Defining Modern vs Retro Gaming

I have been on a huge Nintendo 64 nostalgia kick lately. Recently, I have come to the conclusion that I am becoming more and more disinterested in modern games and more and more interested in retro games. But what are retro games, exactly and what makes them nostalgic? Are they nostalgic because that's what you grew up with? Are they retro because they're old? At what point does a video game go from modern to retro?

My theory for modern vs retro games is the generational gap. The lifetime of a video game would go such as this: a game is just released, and is therefore current and modern. The next generation of consoles is released, and the game that was released last generation is no longer current, but not yet retro. An example of this would be Super Mario Galaxy. Some people may feel nostalgic about Galaxy but I think it's still too new to be considered retro but yet not new enough to be current. I like to call this the "area of obscurity".  Right now the Wii, PS3, Xbox 360 and DS are falling into this category. This is the period where prices for games tend to be the lowest. Most people have moved onto the Wii U, PS4, Xbox One, and 3DS by now.  But yet people don't seem to have that nostalgic feeling when playing last generation's consoles, or feel the need to collect them for retro gaming goodness. Currently, I feel that this obscure stage stretches all the way from the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox?GBA era up until the end of Wii/PS3/360/DS.  Even though there are still new PS3 games being released, games released at the end of a generation never receive the attention they (probably) deserve and as a result sales become low due to lack of interest, hence why I call this stage one of obscurity.

After a certain amount of time passes, a generation of games becomes retro. Some people would argue against this, but Everything from NES, Game Boy, SNES, Genesis, Playstation, Sega Saturn, Game Boy Color, and Nintendo 64 are all retro. Of course you can throw in those other consoles if you like (Jaguar, Turbografix 16, etc).  These games are all old enough to be remembered fondly and are usually the games of one's childhood, where the current console is during their adulthood, hence the nostalgia for older games. These older games remind you of your childhood. And if you, like me, had a great childhood you associate these games with that time of your life and by association you feel nostalgic. But even some people who didn't grow up with retro consoles still love to collect old games. I would guess this is similar to how people who didn't grow up in the 20's love to collect 20's nostalgia pieces, or people who didn't grow up in the 60's or 70's love to collect old vinyl records. Perhaps these objects just take them to an era they never got to experience.  Or perhaps these old games really are just that good and stand the test of time. Maybe a mix of both. But either way, the term "retro" is largely subjective, but yet most people seem to agree NES and SNES are retro, but N64 still seems to be divided. I think it is just entering that stage of becoming retro. I have noticed more and more people starting to collect for it, and as a result prices have spiked. I'd say I started to see this trend about 3 years ago and it doesn't look like it will stop anytime soon.

So what happens after a game is considered retro for a given amount of time? I mean, a game can't be retro forever, can it? Well, technically yes, but I do feel that there is yet another stage after "retro", that is "antiquity". At a certain point I feel people start collecting games just to collect them, not so much to play them.  I can tell you Atari 2600 and older consoles fall into this category. The NES seems to be heading towards this as well. Similar to the obscurity stage, people begin to stop caring about these games because they become "too old". The people who grew up with these consoles are probably too old to still care about them. Perhaps the consoles just seem so outdated that they seem to no longer have relevance. Maybe the technology begins to fail, seeing as they only last a certain amount of time. Whatever the case, my theory is after a game generation spends enough time in the "retro" category people stop caring and move on. A few years ago, when I was retro game shopping for NES games, I noticed NES games were pretty damn expensive, but recently I noticed prices are starting to drop, while SNES and N64's price have begun to spike. As for Atari 2600, prices have dropped significantly since most people seem to not care about it anymore. Just 6 or 7 years ago, Atari 2600 was still considered retro and prices were a bit higher.

So after all of my theories and observations, this is the conclusion I have come to: the lifetime of a game goes as follows: Current > Obscurity > Retro > Antiquity. Perhaps in time there will be a stage yet after that which will bring the antique consoles back into the limelight. Either way, the lifetime of a video game is measured in waves:

It's a crappy diagram but hopefully it gets my point across. Also please note this is my opinion and theory only. You may agree or disagree with my statements but this is how I feel and it makes sense, at least to me.

So with all that talk about modern games versus retro, how do you feel about the whole things? Are you a modern gamer? A retro gamer? Something in between? Personally, I am becoming more and more of a retro gamer and less of a modern one. I already wrote a post on my decline of interest in new games. So it looks like as time goes on I will slowly fade into fully retro, then into antiquity...