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this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2026
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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).
In three years Minecraft will be retro.
20+ years as the cutoff means half life 2 episode 1 is retro now.
definitely agree wrt sim city though.
I would argue that HL2 and EP1 are not retro, the core FPS experience in HL2 still seems to reflect modern standards.
A acquaintance in their early 20s mentioned playing HL2 for the first time recently and they said it didn't feel like a game that was almost a quarter of a century old.
they do feel dated, what with the huge arsenal and floaty movement, but yeah they're not old feeling. mostly because they were so novel at the time.
It's interesting how these things work, I actually dislike the lack of KB+M style granular movement controls in games with first person views (FPS or otherwise). Games that weren't made for computers often just have strange feeling first person controls.
I might just be showing my age here. :)
well yeah. they can be made to work but the precision is lost. hence mhy autoaim largely disappeared from pc shooters but is a requirement on console.
with floaty movement i'm mostly referring to the insane inertia. much better than hl1 but it still feels like you're on ice.