Classic vs Modern Gaming: Where's the line?

[Wallyworld]

I look at gaming in 3 groups. I think everything released from ps1 to the original xbox as classic. Everything before that is retro. Everything after the original xbox is modern.

I just can't group original xbox with atari that just doesn't sit right with me.

[Breaker]

Should there be 'classic' and 'modern' gaming sub forums on here?

Should there instead be forums dedicated to each 'decade' of consoles (per the way the Critic divides the consoles on his front page)?

This is an interesting question...but I think I would actually separate by generation, rather than decade.

Then again, there may not be enough traffic to support a forum for the 4th gen, or 5th gen, or 3rd gen, or whatever.

I'd love to see the consoles divided by generation rather than decade on the front page.

[Breaker]

I look at gaming in 3 groups. I think everything released from ps1 to the original xbox as classic. Everything before that is retro. Everything after the original xbox is modern.

I just can't group original xbox with atari that just doesn't sit right with me.

This is a good point as well. Lumping everything from the Atari 2600 era to original Xbox, PS2, and Wii together is a little goofy.

I could see something like 2600-type to SNES/Genesis era, then Saturn, N64 through original Xbox, and PS3/360 forward.

So it almost becomes 2D, 3D, then massive hard drive storage/online play.

[Shapur]

I agree with the above except that I'd almost have to split up the 2D. Atari 2600/Intellivision/early 80's games are very different than SNES/Genesis games. Games like Pac-Man and Asteroids are great but it isn't until the NES and later that games began to really even attempt to tell stories. Imagine Zelda. A link to the Past, Street Fighter II and Doom are all the same generation as Donkey Kong, Centipede and Joust.

[scotland]

Agree that there is too much diversity for two categories, but also not enough traffic on this site to actually make them into more than three categories. Optical media is confusing not just for the N64 using it late, but early adopters like the TG16 and Sega CD. Nintendo portables never used optical, nor did mobile gaming.

Retro could be large enough to handle discussions on pong games, arcade games, type in early computer games, text adventures (long before there was the NES there was video game storytelling, or did you never die of dysentary on the Oregon Trail - developed 10 years before the Famicom, let alone the NES), up to the time when games became generally to sophisticated for a single creator. Maybe retro goes from tennis for two through the 8 bit CPU era in consoles, and up until Windows 3.0 in PCs. Oregon Trail and Pong would be early retro, Warlords and Donkey Kong retro, and Legend of Zelda late retro.

That would leave a confusion on portables, as their tech is less sophisticated of course. So for portables, the only retro handhelds would be the single game dedicated ones, such as Mattel Football to the Tiger LCD games.

Classic could be the 16 bit console era up until....I would say the PS3 seventh generation. This coincides with a change in focus in HD graphics, online play, hard drives, etc as well as the rise of mobile gaming and easy widespread emulation. So, the Genesis and Gameboy as well as Doom are early classic, Mys, the Saturn, the N64 and GBA classic, and the Gamecube, Halo, and PS2 late classic. I will just put the DS into late classic too.

Just some thoughts.

[Verm3]

Separate forums for every console are probably the only thing everyone will agree on, as we all got into/grew up with different generations of console.

Personally, I don't think it would matter if a forum for console X get's less posts that a forum for console Y; some consoles are more obscure than others. I think the only issue would be if the critic has to pay additional for each sub forum?

[Wallyworld]

Scotland your post had my head spinning. The critic had the right idea just break it down by decade. If you break it down by generation a lot of people would get that confused as well. But most people would know snes, ps1 and so on came out in the 90's. Nes, master system, 7800 came out in 80's.

[Rev]

I think going back to Scotland's first point is enough- we really don't have enough forum traffic to do this. Having 16 or 17 forums seems like overkill. Three might work but perhaps we should throw that on the wish list if the forums ever get busier.

Having a bunch of empty forums just doesn't look aesthetically pleasing. It makes our small forums look barren.

[jon]

First off, using a phrase from Tommy Lee Jones in JFK, this is a "sordid cast of characters" (legendary) in this thread.

But I was thinking. Is the PS2 and PS3 generations classic gaming now? I was writing about the Xbox 360 and it just seems so old by now. Yikes. I think at least the PS2 era might have to be classic gaming by now.

[ThePixelatedGenocide]

First off, using a phrase from Tommy Lee Jones in JFK, this is a "sordid cast of characters" (legendary) in this thread.

But I was thinking. Is the PS2 and PS3 generations classic gaming now? I was writing about the Xbox 360 and it just seems so old by now. Yikes. I think at least the PS2 era might have to be classic gaming by now.

Memory cards. Discs that contain all the content attached to the game. Any game released too soon will remain a bad game forever. Even the small games are often games made by fairly large teams. "Realistic graphics" means rubber faced corpses incapable of making facial expressions, in vast cardboard cities that blew our minds.

Assuming the game wasn't still divided up into 8-bit style levels.

The PS2 is very retro.

But the X-Box shows where the next generation was headed. Between the hard drive, focus on high speed competitive online play, and advanced graphic techniques like bump mapping and normal mapping?

Yeah, it's a very different beast than the Atari 2600. Or really, any console before it. This is when consoles first became budget PCs with many of the non-gaming/non-entertainment features stripped out.