Nobody calls Chris Farley’s schtick retro because slapstick has been around since before we can remember, so it’d be a useless term. Same deal with Tarantino films: we can easily break down the influences that inform and animate his work, so we don’t need to say his work is retro. We have better terminology.

The problem we’re facing here is that most of us seem have labored under a misapprehension that we’re only now identifying. “Retro” is a devaluing term to describe genres that we never properly understood or recognized. As technology improved, more and more games started leaving behind their simplistic 2D roots and striving for greater realism. Three-dimensions, better graphics, physics engines, etc.

In my case, I’ll admit that this caused me to sort of underestimate those older games. They were the way they were because of limited technology and experience, I thought. Gaming would move away from 2D shooters and scrollers as fast as possible. God knows I did (nothing helps contempt for a genre like being exquisitely bad at it).

So now we have all these games that look toward these earlier genres and techniques, but we never fully appreciated these older games nor fleshed out a good descriptive vocabulary for them. They’re retro because people used to make games this way, with the unspoken assumption that these days they should not. However, that is being exploded, so we’re in need of a finer-grained critical language.

I usually use the term “retro” but I’m now wondering why. When I watch a film such as Dawn of the Dead from the 70s, I don’t call it a “retro” film, I call it old.

When reading 1984, you don’t call it “retro”, you call it a “classic” or “fuckin’ boring”. etc.

Well, that’s that then. I’m just going to throw the term retro and it’s application to a majority of media straight out the window.

Done and done. Thanks for bringing this up!

@Rob Zacny, you’re right. If you said it had retro sensibilities people would probably have an idea of where you are coming from, but not a complete picture; for example, I personally find that game very unpunishing and focussed on the experience of finishing levels/songs, and not so much a quarter-muncher. But, the thing is, there’s a cavernous difference (at least to me) between “retro sensibilities” and simply “retro.” Ditto retro-inspired; implying it is informed by retro games is more accurate than calling it a retro game.

I also agree that postretro is terrible, I was being a bit tongue in cheek with it. :) I think, if it can roll off the tongue better than it seems like it is so far, “anachro” might have some promise!

I think retro is a useful term to separate games that push graphics and realism (like most 3D shooters or adventures) from those that look back at the style and mechanics of an earlier era. Until we find a better word, let’s not retire it just yet.

Pedantry aside, I agree totally.

How about: “Retro games are games made with graphics, sound, and game design elements that are influenced by and in accordance with games that otherwise would be extinct?” I can’t nail it right now but it seems like the “step backwards” part is what makes it so; Castle Crashers is being referred to as such based on design choices (and whether CC is retro is almost debatable), but MM9 seems to be the only true “retro” game with its adherence to 8-bit NES capabilities.

Hmmm.

I surprisingly don’t hate neo terms in this context. Neoretro or neoarcade. As you point out, PacMan CE tries to capture some of the arcade experience but is by no means a derivative experience. No more than N or N+ is compared to lode runner.

But I’m blathering. I think of Braid as post-arcade and Mega Man 9 as neo-arcade (even though megaman wasn’t an arcade title it’s still locked pretty into the credits/lives style paradigm).

Whether the games that are old are retro or the games that namecheck them are retro is irrelevant to me, as long as it’s defined which one it is and isn’t both. The fact that they are BOTH called retro is what causes confusion, at least to me.

I am kinda diging on this post-something thing. Post-arcade? Post-retro? Post-coinop?

I was under the impression that retro only applied to art that referred to things before its time, though. Retro taken literally means looking back, and to me that makes something that refers to old things retro and old things just old.

Playing pac-man in an arcade in the 80′s wasn’t retro. Playing pac-man in barcade now is.

Either way it’s damn near being a critically useless term, using the retro = old definition gets everyone into the how old argument, which boils down to when a ‘retro’ gamer played their formative games or when a ‘progressive’ gamer feels games no longer contain relevance.

If we use retro as referring to old, we still have to resolve that first issue and additionally the problem of how much retro is retro enough. It could be pretty easily justified that any game that uses limited lives ever is a retro game because it depends and the coin-op mechanism that is no longer relevant.

More mature critical industries get pretty specific. Most work on Tarantino tries to find specific films he grinches from rather than using generalistic terms.

Semantics aside, I agree that the use of retro is intellectually lazy.

Also, holy quotes batman, you have like two per paragraph up in this!

Otherwise, I do feel old when people use the word incorrectly; In the good old days (with teeth removed and stuff) I did play the atari, and NES, and they were good enough. Arcade games on the XBox have been amazing, but they do induce nostalgia, they’re not retro. Sorry, Rambling – No more sugar for me.

Keep it up!