Retro FPS games are back—by design, not by accident
Retro FPS games are contemporary shooters that copy the mechanics, visuals, and difficulty curves of 90s first-person shooters, often favoring fast movement, clear objectives, punishing mistakes, and minimal hand-holding over cinematic storytelling or heavy tutorials. The surprise is not that nostalgia sells; it is that small teams are rebuilding entire ecosystems of 90s-style shooters across wildly different platforms, from Nintendo 64–inspired Steam releases to a Game Boy Color FPS and a brutal, turn-based roguelike on Nintendo Switch. These indie retro shooters are not comfort food; they are a quiet revolt against modern design trends that sand off every sharp edge. If you grew up on GoldenEye 007 or you skipped that era entirely, the new wave of throwback shooters argues that the old rules still work—and maybe never stopped working in the first place.
Agent 64: a GoldenEye inspired shooter that remembers the fun
Agent 64: Spies Never Die is a GoldenEye inspired shooter that wears its Nintendo 64 FPS legacy on its sleeve. Solo developer Replicant D6 has released the game on Steam, delivering a late-90s-style campaign instead of a modern, checkpoint-stuffed corridor. The 14-mission single-player mode, fully playable in co-op, brings back objective-driven levels where you choose the order of tasks and unlock harder difficulties by mastering the map. It is unapologetically built around GoldenEye 007 and Perfect Dark–style pacing, from the way guns feel to the structure of missions and secrets. Crucially, the multiplayer matters again: four-player local split-screen and up to eight-player online deathmatch—with bots—revive a pre-Halo couch-competitive spirit. The developer calls it “a love letter to the ‘90s,” and that feels accurate: it is both familiar to veterans and framed as a “brand new experience for gamers who never played Rare’s N64 masterpieces.”
WOLF: a Game Boy Color FPS that should not exist, but does
If retro FPS games belong anywhere, it is on chunky CRTs, not a Game Boy Color. WOLF disagrees. Rocketship Park is building a brand-new Game Boy Color FPS, stepping into a space where only Tyrannosaurus Tex previously claimed the title of “real” Game Boy Color FPS. Instead of a gimmick, WOLF uses a custom raycasting engine with procedural maps, textured walls, depth shading, animated effects, and responsive combat to make the handheld do things it was never meant to do. The design is refreshingly blunt: hunt down a set number of enemies, grab the Exit Key, escape before your limited health runs out. Enemies patrol, chase, and fire projectiles you can dodge at the last moment, while an overhead radar helps you track shifting layouts. WOLF launches on August 13th, 2026, and it will run on both GBC emulators and real hardware via compatible flash carts.
Jupiter Hell: 90s FPS spirit, turn-based brutality on Switch
Jupiter Hell is proof that retro FPS games are about attitude more than camera perspective. Built by ChaosForge—the team known for Doom, the Roguelike (DRL)—this Switch title is a spiritual successor to DRL that turns classic 90s sci-fi gunfights into a turn-based roguelike where “action follows your every move.” When you act, your enemies act, and when you die, that run is gone for good. You play in a CRT-flavored future armed with shotguns, chainguns, railguns, and even chainsaws, leaning on positioning and perks instead of generous autosaves. With over 20 years of experience making “top-down, cosmic-hell roguelikes,” ChaosForge knows how to make each procedurally generated run feel distinct and unfair in the way old shooters often were. Every run changes the layout, challenges, and build options, and surviving long enough unlocks new challenges that “are not going to get any easier”—by design.
Why this wave of indie retro shooters matters
There is a pattern here. Agent 64 resurrects Nintendo 64 FPS design, right down to cheat-style modifiers and split-screen chaos. WOLF turns a Game Boy Color FPS into a technical stunt and an arcade-tight loop you can play on original hardware. Jupiter Hell pulls the mood and cruelty of 90s shooters into a turn-based roguelike where procedural levels mean every run is different. Together, these indie retro shooters show that “retro” is not only for nostalgics. They reintroduce classic FPS mechanics—clear objectives, high stakes, and respect for player agency—to players who never touched a Nintendo 64 or a monochrome handheld. As the Agent 64 developer puts it, the goal is a “brand new experience for gamers who never played Rare’s N64 masterpieces, and instantly familiar territory for anyone raised on the classics, while modernizing a beloved formula.” The message is simple: the golden age never ended; it was waiting for someone to care again.
