by Chuck Hoodak

Created on: August 15, 2008   Last Updated: July 15, 2011

The mid- to late '90s saw an explosion of PC games as developers began pumping out content at an amazing rate. Some games were not worth the effort of installing, but some were outstanding and would go on as the best games in the history of PC gaming. In 1996, 3D Realms brought the hero of the 2D side-scrolling world into the 3D universe with Duke Nukem 3D and added a new dimension to the FPS games: humor.

Duke was bigger and badder than them all. Forget Doom's space marines; real heroes don't need armor, they just need bigger guns. Duke came complete with shotgun, machine gun and a rocket launcher for that extra added touch of destruction. Need a little more flair? How about the Freeze Ray, which froze a target, allowing it to be shattered with a kick; or the Shrink Ray, whose victims would temporarily shrink to a minuscule size just right for stomping under foot. Rounding out the weapons available were the handy pipe bombs and the multiplayer favorite: laser trip bombs.

The player didn't just blast their way through the game, they were Duke Nukem handing out the punishment as Duke provided the injury as well as the insults. From the smallest enemy soldier to the largest Boss, the player was ready for anything because the Duke said so.

Duke's humorous insults were one thing, but 3D Realms game designers worked very hard, with tongue in cheek, to plant so many special in-jokes into the game that you would play it over and over just to find them all. Who can forget "Terminated!" when you find the metal arm sticking out of the machinery, or "Doctor Jones, I presume?" after walking into a cave to discover the dead body of a certain archaeologist.

There was also the bonus of secret levels to be found. Discoveries made by lucky gamers were posted in gaming forums and had players scrambling back to the game to find out things like, just what was in Captain Jean Luc Picard's ready room aboard the Enterprise?

Multiplayer Duke sessions became the office lunchtime staple. Fast, fun and simple with players being able to blow up each other in the most elaborate ways. Some people were ingenious with the use of the laser trip-bomb, which could be planted in very dubious ways to lay waste to an adversary or two.

If you thought that all the fun stopped there, you were wrong. Duke Nukem 3D utilized a very cool graphics engine called "Build". Build was easy to learn and only limited by your imagination. Once people got the hang of manipulating things in the Build world, user-designed maps began to flourish. Maps of places both real and imaginary could be created with ease and placed on popular game sites to be shared with others. This was probably why Duke Nukem 3D remained on computer hard drives for years.

3D Realms has been at work on a new Duke Nukem for about 12 years now, and just recently there have been teaser trailers for Duke Nukem Forever on the Internet. Referring to their mantra of "It will release when it is done", 3D Realms has had fans of Duke Nukem patiently waiting for the day when they can again, "Come get some!"

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