New NES were still available in the US through at least Christmas 1992, and in Europe deep into 1995, both selling alongside the SNES since 1991.

The final new international games were released in 1994, but Europe still got new games into 1995.

Japanese Famicoms were still being sold in Japan when the PS2 released. They sold more in Japan in 2001 than in 2000.

So no, calling the NES "retro" in 2000 wouldn't have made all too much sense.

I don't have the magazine to verify, but wikipedia says

> In 2005, Retro Gamer called Snes9x "the best SNES emulator available".[12]

If there was a Retro Gamer magazine writing about SNES emulators, I think it's safe to say some people did consider even the SNES to be retro, 14 years after its US release. My personal experience having used Snes9x around that time, we also considered it retro.

Clearly not everyone though, which is my point in saying what's retro will depend on who you ask.

Except people definitely did call it retro back then, so clearly the facts you point out aren't the entire picture of what makes something retro.