Use/abuse of the buzzword "retro"

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Am I the only one sick of people using the term "retro" to describe things that bear no resemblance to something coded 10-20 years ago? I'm tired of hearing about retro games that run in absurd resolutions and have 200 sprites all being manipulated in real time. People who throw around the notion of something being "retro" without understanding limitation annoy me. There is nothing retro about a program running in million color mode in 800x600 resolution having hundreds of sprites being scaled and rotated being oldskool or retro. If you want to call something "retro" at least consider some of the limitations of the period you wish to emulate. This is probably directed more towards the modern game crowd than anything else. There is great satisfaction in overcoming hardware limitation but they would never know this because they are too content to have a modern game on their hands and just slap an ill fitting title on it.

"Look I have made an 15 MB asteroids clone that runs in 1280 x 800 pixels! It has million color display and can handle 1000 particles and 100 enemies at once! It's very retro. You use the mouse to play it and you have 5 weapons to choose from!"

My ideal retro version

"Look I have made an 64k Asteroids game that runs in 320x240 pixels. It has 2 colors (black and white to look like Vectrex) and uses fixed size arrays to hold objects so it may emulate the memory limitations of the era. You have a single gun but you may get a powerup to increase the size of the bullets. I've used the built in PC speaker to make some sounds for collisions."

Now the first one may sound more modern (all flash and no bang) but the second one is more in the vein of being "retro". As an added bonus the second game would be a small compact fact game.

Thoughts? Yes I'm so ill that I would probably be able to enjoy the second game more because of the care and limitation.

[benny!]

Yup.
Totally right - retro remakes also should look retro but run on
modern hardware. Best example is the site with the same name
http://www.retro-remakes.net/ ;-) All productions there are
trying to emulate the hardware limitations of their origins.

Speaking of retro a little offtopic story comes into my mind.
Last year I was on a trip in Canada, I visited a sports shop and
asked if they have Nike Air '97 shoes since I love to wear them
some years ago.

The shop-owner said:
"No, but I heard that Nike will re-produce them and sell them as
retro".

That was a punch in my face and I realize that I definately get old -
watchinig retro cracktros and wearing retro shoes. Since then I
thought retro was about the 70'ies ... now it is about the 80/90'ies.
:-(

[Clyde]

Retro means a different thing for different age groups. For me retro would go back to the decade that I was a young teenager in. So that era for myself would be the mighty 80's.

I personally like the phrase / term of Old Skool.

[Shockwave]

Maybe this comes as a bit rich from me, I must be one of the biggest abusers of the term "retro" that there is.

The reason for that is that something written on modern hardware may look retro, but certainly doesn't require the same level of optimisation as the effects did on 16 bit computers or even early dos based pc's.

The truth is that it's stupidly easy to do retro looking stuff in modern api's.

I don't think it's wrong to do it but some people are better than others at doing it, a good example of great retro flavour isbrainstorms recent st-01 music disk.

Newschool sounds from oldschool samples.

Same could be applied to code, putting a new twist on old school effects to bring something new could be a really refreshing change from modern overblurred fly-bys.

[combatking0]

For me, Retro is defined by the time. The further back it was made, the more retro it is.

PS2, X-Box and Game Cube are a bit Retro, and anything before the 16-bit era (Mega Drive, SNES) is fully Retro.

On the other hand, the Mega Drive and SNES are a bit Modern. Anything after the PS2, X-Box and Game Cube is fully Modern.

However, if somebody were to produce a NES game/demo today, it would be a modern creation on retro hardware.

[Optimus]

Personally I don't care much (I am the one who thumbs up so called retro demos done in highres and with acceleration because I simply enjoy them). I remember I did cared a bit in the past when a new demo were released claiming it's retro and either running very slow in the PC I had that time or needed an accelerated gfx card just for 2d scrollers. I remember some 2D scrolltros being so slow and bloated and buggy in my Pentium 1 or 2 machine at the time that made me chuckle. But now with modern computers I can freely enjoy the retro productions even those "retro-wannabe" ones.

My favorite "retro" demo that I initially runned on an old PC and was dissatisfied with, but later on a more modern PC I liked it very much, must be http://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=1148 (I think it needed a Pentium 1 or 2 to be smooth).

Also, very few groups twist the retro feeling and effects into something new, like integrating very well oldschool effects and ideas with newschool tech. The only one I can think that does it real well is keops from equinox (and now orb) with his accelerated 64k invitations that shows us very well what means retrofuture

I like the retrofuture notion. Many people have gone into shaders now but what they produce are flybyes with a lot of post processing filters. I once wondered why nobody does some oldschool or midschool bitmap effects on shaders, why have I not seen these effects on demos? Maybe because they'd look a bit old, outdated or childish? Of course, if I was to do another plasma demo but in shaders, it would look lame or spoil the atmosphere of the demo. But how about incorporating old/midschool 2d effects with shader coding in such a way that will be more attractive or original? I am planning to try this approach in my current in production shader demo but most probably I'll fail to make it look original and not amateurish