Penny Arcade - Comic - Retropolis

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Penny Arcade - Comic - Retropolis

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

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Man in the Mists

*Remembers the Commodore 64, the CollecoVision and the Atari*

*Waves cane angrily at Mike and Jerry*

PALaxx

Reminds me of a joke on Futurama in a similar vein wherein Fry locks himself in a room to listen to Sir Mix-A-Lot and Leela says he can't hide and listen to Classical music all day.

FireballDragon

Get off my lawn.

Hevach

Wife in an antique store: "Hey, look, it's a Ninja Turtle! You played with those, didn't you?"
Me: "You were born closer to World War II than the present day."

And that's the story of how I'm sleeping in the car.

Bremen

When I was a kid, me and my brother and sister found an Atari in my grandparents' closet that used to belong to our cousin. I remember we struggled mightily (for children) to get it to work (it turns out that, when a cable plug doesn't fit, you can't actually just tape it in place no matter how much you adjust it to try to touch), and eventually I think my grandfather got us some adapter we needed because I vaguely recall actually playing a few games with no idea what we were doing. I think one of the directions on the joystick was broken and wouldn't register, and if you think it would be impossible to play games with a one and a half axis controller you don't appreciate the stubbornness of bored children.

Then our parents got us a Nintendo (near the end of the original NES lifecycle), so Atari will eternally be the "antique" system for me. As compared to the NES and SNES, which are clearly the pinacle of gaming and will never get old, now a days kids are just spoiled and don't realize what real gaming is. Also they should get off my lawn.

Dirty

I think I already had this conversation in another subforum, but I think this strip is a good example of how certain terms like "Retro" and "Classic" get increasingly useless as time goes on. If you told me in the 90s that you loved classic rock, I'd know exactly what you meant. If you told me that now, I'd have to ask, "You mean like Led Zeppelin or like Green Day?" Same thing with retro games. "Retro? Or retro retro?"

MichaelLC

I like classical music like Jefferson Airplane and The Doors.

Dirty

PALaxx wrote: »

Reminds me of a joke on Futurama in a similar vein wherein Fry locks himself in a room to listen to Sir Mix-A-Lot and Leela says he can't hide and listen to Classical music all day.

I think they make the same joke with the Beastie Boys in Star Trek Beyond.

Ringo

I never finished Spirit Tracks

Overkillengine

Man in the Mists wrote: »

*Remembers the Commodore 64, the CollecoVision and the Atari*

*Waves cane angrily at Mike and Jerry*

I'd wave my cane too, but I nearly put my back out today.

Damn kids. Get off my lawn.

dennis

Hevach wrote: »

Wife in an antique store: "Hey, look, it's a Ninja Turtle! You played with those, didn't you?"
Me: "You were born closer to World War II than the present day."

And that's the story of how I'm sleeping in the car.

It's not as short and snappy, but I like to point out that Stranger Things is a lot like Happy Days. A show made in one period set in another nostalgic period decades earlier that seems like a long time ago.

Only the first season of Stranger Things came out in 2016 and was set in 1983, a difference of 33 years. Happy Days came out in 1974 and was set in 1955, a difference of 19 years. So it'd be more like Happy Days if Happy Days had came out in 1988.

Lttlefoot

The jump from 2D to 3D feels most significant to me. If it came out after Descent (1995), it’s not retro

(PS, Descent came out closer to the moon landing than to the present day)

V1m

Lttlefoot wrote: »

The jump from 2D to 3D feels most significant to me. If it came out after Descent (1995), it’s not retro

(PS, Descent came out closer to the moon landing than to the present day)

You're sleeping in the car tonight

YoungFrey

V1m wrote: »

Lttlefoot wrote: »

The jump from 2D to 3D feels most significant to me. If it came out after Descent (1995), it’s not retro

(PS, Descent came out closer to the moon landing than to the present day)

You're sleeping in the car tonight

The Matrix (1999) came out closer to the end of The Vietnam War than the present day.

dennis

This car's getting crowded.

Dirty

This reminds me of that XKCD chart, which itself is now over a decade old:

Rhesus Positive

dennis wrote: »

This car's getting crowded.

If it's a 3rd generation Honda Accord, it was released closer to WW2 than today

Hevach

Ok all you fuckers have a good night I'm moving to the tool shed.

Rhesus Positive

Hevach wrote: »

Ok all you fuckers have a good night I'm moving to the tool shed.

The blacksmith tongs in there were invented closer to the start of the universe than today

According to Jewish myth, anyway - the story goes that, as you need tongs before making anything, including tongs, the very first tongs were made by God, just before he rested on the seventh day of Creation

Emperor Megaman

Lttlefoot wrote: »

The jump from 2D to 3D feels most significant to me. If it came out after Descent (1995), it’s not retro

I Dunno, ealry 3d games feels retro to me. The way different system, franchise and company handled the switch is historical events at this point.
I think it stops being retro once it stabilize to a point where the difference between two generations is "this one have photo-realistic graphics" to "this one has photo-more realistic" graphics".
playing a current-gen game is functionally the same as a ps360 game, but better (excluding individual games quirks).

On a side note, the 1st Penny Arcade strip released closer to Original Dungeon & Dragon than the present day.

Gasquatch

The arbitrary dividing line for me between "retro games" and "modern games that just happen to be old" is HD. Before HD = retro. After HD = modern, even if old.