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Tech

Apogee’s Forgotten Retro Game Classics

Consider this a public announcement that you should play the original Duke Nukem.
Duke Nukem, pre-Jon St. John.

As influential as game developer Apogee would become, and for as early in my own gaming history its work appeared, Apogee's games didn't land on the same pantheons of classics like Sonic the Hedgehog, Spyro, and Super Mario. Games like Crystal Caves, Word Rescue and Monster Bash were seldom spoken of, largely because of they were more difficult to access than retail games.

Apogee games, like many inconveniently distributed DOS titles, make up a once secret history in retro gaming's timeline. They're games that could be mistaken for things you've made up, undocumented incidents brewed by your childhood imagination.

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Apogee has since rebranded as 3D Realms, best known for Duke Nukem's messy adventures, and this month, the company dusted off a crate in the attic and released an impressive new anthology on Steam. Some of these games were available on Steam or Good Old Games before, but this collection is dense, with 32 relics in total. On top of Monster Bash and Word Rescue are games that had completely vacated my headspace since I had last actively played them, such as Secret Agent and Halloween Harry, though I've not forgotten the fizzy, crumbly boom sounds of thunderbolts, flamethrowers, and doors shutting. Each early DOS game had sound effects like a squeal of a different annoying exotic bird.

Nintendo, survivors and dominators of a post 80s game crash world, had firmly planted the focus of interactive computer entertainment on TV consoles. Apple and home computers were left with smaller text adventure or generally basic ventures. Computers at the time struggled to handle the constantly scrolling, generating worlds made a staple by Super Mario Bros.

It was an infamous conundrum solved by John Carmack, who figured out you could save the computer stress by dividing visual elements so that constant colours, like the sky, would be static, and the hardware could focus on introducing everything else. This led to a watershed moment in PC gaming: Commander Keen, a game that illustrated DOS gaming's potential, which was distributed but not developed by Apogee. After that hurdle, these smoother, bigger games started rolling.

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Playing through this 3D Realms' anthology is to play through a clear timeline of the era's development. Despite there being games with shockingly similar elements in level design and enemy types, you can sense a lot of exploration, a lot of feeling out, as if the company was designing video games with no one watching. The way they evolve in such quick succession is staggering: a three-coloured platformer like Arctic Adventure in 1991 looks nothing like a fully fleshed-out first-person shooter like Blake Stone in 1993.

Monster Bash, Monuments of Mars, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure and Word Rescue have clumsy controls, and the spaces the characters inhabit fit jaggedly and awkwardly. There are funny stylistic juxtapositions: the mutants of Bio Menace look all cute and goofy like Barney and friends, but they still blow up into chum chunks of gore and bone when you obliterate them. There are hanging skeletons and dismembered organs in Monster Bash, which wouldn't seem weird if your protagonist wasn't a boy in onesie pajamas who collects candy for points.

For all the stumbles, there are some true classics in the collection. Crystal Caves, Arctic Adventure and Secret Agent, bland as they may sound, are some of the best DOS had to offer. That's not to mention Duke Nukem and Duke Nukem II, solid running gunning platformers before 3D graphics, womanizing, and Jon St. John redefined the buzzcut avenger.

As good as many of these games were, they were never meant for the limelight. DOS games, usually distributed as shareware, rarely achieved the same commercial gratitude as retail console games of that time. Back in those days, the games were downloaded off the web, or shared on disks by relatives (thanks Aunt Diane!), or ordered directly from their companies. Apogee had about two employees filling out orders manually over the phone. Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Commander Keen and Jazz Jackrabbit were exceptions to the rule, while the humble Apogee games in this collection were distributed in the same fashion.

Archaic distribution methods, while functional for those studios at the time, limited the reach and legacy of many of these games. Even the re-releases still come with ordering info and mailing addresses on the main menu. So while many were influential, to other game makers or a pocket of your adolescence that's washed away like tears in the rain, they literally didn't have the same presence as the other games deemed classic. Now, with the games market oddly but inevitably returning to digital distribution, you can unearth some real lost treasures. That is, if you can put up with audio that I'd generously call "tinny."