It’s been many years since we thought of 3D Realms as a company that actually made games. Their glory days were back in the late 80s to mid 90s, first releasing a bunch of platformers and scrolling shooters under their initial name Apogee. Then they created a few of the early First Person shooters, including the classic Duke Nukm 3D. From there they slipped into an infamous decade-long failure to make a sequel to Duke3D. Then they shut down development altogether in 2009, not doing much more than fighting legal battles and licensing out remakes.

However, they’ve now been bought out and relaunched by Interceptor, the guys who did the remake of Shadow Warrior. This should be exciting news, I guess? One of the titans of days past, brought back from hibernation? Well, one new title they’re working on is bombshell which frankly… does not look promising at all. It’s like they took a generic “hot woman” 3D model from 10 years ago, stuck a robot arm on her and tried to give her attitude with a motorbike and a half-assed attempt to look a bit punk.

I’d like to be optimistic. Maybe they will have sucess with a new intellectual property. Or maybe we’ll get an awesome new Rise of the Triad. Or they’ll challenge all those indie hipster platform games by relaunching Bio Menace.

What a guy.

His mullet will now be ironic.

For now though, they’re celebrating the revival with an anthology of their their back catalogue. There’s a lot of content here – going all the way back to the really early stuff. Want a full list? Of course you do! It’s after the cut!

 

* Arctic Adventure
* Bio Menace
* Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold
* Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy
* Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons
* Math Rescue
* Monster Bash
* Mystic Towers
* Paganitzu
* Monuments of Mars
* Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure
* Crystal Caves
* Death Rally
* Alien Carnage
* Hocus Pocus
* Major Stryker
* Blake Stone: Planet Strike
* Realms of Chaos
* Pharaoh’s Tomb
* Word Rescue
* Secret Agent
* Raptor: Call of the Shadows
* Terminal Velocity
* Wacky Wheels
* Stargunner
* Shadow Warrior
* Wolfenstein 3D
* Rise of the Triad: Dark War
* Duke Nukem
* Duke Nukem 2
* Duke Nukem 3D
* Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project

This has all been readily accessible for years already – from 3DR themselves, Steam and GOG. In fact a few of these are freeware. Most at least had a first chapter released for free as shareware and let’s face it, 10 levels of Blake Stone will be enough to satisfy casual interest.

However, a quick bit of calculation tells me you’d pay around $120 total if buying all of these (that still have a price tag) individually. So if you’re a retro completist but don’t already have much of this list, the asking price of $40 is a good deal. In fact it’s going for just $20 until 5pm saturday GMT – we, er, probably should be quicker off the mark on these news-type posts.

There is also an extra incentive in the form of a re-rockestrated soundtrack. It sadly lacks Megadeth’s version of the Duke3D theme, but does have the Blakestone intro. Also the Duke 2 theme – I didn’t recall Duke2 even having a soundtrack? Or maybe I’m getting confused with the first one.

On a personal note, this is all making me want to revisit Monuments of Mars…