So, What Do You Mean by 'Old School' Gaming?

 Sorry, I know it's been two non-review posts relatively close to each other. But life has been chaotic and I haven't had a ton of time to game in recent weeks. So, instead of a review you get my opinion on random video game topics once again. I promise, I won't ever go full on into something like this, but for now I want to discuss a topic that has been bought up to me a lot in recent weeks.

As I have discussed at length, I've become far more of a retro gamer, some might call me an old-school gamer, in recent years. There are certainly things I prefer about modern games, maybe I will dive deeper in to what at a later date, but I find myself playing older stuff almost exclusively. But what exactly constitutes "older?" What exactly is old-school gaming, or retro gaming, anyway? At the end of the day, the hobby is relatively new, gaming as we know it probably traces its roots to the early 70's, with it gaining popularity in the 80's before exploding in modern times. And the gaming generations are getting longer. At this point, the 7th console generation is nearly 15 years old while the 8th is pushing 8 or 9. A lot of games I once thought of as "modern" are now 20 years old. So where's the cutoff? And why? I have my thoughts and this is obviously very subjective, but first we need to look at some of the different schools of though on what's new and what's old. I should also note, this is strictly discussing console gaming. I don't really know much about PC gaming and I won't pretend I do here. I do know it's quite a bit different when it comes to this stuff though.

First, we have the "old means old" crowd. We're talking about the folks that think gaming died with the release of the Sega Genesis, that the 80's is, was and will always be where its at. Who needs more than one button, maybe two on the NES or Master System controller was okay, maybe. But any more than that...just no. And you can take your fancy sprites and shove them too, real video games have indistinguishable masses of pixels and require you to use your imagination. Don't even get me started on the 3D crap. I'm not going to lie, there aren't a whole lot of these folks out there. But they do exist and they are very, very passionate about their mindset. As to why, well that's a topic all on its own, but its not important right now. What is important is that these folks basically consider anything past the 3rd generation to be "new" and even including that generation (the NES, Master System, Etc.) is a stretch for some. It's all Atari all the time here.

Next up is the group I affectionately call "Team 2D," the group that sets the "old school" barrier at the advent of 3D gaming. These gamers add another generation to the list, opting to include any of the consoles that were predominately 2D-based. Sure, the SNES, Genesis, Turbografx-16 and their contemporaries featured some experimental 3D elements, but they were predominately 2D-centric. The thought process here is pretty simple: the 5th generation fundamentally changed the way we look at the medium, making 3D titles the predominant form of game. That endures to this day, so that generation marks the start of "modern" gaming. Anything before that is old-school. Really, there isn't much more to say about this thought process. 2D is old-school, 3D is new school, clean, simple, end of story.

Next group up is the "20th Century group. You guessed it, these people count the early 3D consoles, the PS1, Saturn, N64, etc. as "old school." They came out last century, making them old. The 6th generation consoles were the consoles that kicked off the new millennium and a truly new gaming era along with it. Many gamers also consider the jump between the 5th and 6th generation to be the last great jump in gaming technology. I personally believe it to be the largest jump, compare a PS1 game to a PS2 game and its night and day. I can't say this is the worst way to break it up, it's probably the most logical from a time perspective. I guess it would make sense to break things up by decades as well, but I always felt like this was the cleanest matchup between generations starting and decades (and in this case, centuries) ending.

Finally, you have the contingent of gamers that consider the 6th generation as the cutoff for old school consoles. I don't have a clever name for this group, but the thought process revolves around one simple factor: online functionality. The 6th generation were the last group of consoles to not have native online functionality (well, technically the XBox was capable out of the box, but it's a long story). Even when the consoles did make the transition to online play, it wasn't until later in their lifecycle, they required add-ons and there wasn't much to the online other than just basic gameplay. There was no online store and the games ran poorly on all but the best of connections. Some of you may not believe that but take it from someone who grew up in the middle of nowhere during the early internet age, most games were unplayable online for a lot of us. Needless to say, the relatively effortless online play of the PS3/XBox 360 was a major dividing line and generational change. I think it's generally agreed this is as late as the argument goes, I've never heard anyone ever try to argue the 7th generation as "old school."

That's a massive oversimplification and there is a lot more nuance than that, there are certainly more groups than the four outlined above. Some people mark the new vs. old divide by decade, or specifically by generation. There's a whole other side to this debate with PC gaming that we aren't even touching. But in general, these are the most common arguments I hear. For me personally if I had to pick one, I would be split somewhere between the last two groups. The 6th generation is a really gray area for me, this generation of games really laid the groundwork for the way modern games are structured. But I have always felt they felt ever so slightly more like 5th gen games vs. 7th gen games. The online functionality situation is also critical, that may be the single biggest dividing line between old and new school. So, I guess I would have to say that puts me squarely in the final group. Hell, I've covered tons of PS2/XBox/GameCube games here, so I must count them as old school, right?

However, I personally have always gone a little more nuanced in my breakdown. I think there are two very distinct eras of older games. I have always seen old school and retro used interchangeably when describing games, I've been doing it myself throughout the article. But I do think we should start thinking about them differently. Perhaps we could eventually find new terms, but let's use the terms we've all become familiar with. I have always broken games into three categories:

Modern - The 7th, 8th and 9th generations (PS3-5, XBox 360, One and Series X, Nintendo Wii U and Switch, etc.)

"Old School" - 3rd through 6th generations (PS 1-2, XBox, GameCube, SNES, NES, N64, Genesis, Master System, Dreamcast, etc.)

"Retro" - 1st and 2nd generations (Atari 5200, 2600, Intellevision, Coleco Vision, Pong Consoles, etc.)  

I might shift the 3rd generations down into the previous generation, but I personally think it fits more into the middle group. Maybe its just a product of them being before my time, but I always felt the 2nd gen and earlier consoles were drastically different from the "old school" generations. Those games were so simplistic and basic that I think they need to be separated out from the consoles from the late 80's and 90's. I wasn't around for it personally, but even a quick glance at the graphics will show just how big a leap the 2nd to 3rd console generation was. I mentioned earlier that I think 5th to 6th was the biggest, but this was up there.

I mean, I guess it makes sense I would break it down that way. I cover those "old school" games almost exclusively, so it seems logical. I have branched into modern games now and then and there are a few on my 10's list, but this was more do to life situations than actually seeking to play those games. Even when I did, I tried to keep it to titles with a more "old school" style. I have tried to review "retro" games in the past, but when I sit down to actually describe these games I often find there isn't much to say. You shoot stuff, it turns colors, it explodes, you get points. There are a few that I want to take a stab at, but I can't see these truly retro games ever becoming part of my regular rotation.

I should also note, this is talking strictly about the generational divide between these eras. I know there's a lot of other major talking points that define the old school/retro gaming conversation. For a lot of folks, things like setup and playing on original hardware are critically important parts of this discussion. For now, I'm not going to dig that deep, I just wanted to give a baseline as to what kinds of games I talk about. I also want to give the obligatory reminder that this is just my opinion, as is literally everything that gets posted on here. I've been doing this for so long without much context and I just wanted to provide some for the few people that do end up reading it.

So there you have it. You may agree, you may disagree, but those are my thoughts. Maybe I'll change my mind, maybe I won't. But either way, its back to game reviews next week.