J T wrote:What is more important for considering something retro: nostalgic fondness for classic older style or tongue-in-cheek goofing around with kitschy old style?
Neither. While both are relevant to retro, retro can't be exclusively about nostalgia, which is subjective based on the gamer. And, as you say, "goofing around with kitchsy old style" is not all that useful either because it implies that enjoying retro involves a self consciousness about the experience, and that doesn't apply universally. (Some people like retro games entirely for other qualities than kitsch or nostalgia, ie. because they are simpler, easier, harder, use different hardware/technology etc.)
The most useful way to define retro is a game experience offering outdated gameplay, game mechanics, art design or hardware that is significantly enough different from what is currently available/being played that part of the enjoyment of the game experience is specifically the difference between the older gaming eperience and what's new and currently available.
That's what we really mean by retro, underneath it all. And this includes nostalgia or kitsch if you want it to, but it doesn't have to.
Time limits, as some have offered, might seem a natural way to create an objective yardstick to measure retro, but they really don't make sense to me.
In the early days of gaming, technological changes made games obsolete on a very short time scale. Using a "retro after ten years" yardstick in that context makes no sense. For example, enjoying 70s Pong-only devices and Mattel Handhelds would be retro, by my definition, as soon as people started playing Pac Man in the arcades and Atari 2600s, which was just a few years later and made both of those gameplay experiences out of date.
Or, to look ahead, if VR immersive gaming becomes the predominent way people game over a short period of time, then all games played looking at a flat, 2d display will become retro as soon as that happens, not ten years later.
My proposed definition of retro is useful because it is focused on the actual gaming experience and applies to more gamers universally. It also isn't tied to one generation, which confuses things. (ie. the situation where folks who grew up with SNES have nostalgia for that retro system therefore argue that SNES defines retro. By my terms, of course the SNES is retro, but so are the PS1, and the Dreamcast. Enjoying anything out of date,
in part because it is out of date, is retro.)
Finally, having lived through it, a good early example of a game that had "retro popularity" would be Ms. Pac Man.
Ms. PacMan was one of the earliest games that made a comeback because people were very much looking for, and were willing to pour quarters into a older school game. Some did it for kitsch reasons, some for nostalgia, others because the other games in the arcade were charging 50 cents a play or because fighting games had made gaming too competitive.
Most people weren't self-conscious about it. To them, Ms. PacMan was just "fun" and so a ton of businesses kept the machine around and Namco kept inventing new cabinets and ways to move the machine.
So, this broader, simpler definition of retro encompasses more of the reasons, more different people enjoy retro gaming. In my opinion, that's the most useful way to pin this down.
And, btw, despite all the grumbling, this is a worthy topic. Being able to express what retro is, helps promote and sustain retro gaming and retro games culture.
A broad definition of retro means more people can be included. We want that.
