Duke Nukem: Introduction

I've never quite gotten Duke. Of all the side-scrolling characters to turn into a tough as nails FPS protagonist, Duke seemed like he was just sort of there. Outside of a kickass intro in his second game, and even that was just the novelty of animation, there wasn't anything that put him above Johnny Dash or Snake Logan. I'm pretty sure I only beat the shareware episode of Duke 2 simply because that's just what I had at the time. Because I remember despite some good stuff, my overall impression was that I played it because it passed the time. This is also the last Apogee game I haven't played until 1995. (well, outside of Wacky Wheels, but from Crystal Caves until Rise of the Triad, I've played everything for at least a little while)

That said, this is an important game because it's the first to have all the important Apogee guys together. That is, Allen H. Blum, George Broussard, Scott Miller, and Todd Replogle. John Carmack helped with the coding, which probably means that this is going to play a lot better than previous titles that were effectively in-house. This is still EGA, and there's only PC Speaker sound, compared to previous titles which were either CGA and PC Speaker or EGA with Adlib/Soundblaster options.

Before I go in, the only thing I've really heard about this one is the plagarism allegations. There was going to be a paragraph mentioning that this wasn't something to brag about. Duke isn't that good looking of a game, since it's EGA. But once I actually found the stuff it was pretty conclusively some of the only actually good-looking stuff in this...and some stuff from Mega Man's DOS spin-off. Those barrels are making me ask the question, is it possible to draw something so poorly that you can't copyright it?

Now, this is coming from a guy whose art is considered objectively awful, but it isn't that hard to draw a crate if you have any drawing ability whatsoever. Stealing stuff from Turrican I can understand, if you're stealing, you steal from the best. Not the dinky Mega Man game nobody likes. Straight-up ripping other game's artwork and then taking one from a crappy-looking game is like becoming a criminal mastermind to steal from a 7-11. It is a complete and utter waste of time. Enough distractions, let's get to the game.

As per usual for a shareware the story is in the instructions menu. The year is 1997, a man called Doctor Proton and his army of techbots have taken over Earth's largest city. Tokyo? No, Los Angeles. I'm assuming they mean largest in size rather than population, but even then Tokyo wins out. Even in the US, Houston is bigger. Unless there's some weird trick or the authors just did not care. I'm making fun of a game for calling LA the largest when the developers assumed that someone could field a robot army in 1997. Naturally, Proton's robots have easily overcome our planet's military, until...

"Self-proclaimed hero, Duke Nukum" is hired by the CIA to stop Proton. "Armed with his [prototype nuclear] pistol and his can-do attitude". Is this Duke Nukem or Lester the Unlikely? This feels less like the badass hero that he was in Duke Nukem 3D and more like the overconfident guy who gets killed in the opening scene before the real hero pops up. Considering how they know where Proton's lab is, since they're setting Duke on top of it, that might not be an unfair assessment. The controls are typical, left and right move, ctrl jumps and alt shoots. Up interacts with things and of course, esc is the menu.

Before the game starts, you get a little cutscene where Dr. Proton mocks Duke. Proton reminds me of the villain of Power Rangers: Time Force, but I guess wearing a metal plate on your face and having armor tends to look alike.

Duke looks like the antagonist's right-hand man, not a hero.

This is the second lamest insult I've heard recently, but I'll give Replogle and Co. credit and say that they intended this to be lame.

Starting off, Duke does feel considerably different to the character of previous Apogee games. Unlike past games, you drop down from a height to an area with both directions open to you. No going in one direction at the start like in Dark Ages. Although this uses a weird save system, only save in a hallway between levels. Unlimited lives, at least. Duke's "pistol" sticks out of the middle of his torso, meaning that it shoots slightly lower than him. Assuming that he's two tiles high, it seems as though we won't be overshooting anybody. Technically, it's at his top tile, but it hits anything that's shootable on his bottom tile too. That is, it ignores solid tiles, but not crates or destructible walls. Jumping is smooth, but has the issue of no real control over height. There are also elevators, which you can raise by pressing up. As soon as you jump off, they retract into the ground.

Duke makes itself quite different from other games by virtue of having a lot of weird power-ups. Firstly, you get on-shot onscreen, find more guns and you get more. There's a jumping power-up which increases jumping power. Then there are health items, chicken, soda, which you can shoot, and an atom. Duke loves his atomic references. Most health items are in crates, which come in three flavors, oddly, the gray variety is the most dangerous. That has dynamite in it, which explodes after a moment and hurts you. There are also letters which if collected in the order N U K E M (or possibly D U K E) gives you extra points. I wonder if that's the first case of that? Mind you, most games I can think of that did that were by Apogee or Epic.

Getting to this opening level, I completely understand how this game was so popular at the time. Between how smooth Duke is and how easy it is to move around this place, this game is showing a great start. Boiled down, it's three floors, plus a secret nearly as big as the level below. You get there by just jumping on a suspicious floor. The only thing truly dangerous is in the secret, which is counteracted by having a lot of health items. There's this mech I didn't get a good shot of, which takes a few blasts to kill and shoots back, compared to everything else here being dumb walk back and forth types. Sometimes on the floor, sometimes on the wall. There are also bouncing spiked metal mines which are invulnerable. They only disappear if they explode, which happens if you touch them. They have a short bounce range, but I didn't notice much trouble getting past them.

The way out is in the middle floor, find a key, open the door, then shoot a nuclear reactor. Or a glowing pillar of light representing a nuclear reactor. I'm sure if Duke was actually shooting the radioactive materials, the nuke part of his name would no longer be metaphorical. Ending the level leads to a corridor, which is the only place you can save. You also find out the various bonuses you got on that level.

Next level introduces some more mundane ranged enemies, and the mechs in regular areas. And boy howdy, does this shift up the difficulty. It's less the enemies and more the hazards. The non-mech is just a slow and dumb floating thing. There's also a walker with spinning flamethrowers you need to wait until the flame stops. It's less impressive than it sounds. The hazards are just dozens of spikes and ball mines, with the odd flame jet. It's not a big increase, but you could sleepwalk through the first level whereas you can realistically die on this level. So many spike balls and spikes in the ground. They try to hide the latter, but they're very easy to spot. It's very simple otherwise. two floors with an optional third floor leading to more points. Most of the level is, since the key is to Duke's left and the door out in down and to the left.

While levels are distinct, they aren't that important, as the game doesn't tell you how many there are or which one you're on. Level 3 starts with a helicopter attacking Duke. I must have killed it too quickly, or they just ram Duke. Which means it's just an oversized bird, really. Interestingly, it's another straight shot to the key out, just don't fall and go right. This also leads to a teleporter. Well, despite how easy it seems, I'll go explore the level. There are some fans around, which blow Duke away if he's within a certain distance, but if you shoot them, they stop.

What I sort of glossed over when reading the level introduction, there's one in the hallway between each level, is that I needed a computer card, which looks like a computer board. Oh, and four keys. This level is very non-linear, you can go in many ways to many different platforms. In this particular case, it's getting on my nerves. Perhaps 2D when the two dimensions are ZY instead of XY my brain can't navigate. I do know that I got lucky. After the fact, I discover that there's a secret level here. Sorry.

This next level is weird. Starting off there's a spinning fire thing and only one path, which eventually leads across a lightning barrier, you can see on the right. This game is actually throwing out a lot of jumps Duke can just barely make, but because of the engine they're all easily managable. I'm going to miss that about this game. Secondly, there's this flying centipede creature. Centipede in the sense that it has multiple segments. It's just an oddity, it makes a terrible racket but just goes in a fixed pattern.

I ended up skipping a big chunk of this by complete accident. Well, possibly a big chunk. There's a destructible floor which has two crates land on it, and one crate has dynamite and I jumped and made a big mistake. This nearly results in my death, because there's a mech on the ground below, but somehow I manage. There's no way back up, but the level does imply such a path with a series of blocks that you can now reach with some boots which increase your jumping power...sadly it's only a secret. There are also Energizer Bunny parodies roaming around. There are a lot of little jokes like that, despite how much more serious it appears to be, it's still spun from the same cloth as DN3D.

The boots and extra laser I picked up last level carry over, which is nice. This level's quite mundane at first, a fairly simple level which just has the illusion of non-linearity via tons of little side places. It does bring me into one of the game's few problems, no looking up or down. Every single jump down a pit is blind, which trips me up quite a few times. I found out those spiky balls are actually mines.

Back to this level, there's a moving car enemy, it doesn't seem to shoot at you, it's only faster than other enemies. The real enemy here is how freaking big and mazey this level has become. There is just so much of this level that's just wandering around trying to find a key. Looking at a map after the fact and it's just so big with little reason to it otherwise. It's just a maze, even in-universe Dr. Proton is trying to break Duke with it.

It's probably not that visible just standing here, but this is very annoying to see in motion. Gray against a gray background. Probably not helped my a headache I have as I write this. (Unrelated reasons) It does look nice, but Keen or Dangerous Dave this is not. This continues to be more about navigating around hazards than fighting, well, much of anything. This level is not quite as ponderous as the last one, instead centering around a tall elevator shaft.

And these stylish rockets you can shoot to spawn a blue crate.

There are two new elements, introduced soon after one another. The Robohand, which is basically another type of key. The difference is it seems to be used for non-door objects, and if you use the slot without having the Robohand, you get hurt. That little trick nearly cost me a restart. Conveyor belts, which function exactly as you'd think they would.

Is that water? A reflection? Or is that a glitch? Could go either way, since it's flickery as hell in gameplay, but there are a lot of them. This is another mazey level, but in comparison to the one a few levels ago, this is much better done, more straightforward, and you only need two things. The key out and a grappling hook that seems to be claw hands. On certain ceilings, Duke can navigate across them. How bizarre. There's not really much else about this level, it tries to do a trick where you have to go back to the start if you fall down to the bottom level, which is really easy to avoid.

Here, you start off next to some walking enemies. Not sure how I feel about this one. Sure, you have to be quick, but you also start in the hallway beforehand. It's a sign of how this level rolls, it tries to make enemies the real threat...by spamming a lot of them. It kind of worked, but that was just because they were in-between crates which often contained dynamite. I'm starting to loathe those gray containers. At least the level is nicely designed.

Another addition, moving fires. Duke can't shoot them. After all, he is shooting an atomic weapon, and aren't fires just mini suns? (Considering this game's fascination with the atom, that may not be untrue) This had a weird effect on my handling of the level, I could try to go past the sections with them, but I already have the key and found the exit. That's not really something that speaks favorably towards how I'm thinking of these levels. They're good, but in the short and sweet way. I think outside of the first level I wouldn't consider any of these classics, and that's more because I think the first deals with the assumption a lot would have in these days that you go from left to right mindlessly. Like Metroid's first section.

I would have preferred to have dealt with this on an episodic basis, but time got away from me this week. I'll try to cover til the end of episode 2 next week.

This Session: 2 hours 25 minutes