WHAT IS RETRO?

Dear Retro Gamer,

Can you tell me what you consider to be retro, because whenever I speak to someone about it I never get a straight answer from them. Some say it’s games that came out in the Seventies and Eighties, but others say nothing past 16-bit qualifies. I’ve even had some people suggest that nothing beyond the 8-bit computers is retro, but that makes no sense, either. The one takeaway I do have is that a person’s age appears to be a massive factor in the answer that’s given. People appear to base retro on the games they grew up with and are instantly dismissive of anything later. This seems wrong to me, as people are different ages (I’m in my mid-thirties for example and grew up with the PlayStation) so will have different expectations. As you’re a definitive source of retro gaming, any insight you could offer would be really appreciated.

Regards,

Oh Dean, this is perhaps our most-asked question in the mag and as you’ve already discovered, the answer isn’t straightforward at all, although you’re absolutely right that people largely class retro as ‘games I played when I was young’. Officially, we tend to class anything older than 15 years as fair game (although we will cover later games if they are on hardware that came out during our cut-off point). Essentially, the Xbox 360 could be considered retro now (it will be two generations old soon) but don’t expect it in the mag anytime soon. »