The ‘retro’ Conundrum

dear retro gamer,

What age of console stops feeling retro? for me it’s the Playstation 2. even in 20 years i’ll never have the nostalgia for that era. it feels like games then became more ‘real’ and modern looking in that generation. ninjapanda (via twitter)

If we had a pound for every time this question popped up we’d all be living on a remote Pacific island playing four-player Puyo Puyo Tetris. the beauty of this particular question is there’s no definitive answer. there’s no definitive answer because everyone has their own definition of what ‘retro’ means and it almost always ties in to whatever systems were available to them as kids. the official Retro Gamer rule of thumb has always been around ten years (as that would typically mean two console generations) but we’ve since extended it to around 15. the Ps2 falls squarely into Retro Gamer’s remit, along with the Xbox and gamecube.

It might not be retro to some, but it’s clear that there’s a lot of love in the Retro Gamer readership for Sony’s monolithic PS2.