Today’s podcast topic is retro games and retro gaming as a whole, a subject near and dear to my heart as The Punished Backlog’s resident Old Games Guy. As much as gamers constantly look to the future for the newest and coolest experiences, revisiting and revering the past remains a crucial part of gaming culture.
When I was growing up, the difference between what was modern vs. “retro” was fairly stark and easy to identify: pixelated, 2D arcade games or blocky, early 3D titles were easy to call old and retro (or, in some ways, “dated”) compared to things like Mass Effect, Skyrim, and Gears of War. As time has gone on, however, the lines have blurred, as it still feels weird to call games from the mid-to-late-2000s “retro” when they’re not quite as different from their modern counterparts.
In the latest Punished Podcast episode, we discuss the definition of retro, what retro games still hold up, what game companies owe to preserving game history, and much, much more. Plus, we even have a little WHO YA GOT competition based on retro gaming later in the episode!
– Sam Martinelli, Editor
The Punished Podcast Episode 16
MP3 Download | Spotify | Apple Podcasts
Timestamps
- 0:00 – Introductions
- 3:49 – What Do We Define As Retro?
- 11:17 – How Gameplay Helps Define Retro
- 25:34 – Should You Play Older Games on Their Original Hardware?
- 29:40 – Retro vs. “Modern” Games
- 38:32 – Arcades, Culture of Retro, and Co-Op
- 46:00 – Many Games Don’t End These Days!
- 52:12 – Preservation in Games
- 1:01:35 – Who Ya Got: Retro Edition
- 1:20:00 – Outro: What’re You Playing Now?
Excerpts: Retro Video Games Podcast
Here’s a few quotes from throughout our conversation:
David: “I think there’s a public necessity to preserve these games and a way to partner with private companies to make it happen. But I would also argue that for the big publishers of the world—Amanda, you and I, we’re in marketing—it helps your brand to assure gamers that you care about your history because then gamers give a shit about your future.”
Vaughn: “It’s honestly embarrassing that big game companies lose source code. I’ve seen this stat that like 90% of source code from before 2010 is lost. Like, if you’re Square Enix, and you don’t have the source code for Final Fantasy VIII, and you have to rebuild it from someone’s copy? Like these games have won multiple awards. You don’t just have a copy of it on a disc in a case on a frame on the wall, break in case of emergency?”
Amanda: “Some of those games y’all described, like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), I might think of as ‘old school,’ but I don’t think of them as ‘retro.’ I have a very 1980s aesthetic idea of retro. It’s big CRT arcade boxes. It’s these standalone booths. It’s Atari, it’s Pac-Man. It’s pixelated, it’s beep boop beep boop. Trying to define anything from the 2000s as ‘retro’ is hard for me, even if it’s been almost 20 years since a game like Mass Effect (2007) came out.”
Sam: “I think once platform-specific feel went away… that’s when things kind of stopped feeling retro. For example, we’re all big Xbox 360 fans here. If I play an Xbox 360 game on my Xbox Series X, it pretty much feels the same. It’s basically the same experience. I just can also play a new game at the same time. Whereas if you play an N64 game on Nintendo Switch Online, you can tell that it’s weird, that it’s different, that it feels off, because you’ve just copied and pasted something old onto something new.”
Song Credits
- “Title Screen” from Earthbound (1995), composed Hirokazu Tanaka by Keiichi Suzuki
- “Stage Intro” from Galaga (1981), composed by Nobuyuki Ohnogi
- “Middle Age” from Tekken 3 (1997), composed by Nobuyoshi Sano and Keiichi Okabe
- “Spiritual Stone Get” from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998), composed by Koji Kando
- “Opening Title” from Harvest Moon (1996), composed by Tsuyoshi Tanaka
Want More Old Games Content?
Check out the pieces below!
The Punished Podcast
- The Punished Podcast: Episode 1 – Remakes vs. Remasters
- The Punished Podcast: Episode 11 – Visual Art Styles
Game Diaries / Op-Eds
- Opinion: Please, Play More Old Games
- 30 Years of Tekken: A Retrospective
- The Quiet Shame of Buying the Same Game Multiple Times
Punished Series
- Punished Chat: Superfans and a Final Fantasy Newbie Discuss VII Remake
- Punished Favorites: The 19 Best PlayStation 2 Games of All Time
- Punished Favorites: The 10 Best SNES Games of All Time
- Punished Favorites: 11 Video Game Remakes We Want To See
- Punished Hall of Fame: The Xbox 360
- Punished Hall of Fame: Donkey Kong Country 2
This is a great episode