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.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] FilthyShrooms 23 points 1 month ago (1 children)

And skyrim! Anything retro can't do that

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago

Yeah Skyrim was only released 14 years ago! Wait-… wait, oh no 👴 ⏰

[–] [email protected] 26 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 2 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.

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[–] KeefChief13 10 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Xbox 360 is 20 years old as of Nov 2025.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago (4 children)

That's bullshit, the Xbox 360 came out 7 years ago.

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[–] [email protected] 7 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.

[–] Valmond 3 points 1 month ago

Yes, it's like they now are the "retro consoles" no matter their age, no other will enter that realm.

The golden age of sorts.

[–] richardisaguy 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Sorry my dudes, the xbox 360 was also part of my childhood

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Nah, no copium here. It's mainly just an observation about how "retro" tends to be a couple generations behind whatever the current generation is, and in the past, that's been very obvious on the basis of graphics capabilities. However, while we have a lot of fancy new rendering tricks and significantly more powerful hardware, most Xbox 360 games still hold up decently well. As such, imo, Xbox 360 will become "retro" if/when VR takes off or a brand-new rendering technique (like gaussian splatting) becomes commonplace. I think that's what it'd take for me to see it as "retro".

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[–] [email protected] 35 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

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Woof c:

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

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 month ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You can die faster...

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

I tried that and it hurts.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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

[–] NickwithaC 18 points 1 month ago (3 children)

So the switch?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago

O shit guys, my entire steam library is disc-less

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

if the switch 2 uses discs you would be correct

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

Has a hardrive

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Dreamcast isn't retro?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago

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

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 month ago (4 children)

2012 laptops are still very modern and people calling them old are mean :(

[–] TheEntity 28 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Given how maimed the modern laptops are, I'm willing to consider "modern" a slur for laptops. Give me back my Ethernet, video outs and all the USB!

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Give me back my Ethernet

Some ThinkPad: I have Ethernet
Buyer: Cool! I am choosing you!
Package arrives
Unpacks
Buyer: What the... there's no Ethernet!
Some ThinkPad: Look closer! There's even Ethernet icon!
Buyer: I see that, but there's just...
Some ThinkPad: That's it! ThinkPad Ethernet extension port. You didn't say "RJ-45".

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

I have a laptop for uni work that I bought in Jan 2011. It's got Lubuntu running on it and most of my work is done on Google Docs... so I'm not seeing the benefit of upgrading really.

It works.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

yes exactly!

stop being mean to my thinkpad friends! (those being, friends with thinkpads, and laptops themselves, which are automatically friends)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Where my X230 people at?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Idk I use a T440p :3

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 month ago (1 children)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

emulators are for the transient people

[–] [email protected] 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.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

Granny you are 1000 years old.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (7 children)

When ‘next-gen’ becomes ‘current gen’ (as we see the PS5 now), then the previous ‘last gen’ (ie. PS3) becomes retro.

Reminder to anyone who disagrees with the above, the PS3 was released 18+ years ago. You’re just old, like me - embrace it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

No.

The Wii is perpetually 5 years old 👉😆👈 I'm not listening lalalalala time is a man made concept

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[–] amon 7 points 1 month ago

"What do you mean, there's a WPA?"

spoiler

DS and DS lite can connect to WEP or open networks

[–] Siethron 5 points 1 month ago

Retro means Atari !

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I like this drawing

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