RetroGaming

Today's kids have the benefit that insanely amazing graphics in huge budget games is commonplace, pixel art is a popular visual style that has new games coming out all the time, and janky homemade graphics with visual glitches (essentially memes in game format) are also popular thanks to everything from garry's mod recordings to platforms like Roblox where a million people make their own goofy little games.

So if I take my 3rd grader though some gaming history, starting at least from the NES era where you have decent resolution, smooth scrolling, and numerous colors, things are not instantly dated like we olds might expect.

I could fire up Super Mario Bros, TIE Fighter, Super Mario World, Chrono Trigger, Symphony of the Night, VVVVVV, or Elden Ring, and I honestly don't think any of them would get a particularly positive or negative reaction based on visual fidelity. It's just a question of whether it looks like the type of gameplay he is into. Even with the obviously popular chunky Minecraft/Roblox look, he's draw to it because it's a popular style that he likes. If I comment about how ooh they updated the Xbox version to 4K rendering, or look at the crazy stuff I can do with the draw distance in the Java version on Linux, he does not give any fucks. It's the command line and the mods that let us do wacky things that are actually entertaining.