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May 21st, 2018 
Carl Williams 
If you’ve been paying even a little bit of attention to the video game industry then you will have noticed some patterns emerging over the last few years. One of the better of these, at least from our point of view, is the increased interest which developers are showing to both retro and retro style games. Why do we see this, and just how far has this spread? Is retro actually becoming mainstream in video gaming circles?
Why Retro?
When we look at why retro is popular these days, it is best that we divide this into two groups – the real retro and the modern retro. Classic retro, as in the older games which many of us have grown up on, were just that. These are games which gave us so much fun in our younger lives, and many of us made real connections to these games and series, through the gameplay itself and the friends and community which were built around these early entries. We still want in on this, as the BBC reports, and this is something which developers and publishers understand when rereleasing or remastering these older games or game collections.
“Stardew Valley” (CC BY 2.0) by Skakerman
Modern retro-inspired or retro-styles games also rely on this sort of nostalgia and appealing to classic gameplay sensibilities, though their popularity among developers can also be attributed to cost. Back in the days of retro gaming, these games could be – and often were – created by individuals or very small teams, and this applied to many of the biggest games of the era. Today, however, the biggest games tend to rely on teams of hundreds, with productions cost in the many millions of dollars.
“Undertale” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by kenming_wang
Indie developers, who are often those getting on board with the resurgence of the retro style, are fully aware they can’t compete against these modern titans. Instead, the most cost-effective method becomes to emulate the simpler retro systems. The fact that these systems also happen to have some of the best gameplay from which to draw doesn’t hurt either.
Retro World
Retro games have been around for the longest, and as such, they have the largest legacy of which fans and the general public can appreciate. This is one of the reasons why when you see other forms of media relate to the gaming world they often do so with reference to classic games like Pac-Man or Space Invaders. We can see this all over modern media from films, like the Adam Sandler movie Pixels, to books like Ready Player One. There are even mobile slot retro games like Planet Fortune, which uses old-school drawings of laser guns and retro robots to set its galactic theme, and the free games you find on browser game websites like Kongregate.com which quite often have a pixelized, SNES or even NES-style aesthetic.
“A Total Washout – Pixels Movie Review” (CC BY 2.0) by BagoGames
When you see a video game in a film or television show, you’ll notice that they often use retro gaming sound effects, even when the game which is shown is ostensibly modern. This is another case of relating even modern forms of the art of video games back to the public’s unconscious view of video games as throwbacks to their youth. A little strange, one of those things you can’t unnotice, and pretty cool.
Retro Future
As the costs for big budget games continue to climb, and retro-inspired games like Undertale and Stardew Valley continue to draw enormous praise and sales compared to many of these major releases, the future of gaming looks more the past than many of us would predict. Partly due to a purity of game systems, a cleanliness of design, and an appeal to the joys of our youth and gaming’s history, retro is not content to be relegated to the past. As even new consoles like the Switch do an amazing job of supporting retro games and developers, the future of retro gaming looks brighter than ever.
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Yeah, agree. Even what Groot’s playing on Avengers 3 was a retro game.