4:35 I’m always reminded of TF2’s art design, where they made the 9 classes have unique silhouettes so that players could easily identify classes from afar just based on the character’s stance. (Of course, this was slightly undercut later on when the cosmetic options expanded beyond reason.)

Personally, I just love some of these games for the same reason I love a lot of other indie games: it feels like they were made by a person and not an algorithm. In Ultrakill, you can throw a coin in the air, change weapons, shoot it with a railgun, and the projectile will be deflected towards an enemy. You can accelerate your shotgun shots by punching them. There's a secret visual novel section where the main character is dressed like a schoolgirl. There's simply no reason for these things existing other than because the person behind the game had passion and love for what they do and were able to show it, and you don't get that with a lot of AAA games.

Superhot is a boomer shooter in the same way that Home Alone is a gory crime thriller. Sure it ticks all the boxes if you have to describe it in an elevator ride, but if you experienced it with those expectations you might feel a bit pointlessly misled.

In my opinion, half of the reason behind the boom is that these kinds of shooters get back to focusing on a few gameplay elements and doing those up really well, vs most modern AAA releases that seem to be doing a ton of things in an attempt to appeal to everyone and or chase trends. The other half is that because you're focusing of fewer gameplay elements you don't need as many people and resources to make these games compared to giant (and sometimes bloated) AAA releases (though obviously it still takes a good amount of talent and a great amount of effort to really make a game in any case). It's resulted in a lot of great independent and AA releases, but I would also wager has resulted in a lot of mediocre ones you don't hear about.

4:30 Funny to use Doom as the example of lighting *not* getting in the way, since one of the major technical innovations of that game was that it WAS the first with dynamic lighting. Who can forget the maze in the second bloody level where they turn the lights off and you have no idea where the zombiemen are shooting you from? Sure, I get your point in general, since the monsters are easily recognizable in areas that *aren't* playing with the lighting, but it's quite an amusing one to me.

I always thought of "boomer shooter" as a cheeky term, not one that refers to actual boomers, but kinda admits to the assumption that young people don't know what they're talking about and refer to anyone older than 30 as a boomer. Annoying but in a friendly manner.

What Yahtzee describes here is something we've seen in the arts in general for centuries: A pendulum swing between intricacy and austerity. Baroque and Rococo giving way to Neoclassicism giving way to Romanticism giving way to Realism

I like how these vids start with a smaller point of focus and then expand to cover the industry as a whole

starts adding games to my wishlist as yahtzee does the "there are too many games in this genre" gag

Another factor that shouldn't be overlooked here is the comparatively easy time a dev would have making a boomer shooter compared to something like a fighting game, RPG, or immersive sim. There are reasons the indy scene is FLOODED with platformers, walking sims, jumpscare horror, and boomer shooters: and one of those reasons is that they're among the easiest to make for a single dev/small team. This becomes even more true when you consider the mountain of preconstructed assets for those genres you can buy off Steam. How many RTS games are in the indy scene compared to those? How about tactical games like X-Com? Isometric RPGS like Baldur's Gate? Those are all nostalgia bait like boomer shooters, and they're niches the AAA devs are mostly ignoring like boomer shooters, but they're quite a bit more work to make happen compared to boomer shooters.

I've noticed a recent trend of these retro style shooters taking the trademark fast pace of their inspirations and cranking that speed up to 11 Stuff like Turbo Overkill with it's chainsaw leg, Ultrakill with it's air dashing, highly kinetic in your face DMC inspired combat that may be an example of taking the speed up to *12*, and the proliferation of air dashes being found in countless retro style shooters nowadays. Which I love, don't get me wrong, Ultrakill is probably my favorite game from the new decade, but I am wondering if at some point something will break and the speed will become too much for some Guess then we'd have to call them Zoomer Shooters

I’ve recently fallen in love with the genre. It scratches my needs in gaming, my ADHD brain needs to be constantly engaged, it fires off a majority of my available neurons due to their difficulty and bright flashy lights, and they’re usually just “here’s a cool thing to kill a bunch of enemies with, go nuts.” Go play Ultrakill and Prodeus btw they’re pretty damn good.

Gonna get my nark on here, but why doesn’t Unreal ever get mentioned in these things? The daddy of scenery porn and lush, beautiful levels with plenty of variation and color instead of brown smears. Absolutely gorgeous for its time and blends a whole massive slew of different set pieces and locations with wildly different aesthetics, and exploration they felt natural to the world instead of humping every wall for the ethereal ones. Tons of cool and unique weapons all with alt-fire modes, and intelligent and engaging AI with cool animations. Not even talking about Unreal Tournie laying the groundwork for multiplayer shooters as well. But I hardly ever see it get mentioned in these! They talk about Doom, Quake, and Duke Nukem and then skip right to Half Life!

I was gonna make a joke about boomer shooters being for old people, but I wasn't aware that was genuinely where the term came from. I always thought it was because "big guns go boom"

I’m just glad Yahtzee finally mentioned ultrakill

They should really be called "generation X shooters" - but everyone always forgets that we exist, and frankly that's just the way we like it.

Did you know if you point an RPG at the ground and pull the trigger it would be very anti climatic. The RPG has a mechanism that will only activate after it has travelled a certain distance in the air, to prevent people blowing themselves up. So ironically your last point about gibbing yourself with an RPG is also unrealistic.

Pretty sure that was already said, but I'm also saying: Extra Punctuation is soooo good...

Totally agree boomer being added to just anything older than mid 2000s is getting bit rediculous

I never played Old FPS's from the 90s but overall I love the old school art style of Old FPS's plus they are more fun and arcade like.

Honestly he could've just made the entire video just him listing boomer shooters and I would've watched it.

Everything you've said is why Vanquish is one of my favourite games. It's all about speed and efficiency and if there's anything with bright colours or lights on it it's either a pickup or an enemy. Plus it's a Platinum Game so it has all of the Platinum... Platinumness. They are incapable of making a character move or fight in a sensible fashion and I love it.

i think an important aspect is also the artistic presentation of these games, there is someone passionate behind them that is more concerned to realize a vision than to sell as much copy possible. You see that in stuff like amid evil, dusk, ultrakill, they are not just some throwbacks, they have a personal style unique to each of them that comes from the passion of their creators

As someone who spent a good amount of time playing a moba and being a part of the community, reading patch notes and developer notes, AMA type things, etc, I think a lot of the industry has lost sight of something important: visual clarity. Visual clarity is extremely important in mobas because there are so many potential characters and abilities and effects being triggered in a fight, and it feels unfair if you don't even understand why you're getting killed. As you mention, visual clarity is something boomer shooters had, and modern games often lack, and that can be a frustrating experience. As long as it's made a priority, visual clarity can absolutely find a place in modern shooters, as long as the game isn't trying to recreate real world locations, or alternatively if it purposely tries to use real world locations with great visual clarity such as having missions take place in broad daylight or in well-lit environments. Also I'm guessing that despite the large number of titles coming out, a given entry in the Call of Duty franchise has probably outsold all of the games you listed off combined (We're not counting Doom/Eternal), so it's definitely too early to say that this will be a long-lasting trend. Gameplay loops should definitely be prioritized more, as should visual clarity, but I think boomer shooter style games will probably be a somewhat niche market going forward. There's definitely a big market for games that take inspiration from boomer shooters like Doom/Eternal and build on that foundation, so I hope we'll be seeing more of those soon.

I remember how back in your retro review of doom you focused on how it was "impossible" to tell if it actually held up as "everyone" were both blinded by nostalgia and using updated versions like zdoom and brutal doom. Meanwhile I, as some who was fetus when Deus Ex first released, was having such a blast with the dosbox release of The Ultimate Doom that I might have perminatly damaged my pinky finger from pressing the control key to fire.

I greatly prefer this style of FPS over the cavalcade of hide behind cover and regen health that plagued the genre for close to 2 decades. I wasn't exposed to the "boomer shooter" genre until a few years ago. And it opened my eyes. Here I was thinking I just didn't like FPSs and now I realize they've been doing it wrong. I like having the huge arsenal, running fast and health and ammo pickup gameplay with very little to no story. It was wildly refreshing.

I’m so thankful we get a weekly series that’s just Yahtzee’s soapbox.

i blame certain colander wearing prisoner locked in a secret underground government facility

I'm really into this series. Its like zero punctuation but more of it. Also I get the sense that Yahtzee is not held at gunpoint while making these.

Really enjoying this series Yahtz! Thank you for your thoughts 🍻

Haven't seen the rest of the video, I'm just really enjoying that generational chart around 1:15 It even has the overlaps! Good job 8-)

I’ve been loving it. There is a lot of shovelware, but also so many great and unique takes on that design philosophy.

Too many genres does that thing where it's a "DOOM Clone" game, "the Dark Souls of" type game, "its BOTW meets..." type game and rogue likes. It's great to be inspired by your favorite game, but people think inspire means cloning the whole damn game. But ultimately, it's because people are afraid of taking that creative risk on something that will be smothered by the number of BS on Steam or AAA hype nonsense. So, everyone takes the safe (let's copy everything) route. I guess what I'm trying to say is game devs needs to grow some balls ....

What's the old saying? "There is beauty in simplicity".

Shooters subgenre of my interest - boomer shooter (doom) - cinematic shooter (cod mw) - cover shooter (gears) - looter shooter (borderlands) Glad so much options from classic to modern takes

It's almost therapeutic listening to these. Keep up the great work!!!

Unironically me entering a room in Call of Duty and having my visual senses bombarded with inane graphical bullshit was one of the reasons why I decided the world needs to go back. Glad to have contributed to the trend :^)

I'm not that nostalgic for old FPSs. I played 2016, and loved it. Later i played Dusk, and loved it more. Doom 2016 doesn't even feel like a boomer shooter, really. It feels like a modernization of Doom. The moment to moment gameplay in 2016 is excellent, but then it stops and you have to explore and burrow through upgrade trees for 15 minutes. Dusk just kicks in the door, and you shoot stuff. It's simple, fast, and fun. Straight to the point, as you said.

Just tried the Ultrakill demo after seeing the footage from this video. Can’t wait for the full release!

Really liking these slower and longer-form videos Yahtzee. :)

The more graphically impressive games get and the more detailed they become, the less I'm interested. I barely play any modern "AAA" games because they are just flat out overwhelming with the amount of detail on the screen. I agree that the "Boomer Shooters" do appeal to a simplicity that one can enjoy, akin to that of simple, 2D games. Also, and similarly to Breath of the Wild, I found Super Mario Odyssey to be the perfect balance of colorful detail and aesthetic simplicity. The game enemies, levels and landmarks are beautiful yet also simple in their design, making it much easier to digest and enjoy rather than be overwhelmed.

I'm really into Lego. For the past half decade or so, they've finally embraced their adult fans actively. It really shows in the licensed properties that get represented in the sets marketed towards the older market. It's all licensed properties that appeal to people born in the eighties - Back to the Future, Ghost Busters, Voltron, Transformers, and that's not to mention console replicas like the NES, or the recently announced Atari 2600.

I feel like in the early 2000s, there were certain FPS titles that managed to expertly balance old-school fast pace with the incoming detail of missions, but that still wanted to be shooters rather than full-blown immersive sims. Probably the best examples of this are the Rare-esque shooter titles (i.e. developed by Rare or done in their style of shooter) such as GoldenEye 64, Perfect Dark and the TimeSplitters series. TimeSplitters 2 in particular had quite the engaging campaign mode with entire levels changing between difficulty modes, multiple main and side objectives, and incorporating fun and varied weapon sets into the time-hopping campaign. Separate to the campaign were the arcade modes (including single-player challenges) with even more maps, iterations on just shooting people (such as Elimination, where each player had a certain number of lives, or Gladiator, where one player started as the designated Gladiator, whoever killed you then became the Gladiator, and only the Gladiator could score) and even an extensive custom level editor. I wonder if that style of shooter will ever make a comeback? And before anyone asks; yes, I am aware that TimeSplitters Rewind is still in development

Yahtzee makes a good point about modern day video game graphics. I’ve been playing through the Resident Evil series for the first time, and I have now arrived at Code Veronica. I noticed how the backgrounds are fully “3-D” now. Maybe it’s because I got used to the pre-rendered backgrounds in 1-3, but I find myself trying to intereact with everything since important items don’t stick out like they used to. While important items do shine, it just isn’t the same. I guess I just liked the older environments better.

I thought for quite some time, that the "boomer shooter" is about the obligatory boomstick

my favorite part about 90s shooters is the exploration. Without that they are just serious sam clones

LOLed at the rocket launcher pun at the end. BTW, Yahtz, I think you kinda missed the two games in the FPS Blake Stone series: "Aliens of Gold" and "Planet Strike". Now, seeing RDR2 and Arthur Morgan again... what a fond memory for a cowboy who struggles to do good while also struggling with TB... well, you know what I mean. Sweet! :)

I'm only 24, I never played any of the old shooters, but I love boomer shooters. I've played almost half of the games Yahtzee listed; currently Hedon.

I missed out on the shooters that spawned this surge due to being a sheltered Catholic kid with limited access to games beyond the ones my parents were willing to shell out for for birthdays and Christmas. We played a pirated copy of Unreal Tournament in computer repair shop class, but that was about it. Needless to say, I am loving the genre regardless of the semantics. Some of my favorites have been the first ones you mentioned: Dusk, Amid Evil, and Ultrakill. Ultrakill makes me feel as though I'm playing an FPS version of Cuphead in the way that the boss battles are exceptionally difficult (for me), yet I want to keep trying to getting better.

As a games designer that's one of my favourite things to critique about any game that is about fast paced combat. If I can't tell the difference between the scenery and the enemies, you're doing it wrong. 🤓👍 The technical term is homogeneous graphics, and it's opposite it, graphical differential.

i forgot where i heard it, i think it may have been naky jaky. something along the lines of shooters are (were) essentially racing games. id add that it’s racing and tag. i love that those mechanics are getting a comeback. quake/doom arena shooters were so fun, i don’t know why they weren’t getting love all this time.

I'd be interested to hear Yahtzee's thoughts on tarkov in terms or realistic shooters

Civvie 11 is holding it down for the boomshoot enjoyers by being not a fucking bastard while producing pretty thorough content about cool gmes.

He sure completely and utterly misses the facetious nature of the term "boomer shooter" for a guy who makes his living with humor.

I remember when I first fired up Doom 2016 (circa 2019) and had a realization that I hadn’t fully realized for a long time - I was having actual FUN. I wasn’t focussing on the realistic reload animations or the quality of the Goodyear logo on a Humvee’s tires. I was just running around ripping demon’s eyes out and stomping on their spines, and it was frickin FUN. How long had it been since I just had fun in a video game? Decades, at least. Thank you Doom.

The advantage I like is that the swing to nostalgia means old games but with modern innovations that remove limitations of old game design and hardware. It helps to separate the nostalgia from actual good games.

Yahtzee acknowledged Hedon and Golden Light! Though I wouldn't call the latter a Boomer Shooter, it being a first-person survival horror roguelike that he would find soooo much to dissect from. But if you're going by the short draw-distance PS1 aesthetic with a weapon in front of you I could see how that would get it pigeonholed as such. Hedon is 100% boomer shooter though. It's literally made with the Doom engine and has plenty of cheesecake. And also map design flexes.... the game is pretty much porn for Doom mapmakers. And snu-snu.

I do find “Boomer Shooter” a bit of an oxymoron as The Boomers were the ones that tried to everything in their power to stop video games. But it think the reason we are seeing a revival of the genre is the same reason why we’re seeing movies like Top Gun 2 and Spider-Man: No Way Home doing so well: There is something very refreshing about a striped-down, simple story/concept done well.

Surprised you missed the Quake remaster (which is really good BTW) from the sarcastic list at the start. As someone who only ever had the Shareware version, I was really impressed with what both the older and the newer expansion packs managed to do.

Nice ending with the Rocket Jump reference. *Thanks for the Content* !

There is a reason why DOOM is a timeless classic, is perfect in how simple it is. I am glad we got a revival of that and classic survival horror games, modern stuff (Like the boring new "Doom" games) is just lacking.

My problem with boomer shooters is that a lot of them replicate them as they were, with no intention of pushing the genre forward. I get bored with them very quickly because a lot of them have small basic levels and dumb enemy ai. We can do a lot better with today’s technology.

Going back and replaying the Serious Sam Encounter hour (Revolution) has been both nostalgic and somewhat rewarding having achievements to provide challenges rather than just kill even more enemies which have more health and you have more ammo to deprive them of said health. That being said, definitely waiting to get my grubby mitts on Ultrakill once the rest of Dainty's Infernal Body pillow have made it through Early Access Paradiso.

There's also a discussion to be had about their graphics. We've developed graphics so far that, currently a bunch of people when making FIRST PERSON SHOOTERS (arguably the genre that most pushed graphics forward) instead of going for the most advanced graphics, dust off 20+ year old engines in order to be outdated on purpose. And it's not just for nostalgia. Okay, maybe on a surface level it's just nostalgia, but those games look unique in a way triple A games rarely do today. Also, if you make your game aiming for an older look, it's less hardware intensive, getting the advantage of working on less advanced computers and, therefore, appealing to a bigger market

I thought it was "Boomer" because things tend to explode in gore when they die. I personally enjoy the catharsis of a quick run in a game where I feel like I'm doing a good job. Whether that's going back to swarm fights in KH2/BBS, running a large chain of battles in Ultimate on NEO: TWEWY, or systematically crushing my opponents in Sekiro.

I thought "Boomer Shooter" was a play on the words "Boom and Shoot" like big explosions and such. I didn't think it had anything to do with Baby Boomers. But I was born in 93 so what do I know lol

I love what Yahtzee is doing. But is the audio a lot better on these versus ZP? Regardless, keep up the good work.

Vr is currently undergoing the same cycle shooters went through. However it’s doing so on the backbone of everything we’ve learned. So the evolution is not software based, how realistic can we make this look, but hardware based “how realistic can we make this feel?” From the latest developments in haptics and full body tracking to rumors that the index 2 will feature lenses able to be tweaked to match your prescription

Someone called me a boomer the other day. I'm only just a millennial technically, grown up me whole life being told we ruined the world, thought everyone my age realised how bullshit generational terms were and they don't really define anything, and now you got the youngsters these days actually identifying with generational names, and thinking they somehow invented "random" humour. God maybe they're right, I just typed youngsters these days without irony, maybe I am a boomer.

Ironically the term "boomer shooter" comes from the "30 year old boomer" meme since people around 30 would have been playing games like doom and also its in their 30s that they started to act more like their parents, being grumpy and all. Which I find funny since it perfectly fits with Yathzee being around 30 and ranting about not being a boomer. boomer

I agree with what you had to say, but i'd also argue that there is a certain kind of joy that comes from the arcade-y feel of the boomer shooter that more realistic shooters often miss the point of. Hoping around the arena with gimmicky weapons taking out enemies like John Wick on a sugar rush, is something that shooters like Call of Duty & Fortnight can't quite capture with their gameplay models. It's certainly why i like them so much! Fun Fun Fun!!!

awesome vid. I learned something :) And now so will you: RPG's, TOW missiles, ect, all need to move a certain amount of distance before they arm. So you wont blow yourself up shooting at your feet. (When i was in the army, this was explained to us in Basic, as soldiers being the dumbest people alive so our bombs don't arm until they are far away, and say things like "Front, torwards enemy")

I found it funny that you were talking about the clarity of vision 'boomer shooters' (fuck, I also hate that stupid name) had to offer around 4:45, and then used footage from a bad acid trip laced with LSD and mushrooms to make your point. For me it's just the opposite. Whereas devs back in the day were trying to make things as realistic as they could within the limitations of their hardware, indie devs today trying to make things look retro go so hard on the pixels and 8/16-bit colour palettes that things become an incoherent mess and I've got no idea what's going on most of the time.

Evidently anyone old enough to remember AOL is a boomer

Great video Yahtz. I am madly in love with boomer/arena shooters thanks to Doom 2016 and Eternal. There is nothing quite like this formula.

Indie gaming proves that a genre or series of mechanics is still fun even if it's old, or retro, or just not getting made anymore by traditional game studios. I find it exciting that you can enjoy, or remember enjoying, a game from a decade or two ago, and then find a new title made by a small team or single dev that recreates that fun. Even better when they can create something that has its own atmosphere or gameplay style by combining various different inspirations or mixing in unique aesthetics/ideas.

Thank you for pointing out the stupidity of the term "Boomer".

1:05 YES. Thank you. 90s FPSes were made by Xers, and played by Xers and early Millennials. Boomers had nothing to do with them, besides being the pearl-clutching assholes trying to get them banned. They don't *deserve* to have those shooters named after them. Just call them Xer Shooters. Or Dad Shooters. I mean, we have "Dad Movies," so "Dad Shooters" works too.

While i played games in the mid 80s, the boomer shooters were probably my first true love. It occurs to me that many of my game choices are still tied to that love. Something like Risk of Rain 2 or The Binding of Isaac may not immediately seem similar to Doom, the primary gameplay loop is mostly just about blasting anything that moves, increasing your firepower and movement ability as you go.

Bought Deum 2016 a couple years ago, only recently got to installing and playing it. And I will say it is satisfying to be handed a task as straightforward as 'splatter the legion of the damned across the walls and ceiling', and to have the tools necessary to do it with a minimum of fucking around.

For me, it's a matter of pace. Modern games are always breaking the pace with cutscenes, menu fiddling, forced walk sections, collectibles or pop up messages, so the game loses its rhythm. You are trying to enjoy the game, but the game is always trying to stop you from enjoying it. Boomer shooters just let tou play them without interruptions. It's just pure gameplay. So boomer shooters are better suited for (hardcore) gamers, while modern shooters are more suitable to (casual) players.

The realistic shooter never really appealed to me Mostly because I had a great amount of issue actually looking at them and knowing what was going on Sure realistic lighting can work well but not when you skip over the hidden guy touting the kill-you-instantly-omatic because you though it was a shadow Ones I usually play have less realistic graphics and/or models TF2, Star Wars battlefront 2 (post updates) games where you point your gun at an obvious enemy and you shoot them because they are easily recognisable and making their presents obvious

„hrot“ is one syllable and rhymes with „coat“ - it translates from czech as „spike“

Yahtzee coming to terms that he is, like most of us, a millennial, makes him more relatable and in turn making every piece of content he made, even more enjoyable.

Weird, maybe it’s my age being born in the late 90’s, but the boomer shooter vs Gears comparison I feel the opposite. DOOM I just find ice skating around so mindless and boring, it’s too much of the same thing. Where as Gears, methodically staying in cover, picking your moments to fire, picking off Locust one by one whilst avoiding incoming fire, all the while getting those sweet active reloads, is much more my speed. But there ya go.

I thought Boomer shooter was because guns go boom...

0:45 got me laughing right outta the gate!

Excellent breakdown of the user motivation/reward loop.

Superhot doesn't belong in boomer shooter IMO

I can't enjoy any shooter where it's 99% walking and 1% getting insta-killed by someone I never saw, and I think that's another place where modern "realistic" shooters forgot what fun looks like.

Hey Golden Light is a weird horror thing, not a boomer shooter. Thank you for mentioning it btw, Ive never even dreamed of Yahtzee mentioning my stuff

Much like pixel art coming back and making a HELL of a splash with some impressive looking games, there are components and ideas of older games that were tossed aside not due to their weaknesses but the compulsive march forward of "shiny" new stuff. Now we can have pixel art in games that transcends the quality it got stopped short of, we can have boomer shooters have MORE things on screen and MORE speed in BIGGER levels with all the processing and memory we have. In a way I consider it related to your "adventure games weren't killed they got bad" Extra Punctuation: some things DO get killed by the march of time despite still holding great value and potential, with people coming back to them to show their worth to a new world.

I struggle with modern shooters due to colour-blindness. Anything after Battlefield 2 has too much going on for me to easily see.

Now, if we just get a rediscovery on the RTS genre it would be great. Stop pandering to the minuscule hyper efficient and bland looking competitive player part and return to the balls to the wall, unbalanced spectacle and plot driven fun part of it.

Honestly this is part of the reason I so much enjoy playing Space Marine, Your personal movement is a bit slow, but the actions are fast and simple and the enemies are very easy to see. It's a pretty fast paced gore-fest that gets you right into the game without crazy amounts of pretense or dialogue.

For a deeper dive on the development and appeal of early shooters, check out Errant Signal's ongoing "Children of Doom" series of essays.

Doom was actually just as 2D as Wolfenstein, it was just rendered more cleverly. I'm pretty sure Quake was the first game that was truly 3D, in that the player's position is recorded using three spatial coodinates.

Repeat after me. Retro FPS, not boomer shooter. Retro FPS, not boomer shooter. Retro FPS, not boomer shooter. Retro FPS, not boomer shooter.

I remember playing the demo of Serious Sam off of a magazine CD for months and months. The good 'ol days.

I think that this simple pleasure that yahtzee is refering to is part why a game like team fortress 2 is still around sure it's player count has dropet and valve is just bearly paying the electricity bill to keep the life support machine on but it still has a thriving community of players. It has outlived many of it's supposed replacements and I think it's partly because of its ease of use.