3D Realms shuts down

[Insert duke nukem for-never gag here]

12 years in development… now this. I remember watching a demo back when they were using the Quake 2 engine, or something of that vintage. If the game had actually come out then, we might have reviewed it as an oldie by now! I guess the reserves of cash from Max Payne finally ran out.

Still it’s sad to see the successor to a much-loved oldie fall by the wayside. I wasn’t a huge Duke3D fan personally, but it still deserves recognition for the humour, and the “real-world” maps which made a change from random, abstract sci-fi corridors and castles as seen in iD games.

Anyone remember this guy?

Correct answers win a prize.

Hi all.

Some might object to us counting the ware of 2003 as “old games” – even this site is older than that. However part of our mission has always been to commit to “5 or 6ish years ago” stuff as much as the early-90s abandonware generation. You can get these games cheap from browsing the £5 selection (a favourite hobby of Rik and myself) at GAME, or from somewhere like Good Old Games, and they’ll run on hardware now considered heavily outdated. That makes them old in our book.

So today here’s Unreal 2. Which is pretty good.

The Jman made a very sensible suggestion, that we review Doom. I’m not entirely sure why i’ve skirted around that one – I’ve covered the iD milestone immediately before, the next two after and even a 3rd-party game using its engine. Maybe it’s just a reticence regarding such a huge name in gaming; there must already be many “10\15 years later” retrospectives out there. Probably deconstructing Doom’s significance in great detail.

It will see coverage at some point – although just to be perverse I’ll probably do Heretic beforehand. For now though, I’m focussing on something long-overdue…

you must gather your party before venturing forth

Xenon 2 is one of those games I sucked at and never played much, but i remember it having an awesome theme tune! By the DJ known as Bomb The Bass, no less.

Here’s it is on the Amiga:

The track was released as a single also. There’s no official video so here’s, er, some student project with a couple of guys running around.

Just when you thought we’d probably had enough of games based around following police procedure, we’re back once again, with a review of Jim Walls’ Blue Force.

I can categorically state that we have had enough of them now. And we will never, ever, ever be reviewing Police Quest: SWAT. Ever.

Next time, something good.

Hello.

After our last few updates, we’ve started to tire of fighting crime ‘by the book’. What about the world of criminals who operate above the law?

One man can make a difference. Providing, of course, he has an indestructible super-car at his disposal. Now you can be that man (sort of) – if you play Knight Rider: The Game. We wouldn’t recommend it though.

games from Apogee

Pick of the (short so far) list beying Duke Nukem 3D. Which i’ll put on my “possible coverage” list. Despite being technically inferior I always thought it was a superior experience to Quake. More fun, more of a sense of character and “real-world” locations.

The rest of the list is only of moderate interest tho. Blake Stone is basically a sci-fi Wolf3d; playing the free shareware version would be enough unless you’re really hardcore. And I don’t recall the Doom-era Rise of the Triad being all that inspiring.

What might be tempting is a compilation of their 2D stuff – Raptor, Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure, Commander Keen. Well ok we can get that last one off Steam, but I know some folks prefer the GoG approach.

The company i work for is about to move office, and as part of the process of clearing out we’re throwing out some old P2 to P3 era hardware.

So I’ve taken for myself a hard disk and a few other bits – I now have more or less everything I need to resurrect my own first PC, a P3-450 I obtained in 1999. Of course why I’d actually want to do that, and whether or not I have space, is another matter, especially as it becomes ever-easier to run DOS oldies on modern sytems. Guess it’s just the collector in me talking.

Tonight we have a double whammy, completing our coverage of Sierra’s Police Quest series. Well, apart from the EGA original. And the SWAT spin-offs. Still, this is our greatest show of dedication yet to the Sierra adventures!

So Rik has reviewed the final installment in the adventures of Sonny Bonds: Police Quest 3: The Kindred. Meanwhile the depature of Jim Walls saw a new setting and player character, so have a read of my thoughts on Police Quest 4: Open Season.