Duke Nukem 3D Comments by Dan Whitehead

Give us Shadow Warrior 3D Realms! It was always the best of the build games with the best humour. 'Lo Wang soap you good!'

I want some Wang

Now just give us Duke Nukem Forever. Please...

/starts humming 'over the rainbow'

"You want to wash Wang, or do you want to watch Wang wash Wang?"

In your face, Groucho. ;)

Already bought! Where were you all last night?!?!?!?!?

@Xerx3s

One year after quake they released quake 2, several months after that they released unreal 1. Progress back then was happening at lightning speed. Meanwhile, consoles where still in the graphical stoneage.

This is precisely why by 1997 I had no need for a Playstation. Got a 3DFX Voodoo 2 and some extra RAM, and had a wonderful time playing GTA multiplayer on the PC (The 3DFX version is fantastic - even on a P120).

The Playstation and Saturn were outdated graphically, by the time that Quake 2 came along. The Playstation version is horrendous! Duke 3D is pretty nice on the Saturn though, as Lobotomy Software knew how to get decent 3D from the console.

Grabbed a PS2 on impulse for GTA III in 2001. £220 with 2 games!

@Ryze you do realise the Voodoo2 wasn't exactly cheap? And that most other (budget) cards underperformed at the time?

The MGS4 of XBLA. Mwaha.

"But you're forgetting Magic Carpet"

Wow! I thought I was the only person on earth who remembered Magic Carpet. What a fantastic game. Way ahead of its time IMO.

I always thought it was amazing that PCs took such a hold in the consumer market. As noted above, even as VGA cards and Soundblasters finally trickled into the market - at considerable cost - they were years behind the technology curve of 16-bit Amiga and Atari products... and even the 8-bit Atari's and Apple's that preceded them! Very strange.

How long is the DN3D demo, anyway? It sounds like the best stuff is front-loaded, so I'll probably have a blast just playing the demo. Then again, the mention of scuba gear etc does bring back memories.

Wasn't there an expansion pack at one point? Duke Nukem in Washington DC IIRC? Is that bundled in, too?

"Give us Shadow Warrior 3D Realms! It was always the best of the build games with the best humour."

And it had that cool radio-controlled car sequence that got ripped off by a Star Wars game a few years later. Props for that.

Dunno what you ware buying about but my voodoo 1&2 where dirt cheap.

"Dunno what you ware buying about but my voodoo 1&2 where dirt cheap."

Proves nothing except that you bought yours a week later than Pulsar. Welcome to the world of PC hardware longevity. :)

@Spadge

Mr Brown! I can't believe that you are here! For years now I have had the cheat code 'beware aliens spadge has dropped one' rolling around in my head.

Canopus Pure 3D II (12MB Voodoo II with TV-output). That was the reason I never bought a Playstation or N64.

I wish they'd used the hi-def mod which is available for the pc version and replaces all the textures and makes the bad guys proper 3d...

Been playing thru it (on my original copy of duke).. it's ace.. level design is BRILLIANT!! Modern shooters could learn a LOT from this game..

But instead end up being boringly static

Damn, do I buy this or dig out my brilliant saturn version?. "I've got balls of steel", but I can't decide.

Shame.

Would love to try this again but seeing as MS has not yet launched Live here yet (Czech Republic), I am forced to use a UK Live account which you would think would work.
But it seems they are IP filtering downloads of some of the BBFC rated games, at least this, Doom and the Dead Rising demo. I can grudgingly understand why they block the Video Marketplace downloads, but Doom and Duke Nukem?

My Voodoo2 cost me £50-70 or something similar. Way better than £150-£300 Playstations / Saturns.

It was a question of... tolerating Windows 95 / 98 falling over.

...or p*ssing around with autoexec.bat and config.sys.

I made a fantastic little gaming rig between '97 & Windows XP.

I did some fantastic experimenting with MP3 and MPEG video at the time too. By '99 I pretty much had my own PVR with VCD recording... that ran in Win98 and fell over.

A lot.

Great review, other than the poor show on the duke match front. For someone who's still playing duke3d since released, I don't think its been bettered by many at all.

Played the demo yesterday and it ended up making me feel sick. Glad I didn't buy it before finding that out.

love it...big time nostalgia hit, like hearing no good played at a mates house..

Still just as good as it was back when it first came out. Definitely going to have to get this on XBLA. It's a pity they didn't include widescreen support - but that seems to be lacking from most retro releases on XBLA.

@darc

Wasn't there an expansion pack at one point? Duke Nukem in Washington DC IIRC? Is that bundled in, too?

There were quite a few of those expansion packs - a Caribbean one and a Winter one too. I don't think they were made by the original developers though so aren't included.

The only dude that comes close to dukes character was the blade from SiN, co-incidently i loved both games. I remember playing duke 3d multi over a modem link in the mid 90's on a custom level that was a design of our high school library, good times.

pretty kewl that this works out to make just as much fun as then.

Sad thing is that I have had more fun playing this tonight than I have on some new stuff and it is making me want to venture into the attic and find my original for the pc and use the graphic upgrade and replay some old maps.

One of my better 360 arcade purchases.

the consoles were restricted by low Res TVs. The graphical affects were still good in the consoles early life considering a 3D card was not the norm on the PC. Come to think of it, Apples Amigas and Ataris had custom graphics chips 10 years before they were affordable on the PC.
At the time of the PS1 a Pentium 1 200mhz PC was over £1000 * without* 3D card. Most people I know played Doom and Duke with the inbuilt PC speaker at work FFS. The PC couldn't touch Ridge Racer and Tekken from 1994, not to mention the superior platformers on the PS1.

C'mon. Im not going to argue costs, you have a fair point there. But sound cards in PC's were standard long before Doom and especially Duke 3d came along. Maybe some numpty at your work didn't have one but a £1000 P200 PC most certainly came with a Sound Blaster Pro or something like that.

As for games that couldn't touch Ridge Racer check out Fatal Racing and Screamer. They may not have been quite as good, but were pretty decent and fun arcade racers. There has never been a big market for beat em ups on the PC, so again that's a fair point.

The PC has and always will be one step ahead of consoles. This was especially true during the 90's. Sure the difference was hardware capabilities but it doesn't change the facts.

>>>The PC has and always will be one step ahead of consoles. This was especially true during the 90's. Sure the difference was hardware capabilities but it doesn't change the facts.

Hmm, dunno, in graphical terms, certainly, but in gameplay terms it's less one sided. It's easy to cite the usual conveyor belt of racing games and shooters on consoles, but actual innovation is equally scarce on PC's imo. In both cases you have to sift the good stuff from the epic amount of generic shite.

Obligatory "As good as MGS4 then?" comment.

@Spadge - Alien Breed

Thank you for that, I now have the intro music for Project X runnig through my head...

Born again!

/obligatory "As good as game in different genre, on different system, in different price-range, released in different decade" comment

This was great game back in the day with many memorable one liners...

"Your face, your ass whats the difference!"

"Let god sort em out!" (and you would fire your shotgun)

Loved this game played it all the way through on the PC.

"C'mon. Im not going to argue costs"

You might not but I am as it's the same bull we still hear today. ;)

You could have a good 200mhz mmx pentium 1 WITH a video and sound card for as little as 800 guilders (about 400 euros if you don't include inflation). Did some digging a while back and I owned an IBM Aptiva in 96 (most likely bought it early 96 late 95) that cost me 799 guilders (i'd guess it at 300 quid back then). It had a a P1 166 mhz MMX, an ATI rage, svga screen (resolutions consoles couldn't even dream of) and a very good sound system. It played just about every game I could throw at it with great ease (quake, that awesome alien shooter, unreal, etc.).

So there you have it. Not only a better value for money deal (did you get a telly with the ps1?) but it also had a better games lineup and had visuals that console gamers didn't see until 1999/2000.

The reason you don't remember the perspective issues when playing the original was that in the original you couldn't actually look up and down, hence the vertical autoaim.

I'm having a blast playing this and just about every addon made for it on my xbox with the updated graphics patches. No need to get the xbla version :)

In the PC version, I believe you could look up and down with PG Up / Down. But rarely used it, was too frustrating to do that and hit someone. So instead used jetpack or whatever to get far enough up to see them on screen :) But was possible to look up and down, just not a part of the normal gameplay.

yay!