I love gaming on the go so I’ll put in a vote for the GBA, which has quite a few NES and SNES conversions.as well as soke great games in it’s own right
FYI, retro means something new with inspiration from the past. The word you’re looking for is vintage.
Setting that aside, it’s gotta be the SNES. The games from that generation have aged far more gracefully than the early 3d games of the fifth and sixth generation consoles.
The Retro/Vintage thing drives me crazy. Not that I mind words altering their meaning over time, that’s just a fact of language. But searching for things when the two words are used interchangeably half the time is a chore 😂 From what I’ve seen, other hobbies do it a bit better than video games do.
But I’m going to completely agree with the SNES. Early 3D aged so horribly, if you ask me. As much as I loved my N64 back in the day, it is easily my least used console and mostly just collects dust.
In german this differentiation is only valid for furniture (and sometimes clothing), everything else is always just Retro. 😮💨 People are unwilling to change their minds on that. I had that discussion often enough to give up and just accept it. Sometimes neo-retro is used for inspired new stuff, seems to be easier to create new words the to use the correct ones it seems. 😫
It’s a close call but I would pick the original PlayStation. It still gets regular action to this day and I’ve barely scratched the surface of the games library.
SNES. Other than the wide variety of top level games, the controller felt very good in the hand, with just the right amount of buttons, in the right places.
I can understand the PS360 argument. It was probably the last generation where most games were actually playable off the disc without a bunch of patches.
With how common DLC and stuff was becoming that generation, though, I feel like it’s sort of a soft boundary for retro. I can equally accept retro being anything before the PS360, or before/including that generation.
I don’t look forward to the days where “retro gaming” refers to “any console with physical releases at all”.
It doesn’t feel right to count that generation as retro, for reasons like GTA 5, which was initially released for those consoles, yet it’s still considered a current game, with no significant overhaul beyond graphical fidelity. It’s the greatest example of how games haven’t drastically evolved since then.
Compared to the jump from SNES to N64 and PS1, or from PS1 to PS3, we haven’t had any major breakthrough, just moderate incremental improvement.
It’s not about holding up, it’s about playing pretty much the same, while mostly just looking prettier.
While lines are never quite so clear cut, from SNES to N64/PS1 we unlocked a whole variety of 3D games, and by PS3/XB360 we added open-world games, immersive sims and console MMOs to our repertoire. But what new horizons were unlocked by technological advancements since? Only battle royales come to mind.
Surely today’s games are larger, more beautiful and have embraced QoL aspects that we discovered along the way. But today’s games don’t feel as markedly different as any previous leaps.
I agree that it doesn’t feel right, but I can understand the justification, haha
“Retro gaming” is a pretty broad description, anyways. There were probably people who didn’t want to include the 3D consoles, and even those who didn’t want to include cartridge-based consoles, haha
I mean it makes sense, I remember around 2006 everyone referred to the SNES as “retro” and no one questioned it. That’s a smaller time gap than 360 era to now.
For sure, though I think a couple of things make it weird to me. Games changed a lot more in that early period, I think. Plus a lot of games in the PS3 / 360 era seem to just get rereleased slightly differently every few years which kind of makes it seem like we never left that generation.
That is true, it was the first truly modern console generation.
Ultimately I think retro gaming is rooted in nostalgia. People will always gravitate to the consoles they grew up with, making them “retro.” Probably why those rereleases do well.
I’m curious to see what happens in 10-15 years when games-as-a-service hits that point, and how the retrogaming community deals with that. With games like Halo 3 being a stretch now, I can’t imagine a world where Fortnite and Super Mario World exist in the same category.
I dont want to accept it however I’m pretty sure that it is considered retro. I would also pick ps2 not only does it have an massive library of games but there are alot of insanely good ones
Exactly! Honestly the birth of some series starting on PS2 and some were skyrocketed because of the PS2. It’s truly perfect system. The fact that it’s one of the few systems you could buy and have endless hours on it spread across multiple games is still amazing.
Super Nintendo, or SNES. The Mario and Zelda games were great, and so was Mario Kart, but there were loads of great third party games too, like Castlevania and Super Probotector (Contra?).
Since 10 y.o. is old enough to be a cutoff for me, PS Vita, and because modding community never stopped. You can even play some Android and PC games through wrappers in it. -
I’m by no means an Analogue fanboy, but the Analogue Pocket would be my pick. The screen filter/emulation on the super-high-res screen, super low latency, portability with dockable functionality, retro form factor, and it covers all the systems that are “retro” in my mind (pre-PS1). I think others may prefer a Steam Deck or Odin or other more powerful handheld to emulate better systems or have more seamless save states.
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