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Does retro gaming slang exist?
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2020 9:44 am
by jonathanfjord
Hi guys! I'm trying to find out if there is a difference between retro gaming slang and more modern gaming slang? What do you think? Could there also be any dictionaries with retro gaming words?

Re: Does retro gaming slang exist?
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2020 10:28 am
by Papy.G
I don't know if there are special dictionnaries, but we can begin if you want:
Older -> Modern
a frag -> a kill
a scam -> a DLC

a hardcore gamer -> a try harder
Don't know wether it is true in english, specifically for "try harder" that kinda hurts my ears everytime I ear it.
Re: Does retro gaming slang exist?
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2020 10:53 pm
by jonathanfjord
Thanks a lot! Looks like there is difference in older compared to modern. This is super cool! Let me know if you got more of them

Re: Does retro gaming slang exist?
Posted: Sun Aug 04, 2024 1:33 am
by Lumina333
Any game console -> a Nintendo
Re: Does retro gaming slang exist?
Posted: Thu Nov 14, 2024 11:25 am
by Audrey Washington
idk if this help but:
getaway shootout
bm = bad manner
gg = goood game
Re: Does retro gaming slang exist?
Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2025 8:55 pm
by Nuguns
modern acronym: im pretty sure gz means gratz -> congrats. Thats a tough one
as i think about it, slang is more of an evolution over time. So yes there very much is a difference. From a different time. If you were old enough back then and playing, what kinda stuff did you hear around. I heard stuff like scrub; general insult to a gamer. Cause they suck or something. Thats another one lol I still say that.
Re: Does retro gaming slang exist?
Posted: Thu Dec 18, 2025 12:28 am
by TeriTakeout
To be honest I am not sure which one of these are not used anymore, but these are some I remember:
scrub -> average (implied bad) player
to pwn someone (pronounced pone) -> to absolutely destroy someone. I think it stemmed from "owning" someone
gibbing -> this is still used sometimes but it means to turn a creature or person into giblets (bits of meat) and can be used to say you one shot someone or destroyed someone ("you gibbed that scrub man that was wild")
ddos -> this is used in security still but I rarely hear it in gaming. It means when a server is getting a distributed denial of service attack. People would say "servers are getting ddos'd" to say the servers are bad
unplug for a bit -> still sort of used but people used it sometimes to say they wouldn't be online for a while
logging out -> getting off of your computer/games for today/tonight
going ham -> dunno if this is still used but meant to do something really crazy good in a game (going ham ~= locked in (?))
Then there was a lot of terms that often came from a mix of World of Warcraft, Doom, and Quake Pro at the time, so a lot of them vanished pretty hard after those games were less frequently played