As TheGamer’s Andrew King wrote, the fact that theSwitchis nowthe longest-running Nintendo console means time has no meaning. And as he correctly points out, kids who started with the Switch in elementary school are now well on their way to high school. That’s weird by any standard! Hell, I myself have been throughmultiplemajor relationships during the Switch’s lifetime.
Previously it usually took me an entire console generation to emotionally push someone away. I’m either getting better at it or the Nintendo Switch is that successful or both.As all of us stumble on towards the evening sun, we’re going to have to face the haunting fact that games that still seem new, likeBreath of the Wild, came out nearly eight years ago. So maybe - just maybe - this is the perfect time to stop thinking of classic games as ‘retro’.
Obviously, nobody is going to stop using the term ‘retro’. It’s a nice term! It’s fun! I don’t think me wringing out 700 words from vaguely negative feelings at a beloved concept is going to change the face of gaming. But, folks, the word has lost almost all meaning. Well, technically, we all agree that ‘retro’ means ‘old’, but past that it’s just chaos.
What Does Retro Even Mean Anymore?
Everyone seems to have a slightly different definition of what the wordactuallymeans, but I feel like the general consensus at one point was any game older than ten years. That may have come from the podcast Retronauts, but I’m also extremely stupid so I’m probably wrong. Either way, ten years is not much time now in the history of games.Super Mario Odysseywould be considered ‘retro’ in two and a half years and that’s just absurd, even if it’s accurate.
I don’t mean that it makesmefeel old. I don’t care about that. I started going bald in my mid 20s. Classic games don’t make me feel old; mirrors do. But I sometimes worry that calling everything before a certain point ‘retro’ places a divide between new,excitinggames and classic,quaintones.
It doesn’t say whether a game is good or not. It doesn’t address some sort of quality. It simply separates the old from the new in a strict way we rarely do other artforms. Nobody calls The Pelican Brief a ‘retro novel’ despite the fact it came out around the same time as theSuper Nintendo. Is it a classic novel? Ehhhhh, that’s subjective. Its age doesn’t make it a more or less compelling book!
Again, the problem is notliterallythe word ‘retro’, it’s that we often default to painting older games as fun little curiosities.Castlevania: Symphony of the Nightand Hooters Road Trip are both ‘retro’ by definition. Only one of those games is a true classic and we all know that it’s not Alucard’s adventure into dad issues. But seriously, both games are old. Both games started on consoles you now basically have to emulate to play. That’s about as far as it seems we have a consensus on what a retro game is. The longer that video games exist in pop culture, the longer the tail of ‘retro’ is going to become and the less it’ll make sense.
The other problem is that some peopledouse the term to mean ‘classic’. So, depending on who you ask, a retro game is something that’s either incredible or it just existed a long time. And the conflation of the two makes classic games seem simpler than they were and less captivating beyond the trivia of their existence.
Movie fans still watch old films because the ones they like are usuallygood,not just because they’re old. And while music has a similar obsession with repackaging our youth, at least ‘golden oldies’ tends to just refer topopularsongs from bygone eras rather than literally anything recorded before 2014. Then again, perhaps I’m drawing my own boundaries around the words.
Retro Is A Selling Point, Not A Descriptor
It frustrates me because many (but not all) video game companies still struggle to value their history. Culturally, at least. They’ve definitely found a way to get financial success from their history. And that’s part of the problem: ‘retro’ is a selling point. Nostalgia is a selling point. But it often fails to look beneath the surface of the actual art itself to seewhyit works orwhywe love it. The fact that some of these games ran on old hardware and have crummy graphics alone seems to be enough reason. Which it isn’t. Saying these games are good because they’re old - or slapping a dozen games of varying quality in one ‘retro’ package - sucks a lot of the real work and spirit put into these titles.
What I think I’m taking far too many words to say is that we need to separate ‘old’ from ‘classic’. The two don’t mean the same thing and they shouldn’t mean the same thing. A game doesn’t stop being relevant to the current discourse because it’s ten years old. At least not anymore. The difference in gaming between 1992 and 2002 is far more significant than the difference in gaming between 2014 and 2024. Games like World of Warcraft haven’t just lasted a console generation - they’ve lasted ahumangeneration. Yet a lot of fans would look at you like you were crazy if you called it ‘retro’, because it’s still being updated and played.
And that’s good! We shouldn’t treat old games as weird novelties, even when they are. Old games shouldn’t just get re-released because they remind us of our childhood, even if they do. Now that console generations last nearly a decade (and the difference between console generations seems to grow ever smaller), we need to stop putting older games on a pedestal in a different room of the house. They’re just games. Some are good. Some are bad. And this medium is getting old enough to consider them all without rose-colored glasses.
