Duke Nukem 3D

Title           Duke Nukem 3D
Publisher       3D Realms Entertainment, 1996
Game Type       3D Action
Players         1
HD Installable  Compulsory
Compatibility   AGA/Graphics Card
Submission      Angus Manwaring Profiled Reviewer

Review
I don't know much about Duke Nuke's origins, or the game's history, but I
remember there being quite a lot of fuss from PC owners, and their envious
Amiga counterparts when the game was released in the mid nineties. I
gather, like Doom and Quake, the game was given a new lease of life when
the Sony Playstation came to the fore, but as far as I was concerned it
was some sort of Doom-clone which was not available to Amiga users.

This situation changed sometime in 2003 when the source code for the game
became available for people to freely convert it to other machines. Enter
AmigaDuke by Daniel Trompetter.

So, having been told there was an Amiga version of the game available, and
that it would play acceptably on an 060 AGA machine, I hunted down the
required pc Atomic Edition of the game on EBay, bought it, and got it
installed as soon as possible. (I believe it is now possible to play the
freely available demo version of the game, if you can't find the full
version).

Despite the readme installation instructions advising you to install the
game on a pc and then write the installation to a CD-R for your Amiga, you
can just put the pc CD into your Amiga, copy the relevant Duke directory
to your hard drive, then add the AmigaDuke components. Its easy - I
managed it.

The game itself initially reminded me of Doom, but after a short while it
became apparent that the 3D engine is a lot more sophisticated and
actually feels more like Alien Breed 3D II: The Killing Grounds, only it
runs better on my 060 than the flawed Amiga classic.

Although, once again, you are walking around a 3D environment killing
unfriendly inhabitants, the level design is particuarly good, and the game
involves me much more than Doom ever did. You actually want to track down
the secret areas and find all the goodies you can here, as opposed to just
progressing through one "shooting gallery" after another. The storyline is
also more involving, and follows on fairly well from level to level - its
not J.R.R. Tolkien, but you do get a sense that you are progressing
through an adventure rather than just completing a numerical sequence of
levels.

There is also a degree of humour in the game, with voice samples from our
hero like "Ahhhhh.... I needed that!" after using a toilet, as well as
many others, some of a more adult (read "schoolboy") nature. It is quite
amusing I suppose.

Duke Nukem then, is another variant from the Doom stable, but it exceeds
its ancestor in most of the important ways. While it doesn't actually look
vastly better, the game play is far more involving, with neat touches like
the aqualung, the jet-pack, and the occasional need to shrink yourself!
The levels are atmospheric and encourage you to explore and strive to
complete them. There are 4 episodes to play through, which are:

L.A. Meltdown
Lunar Apocalypse
Shrapnel City
The Birth

and each of these contain a number of different levels.

Duke Nukem then is a most welcome addition to the growing list of classic
pc games that have been made available to the Amiga thanks to the
ingenuity and talent of a few valiant coders.

I should add that not everybody will find the update speed acceptable on
an AGA 060 machine - but hey, what do they know? In fact it plays
something like DoomAttack running on an 030 Amiga, although some situations
definitely cause a bit of unwanted chugginess. BlazeWCP from Aminet, and
an NTSC screenmode will help here.

Thank you Daniel Trompetter for your excellent work in giving Amiga users
the opportunity to play this classic game.

Alphabetical list.