What is Retro Gaming?

Introduction

"Retro gaming, also called classic gaming or old school gaming, is the practice of playing and collecting computers, consoles, and video games from previous decades." According to Wikipedia .

In this blog I want to discover with you what retro gaming is. What makes something retro or classic? We also take a leap and superficially look at the computers and consoles that can be considered retro.

Where do you think the limit of retro gaming is? To me retro is everything up to and including the PlayStation 1 and maybe the GameCube. According to ChatGPT a console is retro after 25 years, which would mean the original Xbox will be retro next year. For me that's special to imagine. I remember so well playing Ninja Gaiden on "Path of the Mentor - Very Hard" only to find out there's a punishing difficulty. 😂😂😂

Which brings me to the next part: old games are hard...

If you pick up an old game now and notice that you are not as good at it as you once were, you might think that you have become less good. Many of us will have this feeling. However, this is not always the case, for example I, and you too, have become more 'games literate'. A kind of game-literate. By that I mean that I now understand more quickly what a game expects of me: how the controls work, how the difficulty level is built up and why a certain part is deliberately made difficult. In the past I just played and hoped to get through it. I often memorized levels and created muscle memory. Now I see the patterns and intentions behind the design more quickly.

I already said it, memorizing levels... what strikes me now, now that I play older games with more experience, is that there are (although logical) few Quality of Life (QoL) improvements.
QoL are small improvements that make it more fun to play a game. Think of improvements to controls. A good example of this is how old games/developers in the early days of 3D did not yet know how to deal with camera controls. Sometimes these were (not) inverted, semi-automatic or the infamous c-button camera of the Nintendo 64, all horrible. In the meantime, a lot has been improved and an industry standard has emerged. Want to know more about QoL? Check out this blog about QoL !

The cycle time in old games is sometimes very punishing. Think of Ghosts 'n Goblins , a few mistakes and you start all over again. The joke with this game is also that it is designed to let you die multiple times no matter what and that you have to learn a lot of parts by heart. Good to keep in mind is that many of these games were originally designed to take your quarter from you in the arcade. Modern games often don't do this anymore, you've already bought the game so there's no more money to be earned. And if there are punishing elements in it, the cycle time is so short that it's no longer frustrating. Think of Super Meat Boy or Celeste .

There are certainly still games that keep the difficulty alive and are made to be punishing. Think of the From Software Souls series and relatives. But here too, QoL improvements have been made, so that the player who cannot complete it on his own can also get help. I myself always try to complete every FromSoft Souls-like solo at least once because I get a lot of satisfaction out of it.

Hardware

Modern hardware

TL;DR: Emulation devices also bring us huge QoL improvements.

Reviving old games on modern hardware is of course great. Think of beautiful screens with resolutions that are a perfect multiple of the original screens. This allows us to experience old games with a quality that was previously unthinkable.

Modern hardware allows us to play for hours, recharge with USB-C cables, whenever we want. No more worries about batteries. As an 8-year-old, I would have thought that was the best invention ever. I can remember being bored stiff in the backseat of the car on my way to a winter sports holiday in Austria, while my rechargeable batteries had already died three times after a few hours of play. Save states? No way!

The convenience that modern hardware brings us is amazing. Think of the Miyoo Mini Plus with OnionOS or the more modern TrimUI Brick with NextUI. Sleep and resume? Really amazing!

Of course, emulation has its limitations. For example, it is never exactly the same as playing on an original chip. Sometimes there are strange bugs or a game runs just too fast or too slow. And even though CRT screens are technically inferior, they still give the games a certain charm. After all, the games are designed for it.

Original hardware

Another way to experience old games is on original hardware. You would expect this to be the ultimate experience. However, you will quickly run into all kinds of setup problems. I myself spent a while building the ultimate SNES experience: a One-Chip SNES, a retrobright treatment, a 4K HDMI scaler, Bluetooth 8bitdo controllers, cartridges from Marktplaats, cables and adapters from China. And now, dozens of hours later, I can finally enjoy Yoshi's Island on a 4K TV with a modern controller. Amazing!

But sometimes it is a lot of effort. For example, if you bought an old console, you still have to connect it to your 65-inch TV. You then have to convert an analog signal to HDMI. Then you end up in the rabbit hole of scalers. I myself use the RetroScaler , a relatively cheap and solid solution. Note: always use good cables.

Modded original hardware

Nothing plays better than an original Game Boy. For me it's the Pocket or the Color. They have a really nice D-pad. No modern device feels so good for Game Boy games. But let's bring them to 2025 by modding them!

A community of creatives has emerged. Some mod original hardware, some develop the mods, and some produce them on a larger scale. YouTube is full of legendary modders. Think HDMI mods, custom shells, golden knobs, and incredible creations.

For me, this is the best of both worlds: original chip, but with modern luxuries. Think backlit screens, rechargeable batteries via USB-C and transparent shells that show the craftsmanship of the original hardware.

That craftsmanship is impressive. Opening up a Game Boy that was painstakingly built 30 years ago is magical. You see clever design choices, trywing screws, buttons that only fit one way, even pencil scribbles on the motherboard. Who wrote that? What is that person doing now? Unanswerable questions that carry a special charm.

If you don't feel like picking up the soldering iron yourself, you can also check this page , here you will find all my mods that are for sale.

Generations

A Redditor named Iamn0man came up with a brilliant theory: divide consoles into geological eras.

Precambrian (era of first life)

• First Generation (Pong): Electronic games on your TV are a thing!

Paleozoic (ancient life)

• Second Generation (Atari 2600): GENERATIONAL LEAP: Dozens to Hundreds of Games on One Device!
• Third generation (NES): 8-bit, sprites!
• Fourth Generation (MegaDrive): 16-bit power!

Mesozoic (middle life)

• Fifth Generation (PS1): 3D Gaming!
• Sixth Generation (Xbox): Better 3D!

Cenozoic (present)

• 7th Generation (PS3): Always Online, Microtransactions.
• Eighth generation (PS4): Better picture and sound.
• Ninth generation (PS5): Remasters, VR as a serious option.

Retro PC Gaming

While consoles had a relatively straightforward development, PC gaming always felt like the Wild West to me – full of brilliant innovations and frustrating configurations.

Software

Shareware & Classics

Installing was an adventure in itself. I remember well how I walked around the flea market as a child, looking for floppy disks. Often I would come across things like Jazz Jack Rabbit, Jill of the Jungle or Doom II . Once I even saw someone with an impressive setup who was copying hundreds of games live. You could literally pick a stack of floppy disks and take them home fresh from the press. As a ten year old I had no idea what copyrights were, and this felt like the most normal thing in the world.

At home, the real work began: installing. Then you were at diskette three of four, and it turned out that one was corrupt. You had to start all over again. But that whole experience – searching, unpacking, hoping that it worked – I found magical. In those days, I often didn't know where to get new games. I was one of the first with a PC around, and I mainly got my games from those markets or from magazines.

LAN parties & multiplayer magic

Before online gaming was common, we had LAN parties. You'd gather your PC case, heave a heavy CRT monitor into the car (often your friend's mother would drive you), and then you'd go to someone's house and set up the whole setup. Hours of pulling cables, setting IP addresses, installing games, and finally getting loose in Quake III , Unreal Tournament or Counter-Strike 1.6 . Sometimes you'd sleep there, sometimes you wouldn't. But what memories. This was gaming at its rawest and most fun.

Mods and user-generated content

PC gaming wasn’t just about playing, it was also about creating. I loved discovering that you could mod games. Sometimes it was as simple as updating a config file in GTA: San Andreas to make it play at a decent framerate. But other times it was complete makeovers – like Half-Life becoming Counter-Strike , or Warcraft III becoming the birthplace of DOTA – there was so much creativity in the community. A lot of PC gamers were also creators, and I thought that was really cool.

Emulation and DOSBox

Of course you can try to buy a nice 486 pc on marktplaats. Go for it, it's awesome! But for those who want to make it a bit easier: look for tools like DOSBox, PCem or ScummVM. With these you can run classics on modern hardware, without the hassle of corrupt floppies. Pretty nice.

Want to revive some classmates right away? Also check out playdosgames.com

What people think about retro gaming

Retro gaming is an umbrella term, that much has become clear to me. In this Reddit thread that I started, dozens of responses came in. Some philosophical, some practical, and some just down to earth: "old games are just old games".

An important topic: when is something retro? Opinions differ greatly on this. For some, everything up to and including the 4th generation is retro, others also include the PS2 and original Xbox.

Iamn0man's theory was brilliant. From the Precambrian to the Cenozoic, with each generation a technological leap.

Retro gaming isn’t just about nostalgia. Some people are just discovering old games and still feel the magic. Someone said he recently discovered Dragon Quest and Doom and fell in love with them.

Another said it perfectly:

"I miss a time when games were games, not movies. Where skill and reflexes mattered."

Some swear by original hardware, others by modern comforts such as USB-C, sleep/resume and bright screens.

"I'm making my past self (and let's say, inner child) pretty happy."

Afterword

Thanks for reading this far. It was great writing this blog and getting to know the retro community in a new way.

Of course there are thousands of things I haven't described, there were arcades of course, there are dozens of consoles whose existence I don't know about. Feel free to add to this blog in the comments!

If you like this blog, feel free to quote, share or print it out and go through it again in a retro way.

- Xxx -

Jorne
info@retrogear.nl