While much attention has been paid to strippers and other mature content, for me the attraction of the game has been the level design. This explains why when you land on the roof at the start of the game Duke makes comments about getting revenge for them wrecking his ride. If you read the background you’ll learn that Duke Nukem 3D starts after the events in Duke Nukem II as he heads back to Earth only to have his ship shot out of the sky. There are two great things about this – they are freely available under the GNU license, and they make the game look like it was developed using a much newer engine!ĭuke Nukem 3D was never known for having much of a story – even in 1996 it was seen as a step backwards from the Dark Forces and Marathon and System Shock games. I have already played the Good Old Games version, and it is great – like all of their DOS releases, DOSBox is perfectly configured and you can just start the game right up and go.įor this run I tried out eDuke32 and the High Resolution Pack (HRP), which utilize the game files from your existing Duke 3D installation for the core content. There are a few different ways to play Duke Nukem 3D now, either using the original shareware/download or CD versions and then fitting up DOSBox or the equivalent, grabbing the all-in-one solution from Good Old Games, or use one of the fan-made interfaces that allows the game to run on modern operating systems but requires more user setup. – The sequel, Duke Nukem Forever, was announced in 1997, available for pre-order as early as 1999, but not released until June 14, 2011. – The game featured largely immature humor from the gravel-voiced one-liner spouting Duke Nukem, as well as strip clubs, XXX film theaters, and dancers who would gyrate or flash you if you gave them money. There are two major non-gameplay reasons people still talk about Duke Nukem 3D: Duke Nukem 3D fit very well in the sprite-based, 2.5D engine mold of the Doom era, but allowed a level of interactivity not seen before in other games.ĭuke Nukem 3D also featured some excellent level design marked by non-linear exploration and freedom of movement as well as puzzles and vertical hidden areas, but that isn’t why it is known. The genre began in earnest in 1992 with Wolfenstein 3D, took on epic proportions with Doom in late 1993, jumped to the Mac in 1994 with the story-based Marathon (Doom and Wolf3D lacked significant stories), became a sci-fi RPG-hybrid in System Shock, and took on a major license in 1995 with the innovative Star Wars: Dark Forces.īy the time Duke Nukem 3D arrived, games had already evolved graphically from Doom, had gotten vertical height and up/down aiming from Marathon and Dark Forces,and seen interesting stories from both of those games as well. Released early in 1996, Duke Nukem 3D capped the ‘first great era’ of first person shooters. This is the award winning game that helped define the FPS genre and introduced unparalleled interactivity and a talking main character.

He is a can-do hero who realizes that sometimes innocent people have to die in order to save Earth, so accuracy of gun fire is not a real concern to him. But in the meantime I thought it appropriate to dig back into the game that launched the 15 year quest for a sequel!ĭuke Nukem, the politically incorrect celebrity and ultimate alien ass kicker, defends Earth and its babes from alien invasion. I will be getting a review copy very soon in will have a full review as soon as I can. Indeed.This week we FINALLY get the sequel to the classic 1996 game Duke Nukem 3D. In the words of the Duke: “What are you waiting for? Christmas?' Indeed, sir. Need a bit more Duke in your life? Require a refresher before Duke Nukem Forever hits other platforms in 2011? Might as well give this a try. I would normally use words like “unacceptable' and “cringe worthy' to describe them, but those seem a tad too critical considering DN3D‘s current price of zero dollars. Just as a minor note here: the game still suffers the same problems we complained about in our write-up back in August 2009. DN3D for iOS is a very faithful port of that original PC version, so you’ll probably be able to come to understand what all the brouhaha was about - if you decided to give it a download. The Duke represented a change of pace, as well as a dramatic shift in tone and style. When we talk about DN3D, it’s usually in the context of early shooters like DOOM or Wolfenstein 3D. Duke Nukem 3D, the game that spawned the greatest Ventrillo prank on the planet with it’s oh-so-memorable bile-spitting quotes, is now free on the iPhone and the iPad for an unspecified amount of time for an unspecified reason.

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