ve lost direct comparison to modern novelty. Low resolution is a style choice now that it’s plainly not performance-related. Limited color is an affectation. 3D can be taken for granted, so games doing it badly are doing it on purpose.
I say all this to argue: the 360’s not retro because it’s not even retro. It’s just fucking old. The last big disconnect was in that era. GTA IV looks like an upscaled PS2 game and GTA V still feels like a mid-budget PS5 game. PBR shading, local lights-- I don’t think GTA V specifically had screen-space reflections, but it was definitely A Thing by then. Volumetric fog was in PS3 launch titles.
Christ, even retro-as-a-style has its inflection point in the 360 era. Cave Story was a big fucking deal. XBLA gave small indie games a taste of revenue. GBA homebrew shifted neatly to shoving emulators on PSP.
It is increasingly difficult to make any game that was unprecedented ten years prior. The toolkit gets wider and wider, but even a sudden massive increase in rendering power wouldn’t allow much that we haven’t expertly faked. VR would be different if anyone starts buying it. I feel like the PS4 came and went without any distinguishing features whatsoever. (I don’t even remember if it was the bold black rectangle or the italic black rectangle.) Contrast this with how Super Mario Bros launched against an Atari that boasted several sprites, and then the NES’s last official game was on shelves beside Tekken 2.
The counterargument to this might be that anything without live-service gacha bullshit is now old. In which case… burn it all down and start over.
Retro-as-a-style used to be the ONLY meaning of “retro.” It was something new that was made to look old. When it comes to games it usually just means “old” now. I personally consider the 360 and PS3 to be not retro because the general conventions of how they control and the way they were online and capable of getting updates is pretty much identical to today. They’re old, all right, but other than having less polygons and post-processing effects they’re not different enough from the games of today, as you said. The Wii is something of an anomaly and different enough that I’d consider it retro.
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