It's probably supposed to mean 20+ years old. But next year IDK if I'll be able to call Mass Effect and Crysis "retro games"

I'm damaged by vocabulary outside of gaming so for me "retro gaming" always sound a bit weird.
I'm used to retro being a newly produced item that mimics an older style - a chair produced in 2026 that looks like it belongs in the 1960s f.e., compared to vintage being an item that is at least 20 years old and an antique being at least 100 years old. My teacups will officially be antique in two years and it feels kinda cool.

When speaking of games I've just accepted that retro either means "from my childhood" or "old" depending on how the speaker feels about it and that "how old" usually differ from meaning "at least two console generations old" to "20 years old" to "The era of my childhood, forever and ever!".

I'd say games from the 5th generation of consoles and before are absolutely retro, while games from the 6th and early 7th generation are in a weird zone where they're not exactly retro, but not exactly modern either.

IMO, I'd say modern gaming started in earnest in 2011, or possibly even 2010. When you think about it, console generations used to average about five years before 7th gen and the recession of 2008, so if the recession didn't happen, I feel like 8th gen could've started around that time.

the older you get the farther it becomes. Im have only recently accepted that lord of the rings is not a recent thing.

It's marketing first and foremost. I don't remember older things when I was a kid being called retro, they were just oldies or classics. They had their mark of time, but there wasn't a push to bring it back as old, but new again like retro stuff does.

It's going to vary for everyone, but retro basically just means old stuff, so it's always a moving target.

When I was playing the NES, games like Pong and Donkey Kong and Pac Man felt retro. When I was playing the N64, NES games felt retro. Nowadays, PS1 and N64 definitely feel retro to me. I don't think I'm ready to call the Wii retro yet, but I know most people probably accept it as retro now.

Now I'm 43, retro is anything i played as a child/teenager. So NES/megadrive/SNES/OG playstation

For me, retro is two generations ago. But I'm no authority on this matter! :)

20 year to become retro then a 5-8 year oscillating cycle where some stuff during peak retro popularity become "Classic", and classic is really what drives the retro economy long term because as classic things becomes the central main focus for themed events it carries it's retro cohorts up with it.

I happen to have been born exactly when retro ended and modern started.

@[email protected] made a good point here and I tend to agree. It's more about something being gone and brought back. How long does it take for something to be considered gone? At the very least, I wouldn't consider something retro if it can still be easily purchased via official channels (never gone).

To me retro describes the 80s only. But I was also a kid in the 80s, so that might be what makes it retro, things I remember from when I was a kid. So NES and Atari are retro for me. Like things from the 90s when I was a teen do not seem retro to me, Super NES and Sega are not retro game systems to me.

Also in the same vein, "vintage" to me (born 1979) is things from the 60's and 70's. To my mom how almost had a heart attack when teenage me called her 70's sweater jacket "vintage". She (born 1948) feels "vintage" is from the 40s and 50s. But my best friends daughter (born 2009) and thinks things I bought in the 2000's are vintage and loves raiding my closet.

20+ years seems like a solid cutoff point.

I would say anything before circa ~2000 is definitely retro.

It does get more complicated with the release platform.

PC games can be updated and can even take a life of their own, while console games tend to be tied to a specific console/generation and the associated gameplay experience.

One good example is Simcity 4, even before decomp/recomp's got big, the community modded it to such an extent that it wasn't really the same game as the one released in 2003. Simcity 2000 is definitely a retro game though with Simcity 3000 being somewhere in between. Recent decomp/recomp have added much needed modding capabilities to Simcity 3000, but a lot less people play 3000 versus 4 (and the modding scene is a lot smaller).

To me, it's always a matter of context.

If a kid who never heard of Nirvana buys a shirt because they saw other people wearing it, are they being 'retro' or buying the latest thing?

Is Alfred Hitchcock 'retro' or 'classic?'

If I have liked something for twenty years, am I 'retro?'

To me, a product that invokes childhood memories is retro if its wider use has seized more than 40% of my lifetime ago.

Though, the requirement might change when I grow older.

Retro shifts. What was new will eventually become retro, but not at the same rate for everyone.

Kids today probably think the 2010s are retro. I would consider my childhood, 80s 90s, retro. My parents would probably set the "retro bar" even earlier then that.