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While reading the fun CPCnext topic I created, one of you suggested that machines more powerful than 8 bits were "too much" because you lose the magic of "one man projects".

Not sure if I agree or disagree, but combined with my general instinctive disdain for the 16 bit consoles  (I think I perceive those games as 8 bits gameplay with more flashy graphics, too predictable and lacking originality), and the fact that after 1990 many games started having development teams of 10-20 people (a far cry from the 1000 people working on the worst-rated PS5 games, but still), I started to wonder... Where does modern gaming (and all its problems) start? Let's analyze all the options:

2013) If you were born in 2005, you probably think the PS3 is retro. Well sorry, little boy, but this poll is not for you. Oh and stop drinking Monster, you're gonna have a heart attack.

2005) Now this is a more realistic option. 2005 marks the start of the HD era, the motion controls, the wireless controllers, the digital media, the online play by default on all platforms... But let's be honest, games play exactly the same as in the PS2 era. So maybe we need to dig deeper.

2000) Apart from being full of people giving 200 upvotes to posts where one person shows a picture of some game or their collection, the retrogaming subreddit is known for its arbitrary notion of "retro": everything created before the year 2000. For this reason, the Dreamcast is retro for them, but not the PS2. In any case, PS2 era consoles (and equivalent powered PCs) may be a good option as the "first modern gaming era", but the problem is: many PS1 era games already play the same, and the PSX controller is almost the same as the PS2 one. So let's go down one more level of the dungeon (https://youtu.be/rqy4xcXgtxM?si=cq8-jEIpIgdAwtQZ).

1995) Some argue the PSX era is an intermediate stage between retro and modern gaming. It has many great 2D titles, and many great 3D titles. But are 32 and 64 bit games "retro" or "modern"? Many use multiple voice actors, try to be movies or use a team of 50 people. Budgets increased dramatically and in many ways, the magic was gone. But many games are still super fun and creative! How was this possible? I believe the reason was the experimentation: textured 3D were something new, and games trying to be movies for the first time still didn't focus mostly on the story. But there's a good reason why these platforms barely receive any homebrew games. So maybe we can conclude that this was the first modern gaming generation, right? No, because SNES and Mega Drive projects were 10 man projects, not 1 man. Let's go a little deeper.

1990) I refuse to go down further, it's scary and dark! And cold. Please let's stop here, this generation is mostly 2D with except for some crazy flat-texture experiments. The problem is, these games were already focusing on graphics. And the first games trying to be movies appear here: Final Fantasy on the SNES, Gabriel Knight on the PC... And the best games were often 10+ man projects. So by voting 1990, you accept as your holy saviour that one-man-projects are the only true retro flavour, and only 8 bits and previous stuff is retro. The Pico-8 fantasy console creator is in your team, and that's why he created his virtual console with huge pixels and zero chance for realistic graphics. He wanted one-man projects. He wanted retro. But 8 bit computers had some isometric games that back in the day were called "3D", so... Can you imagine that for some hardcore Atari 2600 fan, 8 bit systems from the 80s are already too modern? Let's explore that possibility.

1982) The only true retro systems are the Atari 2600, the Intellivision, the Apple II and mainframes. Everythin else is way too powerful and the magic of high scores is lost. Nah, what am I saying, this doesn't make sense. Still, I will add this option as the "joke" vote.

So what is the year, in your opinion, retro gaming stops and modern gaming starts?

Well it wasn't quite what I meant when I was talking about "one man projects" - that was really in terms of using them for development, a case of can I feasibly produce a reasonable effort without needing a whole team. Not necessarily some definition of "retro".

But it's an interesting question anyway, so let's see. For me Dreamcast, PS2, Xbox (the OG one), GameCube is the dawn of "modern" gaming. Everything from that point on is really just refinement. More polygons to smooth out the edges, bigger storage allowing bigger worlds and more in depth storytelling etc.

The earlier 3D systems like PS1 and N64 have a delightful jankiness about them. Nobody knew how full 3D games should be controlled (the original Playstation controller didn't even have analogue sticks!), there were weird 3D but actually plays likes it's 2D games and pre-rendered stuff like Resident Evil pushing boundaries in a similar manner to that which the 8-bit machines did.

1914.

I second the opinion of andycadley. 

Retrogaming is the era where the hardware limited what ideas could become a game. The era of PS2, Dreamcast, Gamecube is the edge, where retro gaming ends. They have been the last ones, that put a limit on what you can do. You had to deal with those limitations. The generation after them rarely limited ideas - the new limit was number of polygons and/or frame rates, or the size of a game ... I would not consider a PS3 a retro machine anymore. It's more or less the same stuff as today, just less perfect in presentation or with smaller gaming worlds.

There is one system, that doesn't really fit into the retro gaming category however it is so special that it deserves its own spot: The Wii. Due to its library of casual family games and its unique controllers I will definitely keep the Wii for playing some games with the grandkids. And I am sure they will love it - whereas the Xbox One games probably will be of no interest to them.

To readers of the forum archives in the year 3000, I would love / would have loved to know what your answer is :)

Quote from: eto on 20:31, 25 January 24I second the opinion of andycadley.

Retrogaming is the era where the hardware limited what ideas could become a game. The era of PS2, Dreamcast, Gamecube is the edge, where retro gaming ends. They have been the last ones, that put a limit on what you can do. You had to deal with those limitations. The generation after them rarely limited ideas - the new limit was number of polygons and/or frame rates, or the size of a game ... I would not consider a PS3 a retro machine anymore. It's more or less the same stuff as today, just less perfect in presentation or with smaller gaming worlds.

There is one system, that doesn't really fit into the retro gaming category however it is so special that it deserves its own spot: The Wii. Due to its library of casual family games and its unique controllers I will definitely keep the Wii for playing some games with the grandkids. And I am sure they will love it - whereas the Xbox One games probably will be of no interest to them.

Gonna jump in here on the topic of the Wii as I've gotten back into Nintendo stuff recently, but the original Wii really was a bunch of outdated hardware for the standard of televisions that were at the time. No HDMI, SCART was expected to be used. You could get a component cable for it, but it still only did 480p with that. I'm not sure if it would have done so well by itself had Wii Fit not come out (which was actually the reason I ended up buying one).

A lot of the Wii's faults were corrected with the Wii U thankfully. The Wii U is what the Wii should have been. But the Wii by itself was never a threat to Microsoft or Sony in 2007 in my honest opinion. Had it been the U, I think it would have lead to an interesting time in gaming.

I personally count motion controls as one of the "sins" of modern gaming, right there with games that try to be movies, DLC, loot boxes and the zero-risk approach due to the high capital invested in each new 3rd person shooter with a B-movie sci-fi plot that's overhyped as the next Hitchcock's Vertigo (99% of games).

Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 11:03, 26 January 24but it still only did 480p with that.

I have recently connected the Wii to the Amazon Fire 4K OLED TV through an HDMI adapter - and this is extremely crisp and sharp. I am really surprised how good 480p -> 4K upscaling is.

For the casual games we play (Mario Kart, Wii Sports) this is more than enough.

The CPC was my first "gaming platform", so for me modern gaming started at the time, when new games couldn't be implemented anymore on the CPC, not even in a limited way.
And that was definitely around 1995.

Im going to be pedantic, the question is "Retro Gaming" rather than "Retro platforms".For me Retro Gaming is gaming on any system where the games are lost to that platform/never remastered or rereleased on newer platforms. With that, i consider gaming on the PS3 to be retro gaming, e.g. playing Metal Gear Solid 4 which is stuck on that platform, if i fire up my PS3 and play it, immediately i'm reminded of playing it back in 2008/2009.

I have next to no nostalgia for the PS3 itself(although it is unique/clunky in terms of having some godawful framerates like Bayonetta vs the Xbox 360 when devs were just pushing it beyond its capabilities or not completely maxing out its SPs) , so i dont really consider the PS3 a retro platform whereas i would consider PS2 to one and again where so many games were released on the PS2 that were exclusive to it or the Xbox and are stuck on those platforms with no rereleases/remakes.

PC is so generic i really have no nostalgia for any specific system although i did love my PC when it had a X58 PC build with Intel Core i7 920(4 cores) where i later replaced that CPU with a 6 core Xeon x5660 and overclocked it to 200% of its original clock, that platform lasted me 8 years for 2009 to 2017.

But i do have nostalgia for PC games like Battlefield 2 which i got back in 2005 and if anytime i fired that up im whisked back to 2005.

So in summary its a mix of having nostalgia for either older system's and or older games.   

Your tastes are way too modern for me, but it's interesting to read your opinion.  ;D

As someone who stopped buying consoles after 2005, I often feel like I have been transported to the red universe when I talk to a modern gamer.

The only console I ever bought when it was "current" was the NDS, but yet I think I do "retro-gaming" when I play a PS1 game (emulated). Similarly, back in the day I only had contact with the CPC and the speccy, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the MSX and the C64, despite not having any nostalgia.

So I don't think is necessarily "nostalgia". When I play PS2 games, it doesn't feel "retro" to me, but I guess it is because I haven't played PS5 (or whatever) games; so the PS2 doesn't feel retro to me.

What I'm trying to say perhaps is that "retro-gaming" is definitely a very difficult term to define, because it depends on each one of us and our own experiences.

Quote from: cwpab on 16:43, 26 January 24Your tastes are way too modern for me, but it's interesting to read your opinion.  ;D

As someone who stopped buying consoles after 2005, I often feel like I have been transported to the red universe when I talk to a modern gamer.

I understand, but I don't consider myself a modern gamers, I've been gaming since owning the terrible Binotone Pong system since around 1980. Only really got my real computer aka CPC in 85/86.
I just like gaming and have continued to enjoy it since  even into modern gaming.

FUN FACTS: Pitfall (1982) was made by 1 person. Bruce Lee (1984), by 2. Donkey Kong (1982), by 13. Tomb Raider (1996), by 43. The Secret of Monkey Island (1990), by 83. Marvel Spiderman 2 (2023), by 3,586.

Sources (please note the "thanks" were not counted as part of the teams):
https://www.mobygames.com/game/8793/pitfall/credits/atari-2600/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/191/bruce-lee/credits/atari-8-bit/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/574/donkey-kong/credits/arcade/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/616/the-secret-of-monkey-island/credits/dos/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/348/tomb-raider/credits/dos/
https://www.mobygames.com/game/210733/marvel-spider-man-2/credits/playstation-5/

This question in this topic is like trying to determine once and for all the date when "yesterday" was. 
It's impossible. The answer is relative, subjective and temporary, and will never be different.

1995.
I think that the PSX was the last pioneer, as it also gave something that was missing.
Not my cup of tea, but it did. 

Thats right. I think PSX was last of machines on which happend some groundbreaking ideas, new genres and series were created that lasted for years. Because later just grow resolutions and megabytes nothing else. I have no idea what for. This only means you have to wait longer for the premiere and installation. And all these details in graphics, like thousands of leaves on a tree, are only distracting because they are not necessary to complete fabule. And if you want to experience sight of a real leaf, turn off computer and go to forest. You don't have to wait for loading because it is already there and waiting for you.

Quote from: cwpab on 11:42, 26 January 24I personally count motion controls as one of the "sins" of modern gaming, right there with games that try to be movies, DLC, loot boxes and the zero-risk approach due to the high capital invested in each new 3rd person shooter with a B-movie sci-fi plot that's overhyped as the next Hitchcock's Vertigo (99% of games).

Wow, you've lumped someone with a speeding offence into the same prison cell as a convicted murderer!

Motion controls have their place in certain games. Guitar Hero and Rock Band for example certainly wouldn't be as fun without having to raise the guitar controller up for star power. Wii Fit helped me lose quite a bit of weight. Granted I could have joined a gym and gone jogging for it, but not everyone wants to go out in miserable weather or share a space with a bunch of sweaty steroid freaks either. And Dance Dance Revolution if that counts is a lot of fun.

If they dominated the gaming industry, I'd fully agree with you, but they didn't. They were an addition, a novelty.

Nice metaphore!  ;D But unaccurate... Because I don't dislike things just because they dominate. The PS2 is one of my favorite consoles and I absolutely hate the analog buttons (I play with the PSX controller for this reason). In the end, for me these are unnecessary "forced" revolutionary control methods, whis is something that modern gaming loves to do since 1995 or so. Before that, it was more about adding more buttons in places you could press (not always!).

Quote from: cwpab on 20:26, 29 January 24Nice metaphore!  ;D But unaccurate... Because I don't dislike things just because they dominate. The PS2 is one of my favorite consoles and I absolutely hate the analog buttons (I play with the PSX controller for this reason). In the end, for me these are unnecessary "forced" revolutionary control methods, whis is something that modern gaming loves to do since 1995 or so. Before that, it was more about adding more buttons in places you could press (not always!).

I think as time moved on, especially from 2000 onwards, additional controls were were as games became more complex.

Try plugging a PS1 controller into a PS2 and play any of the 5 GTA games released for that format. It's not pretty at all, aiming is next to impossible!
Don't get me wrong, like yourself, I do prefer simpler controls at the best of times, but that's just my personal taste of game, but there comes a time when that era is dead. And bad controls have ruined games for the longest time.

Take Amstrad Renegade for example, and I *love* Renegade and appreciate the control method was to replicate the arcade (Breakthru was done the same way), but it took a LOT of heat for it's control system, especially when the C64 and Spectrum were able to do it with a stick with more moves (the 128k Speccy had the shoulder throw). So in a lot of people's eyes, the controls ruined that game. And when you look at how well Target Renegade was done, controls wise. It does beg the question why this couldn't have been implemented?

But I'm going off on a tangent here. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I do see both sides of the argument. :) 

I wish I could see into the future and see how 2100 games look and control. I assume they'll still exist!

Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 13:47, 30 January 24Take Amstrad Renegade for example

Finished the sequel multiple times from back then till today.
But I agree, the first one is unplayable for me.

Quote from: VincentGR on 15:33, 30 January 24

Quote from: Shaun M. Neary on 13:47, 30 January 24Take Amstrad Renegade for example

Finished the sequel multiple times from back then till today.
But I agree, the first one is unplayable for me.

If you can get used to keys with the left hand as well, it's actually easier than with the joystick. But the keys alternate depending on the way you're facing.
It takes a bit of practice but it's doable.

Retrogaming started when they started to call Gaming RetroGaming instead of Gaming.  ;)

Commercial era will not end as long as people buy software for money for a system.

But I'm sure that was not the point and I missed the topic. Or did I miss the point and it was another topic? In the land of Z80 everything is so much more easy.  :-\

Here's a very interesting 1h24min podcast with John Romero and John Carmack from 1 month ago to celebrate Doom's 30th anniversary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvAkaJsvAXs

What's especially interesting is that Carmack admits that Doom was the technical/creative "sweet spot": starting with Quake, even creating maps was too complex both for the team and for random external users because "you had to be an architect".

Had forgotten that that interview with Romero and Carmack was to happen, thanks for posting/reminding me, will watch that tonight.

I only realised a few years ago that Romero is now living in Ireland, which i thought was cool.

Quote from: eto on 20:31, 25 January 24The generation after them rarely limited ideas - the new limit was number of polygons and/or frame rates, or the size of a game ...

The new limits very quickly became time and budget.

Small games still exist and small teams still exist - I'm currently working on one (modern) game in a team of 4 and another one in a team of 2 and a half. And games never stop evolving, I guess. There will be trends in gaming that will mark future games as belonging to a particular time period. But I do think that the PS2 era is where a lot of things moved to places where they kind of still are now. It doesn't really seem to me that a PS3 is much different from a PS5 in any way that matters. Yeah ok, it looks a little better.

I think retro is kind of a useless term once you start dealing with a history longer than a couple of generations. What I think of as the golden age was probably pre-1995, when innovations were happening all the time, technology was advancing year on year and genre conventions were still being figured out. When you could guess what hardware something was running on by looking at it.

I must confess I lately find myself playing the Commander Keen series and especially the Dangerous Dave series instead of the Doom-like titles from ID.

I was so hyped with 3D games (or 2.5D) in the second half of the 90s that maybe I oversaturated of them or something.

Quote from: cwpab on 11:34, 03 February 24I must confess I lately find myself playing the Commander Keen series and especially the Dangerous Dave series instead of the Doom-like titles from ID.

I was so hyped with 3D games (or 2.5D) in the second half of the 90s that maybe I oversaturated of them or something.

For a week now, I do the same.

Quote from: VincentGR on 19:45, 03 February 24

Quote from: cwpab on 11:34, 03 February 24I must confess I lately find myself playing the Commander Keen series and especially the Dangerous Dave series instead of the Doom-like titles from ID.
I was so hyped with 3D games (or 2.5D) in the second half of the 90s that maybe I oversaturated of them or something.

For a week now, I do the same.

That sounds great! Which ones are you playing the most and liking the most?

I played a lot of Dangerous Dave and Commander Keen series over the last years and finished 5 of them. Here's some advice if anyone wants to try:

1) Keen 4-6 are considered better, they control better. You can try those if you get too frustrated with 1-3, where the jumpinng takes some time.

2) Dangerous Dave 1 and 2 are both GREAT and FUN games, but very different. 1 is a classic platformer with awesome Romero level design and 2 is like a 2D Doom with infinite ammo and a cool single weapon: the shotgun.

3) Keen games let you save between levels from the game itself, but Dave games don't. I recommend using this version of DOSBox to save on the Dave games between levels: http://ykhwong.x-y.net/ (I say between levels because you don't want to kill the challenge by saving after every jump, right?) In any case, please note sometimes Romero goes nuts with the difficulty and in those cases, you might allow for some artificial "checkpoint" mid-level if beating a level is too hard without snapshots.

Finished a couple of years ago "Dangerous Dave in the Haunted Mansion"
Also Pharao's Tomb, Bio Menace (all chapters), Artic Adventure and Monuments of Mars.
Now I am at Dangerous Dave Pack starting with the first.
Never had a DOS machine back then.
The games are awful, controls are a mess and the CPU is changing speed in game.
Besides that, they are cute and I play.

Haha, I don't think the games are that awful, man... I mean the Dangerous Dave games require precision. Remember to save between levels. Getting angry is part of the fun.

The first 3 Commander Keen, however... That could be open to discussion. The jumping and inertia can be hard, but I persevered and finished a couple of them. The third one is masochist, though.

Can I just say, that this is by far the dumbest question that I have ever seen on this forum. Retro / vintage etc. doesn't have a start date, it's a moving target and extremely subjective. Retro gaming for an 18 year old could be anything before the PS4, or for someone like myself it could be anything before 16bit. So I'll add the question to my "Yes, there is such thing as a stupid question" list, along with:

How long is a piece of rope?
How many drops are in a glass of water?
What time is later?

and of course...

What's the difference between a duck?

Bryce.  

That may be valid for music or movies, but not for games.

Because games changed radically in the 90s, and therefore many people define "retro" not as "something 10 years in the past" (otherwise games from 2013 like "Rage", by ID Software/Carmack and a game I just learned it exists, woud be vintage just like Monkey Island was in the year 2000), but as "something with simpler controls and shorter, more action-oriented challenges".

With movies, you watch a 70s movie and in the end you have watched a movie, the hobby is more or less the same. But try playing Spiderman (PS5) and then Breakout.

That's why retro is an increasingly poor choice of word when something's been around long enough. But vintage is a different matter. 

People who are into cars decided some time ago that "veteran" = before 1918, "vintage" = 1919-1930, "post-vintage" = 1931-1949 and "classic"  = 1950-1969.

The early decades of gaming were distinct, not the same thing as an 18 year old with a PS3. It's more descriptive to talk about the 8 bit and 16 bit era, as imperfect as those designations may be.

I find it a bit worying that not much has changed in popular art and games in the last 15 years. And since 2000, only smartphones and HD graphics come to mind. I can see 2100 people calling these decades "the samey era".

Quote from: cwpab on 22:45, 04 February 24I find it a bit worying that not much has changed in popular art and games in the last 15 years. And since 2000, only smartphones and HD graphics come to mind. I can see 2100 people calling these decades "the samey era".

I dont agree with that whatsoever, in the past 15 years you've had fantastic single player games with brilliant narratives:
1 Deus Ex
2. Bioshock
3. Spec Ops - The line
And many others like e.g. the recent Baldurs Gate 3 which I've spent well over 120 hours on.
Most of the above I will admit are older and gaming is in a crap place atm but games like Baldurs Gate 3 just completely shine through and make you ignore most of the crap.

That'd my view, I realise everyone else's view might differ.

Quote from: lmimmfn on 02:34, 05 February 24

Quote from: cwpab on 22:45, 04 February 24I find it a bit worying that not much has changed in popular art and games in the last 15 years. And since 2000, only smartphones and HD graphics come to mind. I can see 2100 people calling these decades "the samey era".

I dont agree with that whatsoever, in the past 15 years you've had fantastic single player games with brilliant narratives:
1 Deus Ex
2. Bioshock
3. Spec Ops - The line
And many others like e.g. the recent Baldurs Gate 3 which I've spent well over 120 hours on.
Most of the above I will admit are older and gaming is in a crap place atm but games like Baldurs Gate 3 just completely shine through and make you ignore most of the crap.

That'd my view, I realise everyone else's view might differ.

Not sure if you're replying the wrong message, but read my text again. I don't talk about quality, I talk about lack of changes in art (including video games as interactive art) that makes something from 2010 feel the same as something from 2025.

Quote from: cwpab on 22:45, 04 February 24I find it a bit worying that not much has changed in popular art and games in the last 15 years. And since 2000, only smartphones and HD graphics come to mind. I can see 2100 people calling these decades "the samey era".

I have the gut feeling we will se a big change soon...

In my experience the introduction of (really) new capabilities spawns creativity - and introduces new gaming genres.

Usually it was just that hardware was finally "powerful enough" to no longer limit a certain idea. In the early 80s the arcade machines were powerful enough and developers created almost all 2D genres that we still see today. This lasted 'til the PCs were powerful enough to render 3D worlds.

Since the PS3 era no new generation of PCs or consoles introduced really new capabilities. Sure, new generations were faster - but not "fast enough" to get fundamentally new capabilities.

And we see that on the games side. Every new game is just a reiteration or combination of already existing ideas. (okay, not completely: VR, Wii and mobile games introduced new ideas). It's just bigger, better, faster and more, maybe "seems" more intelligent. Online gaming is bigger, more polygons are rendered, raytracing makes scenes look realistic, interactions are more complex - but the underlying game idea is still the same.

However 2024/2025 might be the start of a new era. I'm 100% sure the next generation of consoles will include AI chips - and it will be interesting how they will be used - they might be a literal game changer. Maybe a totally new way of interacting with a game - or the game could adapt to the players way of playing in an undetermined way.

It could also be used to make people more addicted to games. If you make a "friend" online, who lures you into spending more time with him on quests - and you don't even realize that it's a bot.

Or it's the end of gaming genres. AI might be powerful enough to kill online gaming - e.g. when it's impossible to distinguish between an AI controlled bot and a good player the bots will ruin the game for human players.

For me, the clearest bounder of change interactions in games is not transition from 2D to 3D, nor improvement of resolution screens or textures. But change to do games that cannot be played with a joystick with 1 fire. PSX pad has cross arrows and 10 buttons. You can't play this even with 2 or 3 fires. That is difference between simple early games and more complex a new type of games.

And what about movies, music and other forms of arts? Hasn't anyone noticed some kind of a Groundhog Day feeling? All I can hear is reggaeton and autotune, but it's been like that for 10+ years. And you can watch a 2010 series and it feels fresh.

Games don't need to have made a quantum leap to be considered "last generation". I asked my son and his friends (all between 12 and 14 years old): For the older ones Tomb Raider is retro, but the younger ones even considered Call of Duty and GTA already as retro. Anything that ran on a pre-PC computer is archaic for them and belongs in a museum. I showed them a C64 Breadbin and one of them asked if an archaeologist had found it next to the pyramids! :D
My son said retro for him is anything where the jagged edges are visible in the graphics. He's still a fanatic retro gamer and often spends more time playing on the Retro-Pi, Nintendo DS or even a Gameboy SP instead of his Nintendo Switch! 

As for music: If you only listen to mainstream / radio music, then yes. It's been the same crap for years. Try wandering outside of that comfort zone and you will find a lot of very good, innovative independent bands creating great new music that will most likely never get played on the radio.

Bryce.

Quote from: cwpab on 10:39, 05 February 24And what about movies, music and other forms of arts? Hasn't anyone noticed some kind of a Groundhog Day feeling? All I can hear is reggaeton and autotune, but it's been like that for 10+ years. And you can watch a 2010 series and it feels fresh.

I think that's just called "getting old"
:laugh:

If anything with visible pixels is retro, then my declining eyesight should mean that nothing is retro soon enough. 

Back to the games and since we're comparing modern to retro, I must recommend Portal (2007) to every CPCwiki user (or guest) reding this topic.

I basically never play post 2005 games and rarely play post 1997 games lately, but this one is an exception. It has the simple structure of retro games and the 3D possibilities of modern games.

It was designed by a girl 2 years younger than me. I didn't play it back in the day because back then I started going full retro and didn't trust modern games, especially when there were memes about it everywhere and it kind of became tiresome before you even saw the game in action.

A mistake. Not because thousands of people who play a game are stupid or annoying, it means you need to ignore it. The game is super fun to play with a very well designed dificulty curve, and the dialogs with the female-voiced robots are hilarious (for example, there are some cute little robots that look like oversized white toasters or radios with oval shapes, and you can pick them up or simply "kill them" by making them fall or shoot each other. You don't encounter them until stage 12/18 or so, and they're constantly speaking to you in a hilarious female robotic voice. When they find you they say: "There - you - aare". And when you finally kill them (their goal is to find you and kill you with machine guns, lol), they say: "I - don't  - blame - youuu...".

Go play this now if you haven't, seriously. I wish all modern games were like that.

Quote from: cwpab on 22:42, 09 February 24Back to the games and since we're comparing modern to retro, I must recommend Portal (2007) to every CPCwiki user (or guest) reding this topic.

I basically never play post 2005 games and rarely play post 1997 games lately, but this one is an exception. It has the simple structure of retro games and the 3D possibilities of modern games.

It was designed by a girl 2 years younger than me. I didn't play it back in the day because back then I started going full retro and didn't trust modern games, especially when there were memes about it everywhere and it kind of became tiresome before you even saw the game in action.

A mistake. Not because thousands of people who play a game are stupid or annoying, it means you need to ignore it. The game is super fun to play with a very well designed dificulty curve, and the dialogs with the female-voiced robots are hilarious (for example, there are some cute little robots that look like oversized white toasters or radios with oval shapes, and you can pick them up or simply "kill them" by making them fall or shoot each other. You don't encounter them until stage 12/18 or so, and they're constantly speaking to you in a hilarious female robotic voice. When they find you they say: "There - you - aare". And when you finally kill them (their goal is to find you and kill you with machine guns, lol), they say: "I - don't  - blame - youuu...".

Go play this now if you haven't, seriously. I wish all modern games were like that.

While RPGs and may not be your bag, Dragon Age Origins and Baldurs Gate are some of the best games since then.
I would say Battlefield 2 from 2005/2006, my favourite game ever but its best online and unfortunately it's time has passed. Probably the only and last game I have 1000+ hours played. An innocent time before family 😀