Boomer Shooter December: A Month of Retro Carnage

For absolutely no reason, other than a sudden burst of nostalgia, I’ve decided December is Boomer Shooter Month. Maybe it was replaying GoldenEye? Maybe old school shooters are just unreal? Spoiler: they are. This isn’t really a challenge or event, I’m simply giving into the urge to rip through some old-school style carnage. Will it spill into January? Absolutely. I finished Quake to start the month and immediately rolled into Rise of the Triad for some gloriously over-the-top first-person shooter fun. The speed, simplicity and sheer ridiculousness of ROTT hits exactly the right spot. Firing up any of these classic shooters really feels like slipping back into a familiar groove. Muscle memory definitely plays its part, but they’re just legitimate fun and that’s hard to walk away from once you’re in the thick of it.

So, what’s the plan? Well, it’s simple: spend the month diving back into classic first-person shooters from the ’90s and early ’00s. The kind of games that helped shape the genre long before they become chock-full of regenerating health bars and massive story-driven sequences. I’ve got a fairly loose list of games in mind that I want to work through, but I’m fully prepared to chop and change the lineup when something new catches my eye. I’m looking at you Blood: Refreshed Supply releasing on, *checks notes*, today. Some big names will be omitted, Doom and Doom II won’t feature. Hey, put your pitchforks down! I finished them both fairly recently and they’re pretty fresh in my mind. I won’t share the list due to the high possibility of last minute cuts, but if you know boomer shooters you’ll probably know what to expect. The only concrete part of the plan is to finish up December with Duke Nukem 3D.

A big part of the fun is revisiting games that defined my early gaming years. I grew up in the middle of that glorious ’90s through ’00s era. LAN parties where you’d all cram into someone’s spare room or shed after hauling your big ol’ beige PC case and a CRT monitor across whatever town you lived in. Fueled purely by Doritos and Mountain Dew, you’d hope to finally hear ‘YOU HAVE TAKEN THE LEAD’. Arguing for what seemed like forever over what map to play, swapping totally legitimately sourced games, fixing that one dude’s PC that couldn’t connect to the network for no particular reason and of course staying up way later than anyone’s parents approved of. Diving back into shooters of that era really taps into that same chaotic energy.

Boomer shooters even now strip away the noise. No battle passes, no seasons and no endless map rotations to grind. Just you and an arsenal of weapons that often entirely ignores the laws of physics, up against a corridor full of demons, cultists or whatever vaguely menacing creatures the developers could dream up. How straightforward these games are is just entirely refreshing. I’m currently revisiting Kingpin: Life of Crime, which I’ve always felt is an underrated gem and just another one that captures just why these games are so good. Coming back to them now just feels like returning to a style of game that never really stopped being fun. Fast and not at all pretentious, but built to make you grin like a dickhead when you start blowing things to bits.

So throughout December, and let’s be honest probably January as well, I’ll be working my way through as many classic first-person shooters as I can fit in. I’ll post my thoughts and experiences, maybe some mini reviews along with full reviews and definitely a few complaints. Whether I stick to my scheduled programming or go completely off the board due to last minute cuts, the goal is ultimately to enjoy the ride. If you’re a fan of that sweet golden age of shooters or if you’ve got recommendations for retro first-person shooter gems, feel free to throw them my way. There’s always room for one more deadset banger.