One view is that "retro" is relative, that whatever was "new" becomes "old" and as time progresses "retro" is really just a matter of what you remember last. Thus, for some people "retro gaming" and "retro computing" is framed in time as a moving sliding window that constantly updates.

However, at Wizardry and Steamworks we have a more absolute echelon for what can be considered "retro". Specifically, we consider that only the pre-3D world is "retro" and that any game that needs a dedicated graphics card is to be considered a "modern game".

We justify this stance though the fact that games existed well-before graphics cards and they looked "3D" enough such that when graphics cards started to appear, most people that witnessed the transition did not really understand what a graphics card could bring to the table. One example we cite all the time is Donkey Kong Country, a game that uses pre-rendered 3D sprites to achieve a flawless three-dimensional appearance even if it runs on a plain Super Nintendo without any graphics card.

What we note is that there are actual absolute milestones in the evolution of technology, perhaps even following the Malthusian model with asymmetric periods of stagnation in terms of duration and intensity after which some asymptotic development takes place that has everyone wondering how they could have lived without the innovation. In other words, it is easy to argue that since the establishment of planet-wide communication, the development in that regard has seen some improvements and some innovation but there is an absolute and abstract pre-post era depending on when the Internet became available. As another example, the classic view as highlighted by the Morris law is that computers would have doubled in terms of complexity every year, and whilst that is an exponential expectation that has now been disproved, even if it would have held true, it is clear that the advancement is in terms of performance or "optimization" but that no real groundbreaking horizon had been met. We also see stuff like ChatGPT as Racter that already existed in 1984 and even back then was extremely impressive because it was coasting on the Eliza tulip fever such that even ChatGPT is not a horizon event in terms of the Malthusian model.

Having said the above, pre-and-post graphics cards is the demarcation that we use to distinguish "retro" from modern. Nevertheless, platforms such as the Playstation 1 represent "transitional platforms" such that even if the PS1 has a GPU, it is one of the platforms that witnessed the transition from retro to modern, such that as an exception these edge-cases are considered part of the retro-movement. Furthermore, given that "retro gaming" and "retro computing" also serves research in various dimensions, it's always very referential to check out the PS1 as the machine that crossed the horizon with both types of games existing on the same platform - we would even wager that this is why you still find people trading the PS1 or the PSP even though by modern standards they are antiquated.

In other words, we do not exclude that there will be another leap in terms of computing, such that "retro" will consist in, say, two long streaks, but in order to consider anything that requires a graphics card and up as "retro" a very large Malthusian leap will be needed.

In retro-gaming, "multiplayer" is, in fact, extremely rare probably due to the times where consoles or computers either were scarce, cost a lot of money and were not really part of any mainstream. Furthermore, buying yet another controller, seemed for most parents excessive. More than often children used various schemes such as hot-seating in order to "enact" some form of playing together. There were various rules, such as 1 life each, where after one death, the controller was passed to the next player, and so on, with the sense of "multiplayer" being more along the lines of solving a puzzle together rather than "real-time action".

That being said, even if you might have a gargantuan collection of retro-games, pirated or not, spanning up to a terrabyte of storage, statistically almost all of them are just single player games. What makes things worse, is that to this date there has been very little movements towards creating a network protocol to support playing these games over a network, with the "Netplay" protocol being the most widely available to this date. There are some drawbacks to the current solution:

• "Multiplayer" is implemented via saved states (save game files, essentially) that are exchanged over the network between ALL players. Given the resulting network layout this scheme requires a very large amount of traffic. Furthermore, all platforms that exceed the production date of 2D consoles, generate save games that are huge that would also have to be transferred through the network in a matter of milliseconds, making gameplay, especially gameplay that relies on reaction speed impossible. In other words, for network-playing, any 3D console, simply cannot be played in "multiplayer" over the network. Even a console that could by considered "ancient", the "PlayStation 1" cannot be played in multiplayer over the network due to a small "stutter" that takes place every 10 seconds (intuitively, this would be the game clients trying to synchronize save games / snapshot files that are too large to synchronize given the speed or data limitations of the network).
• Interestingly, consoles such as the Gameboy, Gameboy Advance and other similar portables, in spite of their available game repertoire, have never had an emulator that also implemented any sort of network play. For example, the Gameboy DMG does have an interlink cable emulator but it only works for some specific games. The Gameboy Advance, on the other hand, just does not have any emulator that can do multiplayer over the network.

All-in-all, you would be amazed, but the number of games that have "true multiplayer" is extremely small relative to a full collection of ret-games. Our retroarch section contains a series of playlists, for the Arcade and Super Nintendo, that are "true multiplayer" in the sense that all players will have their own controllers, that are compatible with retroarch (an emulator wrapper) but the titles could be lifted because they are mentioned on the lists.

These are the only ones for those consoles that would fall within the definition of "true multiplayer" mentioned above.

There are a plethora of devices available on the market to pick from and typically most of them are extremely cheap compared to modern consoles. However, it is important to understand the retro scene a bit in order to pick something worth the money. Here are some notes that can be used as guidelines:

• You want a console that can be "rooted" or flashed with something like retroarch, which is one of the few complete retro-suits that bundle a bunch of emulators for all classic consoles. This means that by installing retroarch you will have an interface and a bunch of bundled or integrated emulators that can be used to load right about any ROM file up to the Dreamcast and Playstation 2.
• Emulation is CPU bound and we'd paint this sentence with the largest font possible because this is very very important to understand. You can throw any high-end NVIDIA at emulation and there will be zero benefit whatsoever regarding retro gaming. From the former definition in time, all retro-gaming takes place before graphics cards even ever existed, such that all they consist in is a CPU that moves sprites around the screen with zero opportunity to render graphics in real time. If you want to buy a retro console or a retro handheld, you should strictly compare the CPU speed and pick the console with the fastest CPU. Note that "multicore" is also, unsurprisingly, entirely useless to emulation and will not help at all. Of course, the console will run an interface like libretro that will also connect to the Internet for netplay or perform some stuff that might benefit from multicore or "lots of RAM" but for the games themselves, the CPU speed is primordial because the emulators do not use anything else to both run and display the game (ie: graphics is also CPU bound). Wasting money on a device with 8GiB of RAM in order to play retro games is a complete and total waste of money that should be spent "elsewhere" - for example, getting a sturdier console than plastic.
• The retro-console you will be purchasing will be final because there will never be any need to upgrade so with that in mind it is a good idea to assess things like build quality and durability along with performance.