What Qualifies As Retrogaming?

 Whether or not a game or system qualifies as retrogaming is a tough thing to quantify and something that different people will often think very differently about.

 The 'retro' in the word 'retrogaming' is in itself a bit of a little bit misleading. Retro, by definition, is a style that intentionally evokes memories of an older style that has since gone out of fashion. So movies from the '30s aren't retro, but The Artist, a recent movie made in the style of an old silent movie, is retro. If we apply the same logic to video games then something like Mega Man isn't retro, but a game like Shovel Knight is because it pays homage to the NES games of old. Gamers have appropriated the word 'retro' into the new word 'retrogaming', but unlike the traditional definition, 'retrogaming' refers to playing old games rather than games that play like old games.

The origins of the word 'retrogaming' are, as we've established, pretty murky to begin with, but the definition isn't any clearer. With the speed at which technology develops, games released at the start of a console generation look noticeably worse than those released at the end of the generation. And that's just the lifetime of a single console. Games visibly age quite quickly, but in terms of the actual number of years since release, they might not be so old. It also doesn't help that the contemporary indie development scene has a fascination with making games that look and play deliberately like games of yesteryear. It's all so confusing. At what point does a game qualify as old enough to be considered retrogaming?

Well, depending on who you talk to you'll likely get a different answer. Someone like me who has been playing video games for over twenty years and started my gaming life with a Commodore 64 is going to have an entirely different perspective on whether a game is old or not to a kid whose first console is the PlayStation 4. But that doesn't necessarily make either of us right, it's just a matter of perception. I might look at a game like Prince Clumsy for the Commodore 64 as a fairly primitive side-scrolling platformer, but to my father who grew up with Pong the game was like nothing he'd ever seen.

The PS2 isn't a system that instantly springs to mind when I think of retrogaming; I think sprites, MIDI music, and two dimensions. But that's the eyes of a thirty two year old gamer looking at this, and not a ten year old. The likes of Devil May Cry, Ico and Twisted Metal: Black are games I remember picking up and being blown away by, but for a child used only to PS4 the games might look positively archaic.

Since we all, depending on our age and experiences, have different ideas about how old something has to be to be old, there has to be some sort of objective rule. For my money, once a system has been discontinued by the manufacturer then we can safely call it old enough for playing it to be considered retrogaming. By that definition, the most recent console to fall under the umbrella of retrogaming would be the PlayStation 2, and while some of you might balk and scoff at that considering this; the PlayStation 2 was released sixteen years ago. Every few years another new console joins the ranks of retrogaming, and while they might not adhere to what our personal ideas of retrogaming are they still fit the criteria.

Age is just the beginning, though. All we've determined is what length of time needs to pass for us to safely refer to something as retrogaming. If we accept that retrogaming is playing video games or consoles that have since been discontinued, then how one goes about playing these discontinued games is the next step in understanding exactly what retrogaming is.

The first and easiest way that we can play old games is to pick up a remaster or a port. These are becoming more and more common in recent years, with the PS4 in particular receiving port after port of popular (and not so) PS3 games since there's no true backwards compatibility available for the system. But the PS4 has also seen some older games see release, too. Final Fantasy VII and X have both been ported to the latest PlayStation console, and going even further back than that, Grim Fandango has been re-released with some graphical and control overhauls.

As technology evolves there are also more options available to players who only have the current generation of consoles. With a service like PlayStation Now, people don't even need to buy the old games that they want to play, with Sony offering a Netflix-like subscription program to gain access to a glut of older titles. It's backwards compatibility, and near-retrogaming for a monthly fee. If you've got the money and a stable Internet connection then this might be a preferable alternative to dusting off your old consoles and fighting to get them to work with your high-end television.