NGL, I don't feel like the Xbox 360 or Wii are really "retro". A lot of the games still hold up decently well from a visual standpoint imo. Obsolete? Sure. Old? Sure. Retro? Nah.

I think the GameCube generation is the border of "retro". That's where you still had some games that looked old (like Animal Crossing), but you also had games that still look relatively good (like Pikmin). Imagine calling Crysis "retro". That's the same generation we're talking about.

I'm also saying this as someone who remembers the N64 fairly well.

[–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 26 points 1 month ago

I mean, the 360 can run GTA 5...

[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

The Xbox 360 had 512 MB of RAM that it shared between its CPU and GPU. I have 128x that amount of RAM in my PC right now. That's the same multiple as the difference between the 360 and the N64.

Imagine calling Crysis “retro”.

This is a video that came out back in 2007. He is using 2x of the highest end GPU you could buy at the time in SLI to run Crysis at 720p with an average of 27 FPS:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PSI9nvIXaF4

Meanwhile here is a demo using the highest end GPU you can buy right now to render a forest at 4K resolution and 60+ FPS (16x more pixels and more than 2x the fps, if we're keeping track):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7tp4eg0ax8

Most of the maps in Crysis were a few hundred feet across. The forest map in the video above is 4 square kilometers.

Crysis is retro my dude. It is as old now as Super Mario World was when it released.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is a good example of how powerful hardware is now and how games that run like shit don't have much excuse other than horrible management.

[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

The engines themselves have gotten better at pushing pixels too.

Remember all the hype about Euclideon "infinite detail" stuff back in the early 2010s? How they had a data structure that pre-sorted their voxel data in such a way that they could switch between rendering big and tiny voxels depending on the player's point of view, seamlessly and in real time?

We have that now, just with polygons instead of voxels, which actually makes it even more technically impressive since Nanite has to maintain the mesh's coherence (though I guess in some ways Nanite is a bit worse, since there's only so much it can reduce a mesh before it disappears, whereas you can just keep making voxels bigger and bigger).

The foliage you see in that forest demo is Nanite geometry.

[–] warm@kbin.earth 3 points 1 month ago

You are right, it's all very impressive tech, but most UE5 games still suffer from TAA. Maybe at 4K+ it looks great, but at lower resolutions it's like the screen is coated in a thin layer of Vaseline. The push for realistic graphics, left graphical fidelity behind.

[–] populustree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago

as SMW was when Crysis released*

[–] zarenki@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago

some games that looked old (like Animal Crossing)

There's a good reason for that one: the first animal crossing game was originally made for Nintendo 64, though that version was only released in Japan. GameCube got a port of it and that port (plus some extra features) is what released in English.

[–] Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

i feel like we have the terms vintage for REALLY old stuff, retro for quite old things, and then there's a term missing for stuff that's from ~1990-2005-ish, which is what the xbox 360 and wii fall into.

you can associate the periods roughly with materials: vintage is solid wood and steel, retro is thin wood/wood veneer and thick beige plastic, and the new category is thin black/white plastic

[–] Hoimo@ani.social 3 points 1 month ago

~1990-2005-ish

1990: Mega Drive, SNES, Neo Geo
1994: Sega Saturn, Playstation
1996: N64
1998: Dreamcast
2000: PS2
2001: GameCube, Xbox
2005: Xbox 360
2006: PS3, Wii

Those are all consoles normally considered retro, except for maybe that last gen. I think the era that's missing a term is 2005-2015, but there's actually not a whole lot happening in those years. PS4 and Xbox One? The age of cheap gaming PCs?

[–] TheCoolerMia@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 1 month ago (1 children)

agreed, anything that came after whatever was current when I was born is new and everything that happened before I was born is prehistory :3

[–] Unlix86@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 month ago

Woof c:

Pup would love to play with vacuum tube stuff tho c:

[–] Sabata11792@ani.social 20 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I wish this anime could stop reminding me that everything I know and love is dying faster than I can.

[–] viking 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Frieren is so good even though it makes me feel feelings.

[–] Sabata11792@ani.social 4 points 1 month ago

[–] dwindling7373@feddit.it 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can die faster...

[–] Sabata11792@ani.social 9 points 1 month ago

I tried that and it hurts.

[–] Vespair@lemm.ee 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

When I say "retro game" I mean pre-disc era.

[–] Blahaj_Blast@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Dreamcast isn't retro?

[–] Vespair@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago

Dreamcast gets the special distinction of being retro futurist. Criminally ahead of its time.

[–] Sombyr@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not a joke: When I was playing the Wii for the first time I legit thought "Damn, when this becomes retro Ima feel so old."
Prophetic.

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

Although the graphics looked old even when it came out.

[–] luciole 12 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Hot take: No console with significant connectivity requirements can ever be retro. That’s pretty much everything in the last twenty years.

[–] scops@reddthat.com 8 points 1 month ago

I was going to quibble with you regarding the OG Xbox and PS2, but then I looked up their release dates. I feel so goddamn old.

[–] samus12345@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Not until graphics are significantly different enough, anyway. Arkham Asylum could pass as a modern game with a lower budget. No PS2, OG Xbox, or Gamecube game can be mistaken for a modern game, though.

[–] pixelscript@lemm.ee 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

[–] populustree@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 month ago

emulators are for the transient people

[–] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 2 points 1 month ago

I like this drawing

[–] Nexy@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 month ago

I put the line of retrogames with consoles with hardrives and dlcs.