Define old school games.

I remember a while a go some moron started up a thread and was talking about how he was such a hardcore "old school" gamer, and he was listing some of his favorite "old school" games. Well, i cna't say he was listing bad games, but i think the oldest game he listed was a late NES RPG, everything else was SNES games. I want to hear what your deffinition of old school is.

According to my definition, old school is anything from NES and back. As soon as you start getting into consoles with ergonomic controllers it's disqualified from being old school, at least console wize it is. I'd have to do some research and definition building to figure out what constitutes old school games on new school contsoles. For one thing, true 3d, or polygon based modles disqualifies it automatically. This definition is liable to change and include SNES and Genisis with in the next five or so years depending on how things play out in the gaming community/industry.

I think that it is kind of difficult to define old school games by the original release date or the platform on which they were released. There are games on the Dreamcast, like Mars Matrix, that are fundamentally unchanged from Galaga. Sure, Mars Matrix is prettier, but the gameplay of "shoot anything that doesn't look like you" is relatively the same as lots of earlier shooters. There are versions of Tetris on the current hardware (Tetris Worlds on X-Box and GC, maybe PS2, I'm not sure) . I consider both forced-scrolling shooters and block puzzle games to be pretty "old school" genres. I also don't like that phrase, especially coming out of the mouths of people who are roughly the same age as the Sega Genesis.

I think that the gameplay mechanics of something like Breakout or Pong are definitely "old school" and newer releases that employ the same gameplay that are simply variations on those themes are by analogy also "old school" even though they might have only been released in the last couple of years. That's not a criticism. I love games like R-Type Final, Mars Matrix, Tetris Worlds, etc. but based upon their vintage alone they would not be defined as old school; based upon their content, I feel that they should be.

So maybe the better way to tackle this definition problem is to define which genres in particular are old school and based upon that make our classifications. I've made the first two suggestions. By the way, this would be a great thread for the Best of the Oldschool Union, maybe you'd like to put this over there as well, or at least look at whether they have addressed the same question.

Probably a good idea, i should toss it up on their board later on today, i forgot we had one of those unions. But what i was saying before, i don't usually look at the game's content and gameplay to decide if somthing's old school. Personally, i don't care if people think of a game as being old school or not, and i don't think playing games that are old school would make a person cooler or not, exspecially if their playing those games because they think it gives them some sort of special status, thats playing games for the wrong reasopn and a waste of time.

When i classify things as being old school, i go by my previous deffiniton of everythign from NES and back because i don't really care if a game falls under the "old school" lable. If the game is fun, then i play it, i don't care if it's 20 weeks old, or 20 years old.

I think we should throw out the title of  "old school" and maybe go to a generational view of gaming age.

NES, MegaDrive, Atari and older 1st gen

SNES, Genesis   2nd gen    - maybe combine these first 2 or 3

n64, dreamcast, playstation  3rd gen

cube, xbox, ps2 - 4th gen

Xbox 360, ps3, Revolution -5th gen

or you could go with the whole era definition

I think we should throw out the title of "old school" and maybe go to a generational view of gaming age.

NES, MegaDrive, Atari and older 1st gen

SNES, Genesis 2nd gen - maybe combine these first 2 or 3

n64, dreamcast, playstation 3rd gen

cube, xbox, ps2 - 4th gen

Xbox 360, ps3, Revolution -5th gen

or you could go with the whole era definition

amorphe

Atari 7800 and under, colecovision, INTV and Pong 1st gen

NES, MegaDrive, AtariXE and Odysee 2nd gen

SNES, Genesis, Turbo Grfx, Atari Jaguar, 3D0 and CDI 3rd gen

n64, Saturn and Playstation 4th gen

game cube, xbox, ps2 - 5th gen

Xbox 360, ps3, Revolution -6th gen

or you could go with the whole era definition

Atari 7800 and under, colecovision, INTV and Pong 1st gen

NES, MegaDrive, AtariXE and Odysee 2nd gen

SNES, Genesis, Turbo Grfx, Atari Jaguar, 3D0 and CDI 3rd gen

n64, Saturn and Playstation 4th gen

game cube, xbox, ps2 - 5th gen

Xbox 360, ps3, Revolution -6th gen

or you could go with the whole era definition

better?
waflerevolution

what about Dreamcast?

Also it kind of gets confusing with the genesis.  where does the 32x or sega cd fit in?  Or for that matter the Genesis competed with the SNES and the NES.  It kind of spans both gens.

[QUOTE="waflerevolution"]

Atari 7800 and under, colecovision, INTV and Pong 1st gen

NES, MegaDrive, AtariXE and Odysee 2nd gen

SNES, Genesis, Turbo Grfx, Atari Jaguar, 3D0 and CDI 3rd gen

n64, Saturn and Playstation 4th gen

game cube, xbox, ps2 - 5th gen

Xbox 360, ps3, Revolution -6th gen

or you could go with the whole era definition

better?
amorphe

what about Dreamcast?

Also it kind of gets confusing with the genesis.  where does the 32x or sega cd fit in?  Or for that matter the Genesis competed with the SNES and the NES.  It kind of spans both gens.

[QUOTE="amorphe"][QUOTE="waflerevolution"]

Atari 7800 and under, colecovision, INTV and Pong 1st gen

NES, MegaDrive, AtariXE and Odysee 2nd gen

SNES, Genesis, Turbo Grfx, Atari Jaguar, 3D0 and CDI 3rd gen

n64, Saturn and Playstation 4th gen

game cube, xbox, ps2, Dreamcast - 5th gen

Xbox 360, ps3, Revolution -6th gen

or you could go with the whole era definition

better?
gmsnpr

what about Dreamcast?

Also it kind of gets confusing with the genesis. where does the 32x or sega cd fit in? Or for that matter the Genesis competed with the SNES and the NES. It kind of spans both gens.