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Why did Duke Nukem 3D get all of the attention?

User is offline   Maisth 

#31

View PostNinety-Six, on 15 February 2019 - 04:55 PM, said:

I'm not as sure about that. Duke's character in 3D was pretty signifcantly different from his first two installments. Plus Duke 3D put him on the map for a lot of people, who probably didn't even know the previous two games existed.


Maybe not so much of the character but perhaps of the name, If I grew up with Duke 1 or 2 and saw a third entry coming out I would definitely have bought it, maybe I'm speaking for myself but I'm pretty sure some people bought it not only because it was a new FPS game with impressive stuff but also because people knew what to expect when it came to Duke Nukem itself.
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User is offline   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#32

Speaking as a person who was already an adult in 1996, I had never heard of Duke Nukem until Duke Nukem 3D came out. I can't imagine that the use of an existing character had much impact on sales. Sure, there must have been a few fans of the 2D games who were excited to see him return, but they were a small minority.
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User is online   Phredreeke 

#33

View PostForge, on 15 February 2019 - 03:59 PM, said:

That's not it.
I don't mind being wrong, and being corrected.

I don't like that it was taken as being intentionally deceptive.

I'd rather be dumb, than a liar.


I wasn't accusing you of being deceptive, just that you went on to list the PS2 which came out in 2000 (4 years after Duke3D) when the games in question came out in 1997. I apologise if it seemed like I was suggesting malicious intent.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#34

View PostPhredreeke, on 15 February 2019 - 05:58 PM, said:

I wasn't accusing you of being deceptive

then we're all in agreement that I'm just dumb. A fair assessment.


View PostPhredreeke, on 15 February 2019 - 05:58 PM, said:

I apologise.

don't
i'm being a sensitive little bitch.
you're perfectly fine
I should be the one apologizing.
Sorry.
I have issues and sometimes they pile up at the door until the latch breaks.
It's not an excuse, just the reason.

This post has been edited by Forge: 15 February 2019 - 06:17 PM

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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#35

View PostMaisth, on 15 February 2019 - 05:09 PM, said:

Maybe not so much of the character but perhaps of the name, If I grew up with Duke 1 or 2 and saw a third entry coming out I would definitely have bought it, maybe I'm speaking for myself but I'm pretty sure some people bought it not only because it was a new FPS game with impressive stuff but also because people knew what to expect when it came to Duke Nukem itself.


View PostTrooper Dan, on 15 February 2019 - 05:42 PM, said:

Speaking as a person who was already an adult in 1996, I had never heard of Duke Nukem until Duke Nukem 3D came out. I can't imagine that the use of an existing character had much impact on sales. Sure, there must have been a few fans of the 2D games who were excited to see him return, but they were a small minority.


What Dan posted.

Side-scrollers were a dime a dozen back then. Duke Nukum & Duke Nukem II were just a couple of many, and weren't that remarkable.

Duke3D stood out for obvious reasons. Environment, colors, scenery, interactivity, pace, pop-culture, some naughty stuff & coarse language. It had things that other 3d shooters lacked.

Technology and trends were changing fast back then.
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User is offline   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#36

View PostForge, on 15 February 2019 - 06:25 PM, said:

Technology and trends were changing fast back then.


Indeed. These days, one year doesn't make a lot of difference in the perception of 3D gaming tech. In the mid-90's, a year was huge. Duke 3D came out in the first quarter of '96, but in June we had both Quake and Mario 64, and after that it seemed like full 3D was a requirement to be considered current gen. This was before many people considered games as art and well before "retro" was cool. So while Build games coming out in '97 does not seem like it should have mattered much, the fact is it did. Even though the sprites looked way better than the shitty low poly models used in early Quake engine games, they weren't the latest thing.
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#37

View PostTrooper Dan, on 15 February 2019 - 06:39 PM, said:

after that it seemed like full 3D was a requirement to be considered current gen.

i'm probably off again, but I think Final Fantasy VII came out during that time-frame as well. That was a huge draw away from the old software tech. & pushed the hardware to its limits. Change and advances were in the air.

This post has been edited by Forge: 15 February 2019 - 07:20 PM

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User is offline   Hank 

#38

[venting]
Am I the only one that could (want) not pay for the latest Voodoo OpenGL cards with the required support system? To play those games in the top, fancy graphic mode? P.S. those comps ran around 2.5k in 1999 dollars.

I played Quake and Quake II first on “software” mode! Why am I a fanatic about Quake? Simple. It actually was a good (superior to Duke) SP game. In my never humble opinion!

Now, Duke had this marvellous editor, called Build, more fun (much simpler) to use compared to Radiant. But this it. Sex and violence, my arse, it was a selling gimmick, nothing more, but it did work. Movies at the same time had much more, to play with oneself.

As for the original post, I prefer Blood over Duke, but mainly because I prefer the mysterious over the blunt, silly violence Duke offered. Yet, Duke was king for while in the multiplayer circles, no clue where Blood was at that time. And MP is/was dominant to win.
[/venting]

This post has been edited by Hank: 15 February 2019 - 07:24 PM

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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#39

View PostHank, on 15 February 2019 - 07:20 PM, said:

Why am I a fanatic about Quake? Simple. It actually was a good (superior to Duke) SP game. In my never humble opinion!

more like drunk opinion

View PostHank, on 15 February 2019 - 07:20 PM, said:

Sex and violence, my arse, it was a selling gimmick, nothing more, but it did work. Movies at the same time had much more, to play with oneself.

Okay.
But that was '96-'97
Mummy and Da-Da were more likely to give their kid a silly video game rather than a naughty vhs tape.
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User is offline   Hank 

#40

View PostForge, on 15 February 2019 - 07:33 PM, said:

more like drunk opinion

Nope, I'm on coffee.

View PostForge, on 15 February 2019 - 07:33 PM, said:

Okay.
But that was '96-'97
Mummy and Da-Da were more likely to give their kid a silly video game rather than a naughty vhs tape.

Wut? Name one hard working pop that actually knew Duke 3D, in them days, Mario was it. :)
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User is offline   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#41

View PostHank, on 15 February 2019 - 07:20 PM, said:

[venting]
Am I the only one that could (want) not pay for the latest Voodoo OpenGL cards with the required support system? To play those games in the top, fancy graphic mode? P.S. those comps ran around 2.5k in 1999 dollars.


My first 3d video card was a Voodoo 3, and I didn't get it until 2000 when it was on discount. Most of us played Duke 3d, Quake, et al in software just fine.
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#42

View PostForge, on 15 February 2019 - 01:54 PM, said:

The games themselves aren't the only thing that has be taken into account.

Duke3d was released around the same time as the nintento 64, playstation, sega saturn & 32x, VooDoo 1, 3dFx, 133MHz - 166 MHz processors

By the time Blood, Shadow Warrior, and RR hit the market over the following couple of years, the technology in consoles and computer hardware had advanced: Dreamcast, Playstation 2, VooDoo 2, GeForce 256, 366 - 400 MHz pocessors.
The attitude was that Quake was a forward looking advance (regardless of how mundane the game was), and build was a step back.


So damn right! When Duke 3D came out it seemed as if all the planets were aligned, a badass character somehow similar to Schwarzy from Terminator 2, plus his funny quotes with that deep voice (so damn charismatic), the many piece of hardwares and the ways it was modified on each of them, more fast paced and controllable than the characters from the other games (exception for Quake maybe - and don't take me wrong i love the other ones too).
But lets face it, in which game the player start on a skycraper followed by an explosion, a quote mixed with fun and vengeance at the same time, and the first thing you have to do is to let Duke fall down right before "the show " begins?
Musics, level design (exception for the Stadium lol), so many enviroments, easter eggs, secrets, interaction with lots of objects, breas...err i mean girls, monsters (tecnically aliens :)) that screams in pain before to turn them in pieces, what else? it was awesome for that era, thats all.
Full respect to Doom that is the parent of these games and they were possible thanks to it and Build, but i prefer the King baby! Maybe because the developers that era always tried their best to step forward , not backwards, I Thank God that let us born in that era, or almost!

This post has been edited by The Battlelord: 15 February 2019 - 09:24 PM

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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#43

View PostHank, on 15 February 2019 - 07:42 PM, said:

Wut? Name one hard working pop that actually knew Duke 3D, in them days, Mario was it. :)

Wat?
That has nothing to do with giving a kid a video game vs. letting them watch dirty movies.


Posted Image


Not many people knew video games like they do now. Online information was limited and there weren't that many widely distributed gamer mags.

Mummy and Da-Da probably shopped like I did at the time. My neighbor had Doom. I went to the store fully intending to buy Doom. I seen Duke3D sitting on the shelf and decided to look at it. Nice colorful box with a gun toting guy on the cover. Gave it a once-over and decided it looked cooler than Doom, so I purchased it.
Kids also have play-ground gossip. Word spreads, then they tell Mummy and Da-Da what they want. Kids want edgy cool shit they can brag about, not some decade old plumber in yet another side-scroller.

This post has been edited by Forge: 15 February 2019 - 10:07 PM

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User is offline   Hank 

#44

View PostForge, on 15 February 2019 - 09:55 PM, said:

Posted Image

Posted Image
'tis is a perfect score, on Hard+, try that on drunk.

By all means, ridicule me silly for my lack of Duke 3D respect on a Duke fan forums, but ... Blood beats Duke and Quake II rule(d)s them all, for a good reason, like the Ring did in fairytale land - because it is just my very own insignificant opinion, that no one cares about. :)

As for Build, and Mapster32, there too, I just happen to think, Build/Mapster is simpler to use than the original Radiant. Sue me. Or go and get drunk.

My own boy collected a one terra bite of porn right under my nose, so please, what pops think their kids should watch and what they actually watch is like night and day like :lol:
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#45

View PostHank, on 15 February 2019 - 10:29 PM, said:

My own boy collected a one terra bite of porn right under my nose, so please, what pops think their kids should watch and what they actually watch is like night and day like :)

In 1996?

How could you not notice 695,000 floppy disks?
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User is offline   Hank 

#46

View PostForge, on 15 February 2019 - 10:46 PM, said:

In 1996?

How could you not notice 695,000 floppy disks?

OK go ridicule, and miss the point.
In 1996, we where on modem, he was 4, and I played Doom. :)
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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#47

View PostHank, on 16 February 2019 - 12:11 AM, said:

OK go ridicule, and miss the point.
In 1996, we where on modem, he was 4, and I played Doom. :)

Okay.
Go back to the original point - you said, "Sex and violence, my arse, it was a selling gimmick, nothing more, but it did work. Movies at the same time had much more, to play with oneself."

I simply replied that it would probably be easier for kids to get access to the video game than it would be for them to get access to adult movies. Parents would even be willing to buy their child the video game.

Now kindly put that in perspective of 1996, since the subject is a 1996 video game. Jamming up phone lines to download porn probably wasn't a major issue in most households.
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#48

I suppose this raises another question, which is; Why wasn't Dark Forces a huge hit? It was far ahead of everything else, including people's beloved Doom II and it influenced the Build games.
Actually this ties in because it suffered from similar presumptions to Shadow Warrior and Blood, people thought it was just a Doom clone, they called it Star Wars Doom and never actually played it to find out that it was so much more

Also shitty fun fact: My Dad's 'job' when I was really young involved recording and distributing pornography, I can still remember the setup he used to duplicate the tapes and him laughing at some German stuff he had gotten hold of. Also my Mom was a pole dancer for a while. Looking back it's probably small wonder they never really had a problem with my playing Duke Nukem 3D.

This post has been edited by High Treason: 16 February 2019 - 12:30 AM

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User is offline   Forge 

  • Speaker of the Outhouse

#49

View PostHigh Treason, on 16 February 2019 - 12:27 AM, said:

I suppose this raises another question, which is; Why wasn't Dark Forces a huge hit? It was far ahead of everything else, including people's beloved Doom II and it influenced the Build games.

PC/Mac did well in its time.

The playstation version sucked.
It had no multiplayer

the source code was never released afaik, so it never got a proper modern port
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User is offline   Danukem 

  • Duke Plus Developer

#50

View PostHigh Treason, on 16 February 2019 - 12:27 AM, said:

I suppose this raises another question, which is; Why wasn't Dark Forces a huge hit? It was far ahead of everything else, including people's beloved Doom II and it influenced the Build games.


According to wikipedia:

Quote

Sales
Dark Forces shipped more than 300,000 copies in preparation for its launch, a record for LucasArts at that time.[33] It debuted at #1 on PC Data's monthly computer game sales chart for March 1995.[34] In 1998, it was the third-highest-selling game for Mac OS.[35]

According to PC Data, Dark Forces sold 952,033 by September 1999 in the United States. This made it this country's 11th-best-selling computer game since January 1993.


So, it did well, but it didn't shatter records. I remember loving the game at the time. I can think of a couple of reasons that could explain why it wasn't huge. As far as we all knew at the time, there weren't going to be any more movies. The culture had been saturated with content from just the three movies for several years, to the point where it was cultural background noise. LucasArts pumped out more games on a regular basis. I don't recall their marketing being especially strong, either.
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#51

At least Dark Forces gets proper dues as a landmark title.
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User is offline   axl 

#52

View PostNinety-Six, on 15 February 2019 - 03:53 PM, said:

Honestly I think culturally people look at the game's extreme attitude and erotic elements and assume without actually looking deeper that it was just a superficial doom clone with attitude and not as the landmark title in the evolution of the genre that it is.


This. I'm not saying Duke Nukem 3D is as important as Doom or Quake, but goddamn, Duke Nukem 3D was such a revolutionary titel that it should receive more recognition in that regard.
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User is offline   Sanek 

#53

Duke Nukem 3D is the most popular Build game is because it's the most solid one, and the first game that had the unprecedented amount of interactivity.
Epic's Tim Sweeney once described Duke3D as "GTA before there was GTA" or smth, i.e. game where you could do practially anything, plus all the adult content and controversy, which was the reasons why game a best-seller. Too bad Quake came out so fast after Duke3D.
Other Build games was less successful in terms of sales and longevity, but I don't think that it was all flops. Sure, most of them came out too late, but it was still a hit games in it's own right, which proved that you don't need a cutting-edge tech in order to succeed. Just think about all the 2D RTS games that became successful in the age of 3D.

And apparently, titles like Witchaven, Blood and Redneck Rampage sold enough copies so the expansion packs and sequels was released.
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User is offline   necroslut 

#54

View PostHigh Treason, on 16 February 2019 - 12:27 AM, said:

I suppose this raises another question, which is; Why wasn't Dark Forces a huge hit? It was far ahead of everything else, including people's beloved Doom II and it influenced the Build games.

It was popular. But as always, license tie-ins is a gift and a curse - sure, it draws in some people just because of the license but to others it will have the opposite effect. The Star Wars brand had something of a kids vibe, and this comes across in its largely bloodless presentation.
And while to be fair it did innovate in a lot of areas, I don't think it did any of it particularly well. TekWar, too, was an ambitious and innovative game, but in the end it didn't pull any of it off so people didn't care. But where TekWar is just an interesting dumpster fire, Dark Forces qualities just kinda got lost in its general mediocrity - there was no real reason to play it if you weren't a huge Star Wars nerd.

As to the original question, as others have pointed out - Duke did it first and Duke did it the best. Shadow Warrior and Blood were too late to the party, came across as "Duke clones" (which they sort of are), and their themes were more niche than Duke's. Redneck Rampage was just a terrible game from the start and did better than it deserved.
It might also be true that Duke had at least some brand recognition. Sure, only "veteran" PC players likely knew of the 2D games, but while quality side-scrollers were a-dime-a-dozen on consoles and Amigas they were more scant on PC's, and the Duke games were some of the better ones available. I certainly knew of them, and it probably counted for something.
In the case of Blood I also think it's cover hurt it - I remember seeing it in stores and it really looked more like a survival horror or adventure game, something like Alone in the Dark or even Phantasmagoria, than a bad-ass Duke-style shooter.

This post has been edited by necroslut: 11 March 2019 - 04:29 AM

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User is offline   FistMarine 

#55

Even though people have pointed out pretty much everything that had to be said, here's my thoughts on all of this:

Duke Nukem 3D got all the attention because it was simply the BEST game at the time when it came out (and it still is one of the best, it's also my favorite game of all time). There was no other game at that time that had a large interactive world with a lot of cool features (powered by the BUILD engine!), a talking protagonist, a lot of pop culture references, the erotic elements and so on. It was a step in the right direction from the Doom clones at that time, although there were some other good games around that time but nothing felt as fresh and new as Duke3D. Of course Quake came out later in same year with its 3D technology but even if Quake was a good game on its own, I still preferred the interactivity, the humor and the charm that Duke3D had.

Since there was a recent topic created about LameDuke, it makes me wonder what would have happened if 3D Realms decided to polish LameDuke and release it as Duke3D? Would Duke3D have been as big as the final release of the game? Of course not. I don't think it would be too different to differentiate from the Doom clones at the time, so I'm glad 3D Realms went with the changes to make it more unique. I know I should probably make a new topic to talk about that.

To answer why Duke3D is more known compared to the rest BUILD engines at the time is simply because it came at the perfect time and the others came at a much later time when people already moved on to the games with their 3D graphics.

Blood and Shadow Warrior are both underrated games. Even though I still haven't played Blood so far (the only version of Blood I played so far was the alpha version that was included on a CD with games, which back then wouldn't even run and it wasn't until a few years ago when I played it for first time and discovered it's a totally different version than I expected), it's something I'm looking forward to play soon when I have some free time as recently I managed to get an original CD copy of One Unit Whole Blood in sealed condition from eBay (only the Jewel Case). I heard mostly positive things about Blood (aside from the really high difficulty the game has), so I'm positive I will enjoy the game as I'm pretty good at all these classic FPS games. I will probably start with the third (default) difficulty for first playthrough, considering I want my first playthrough of the game to be done in DOSBox and then maybe I can do on higher difficulty with the recently released NBlood source port. :)

Shadow Warrior I have played first time a couple of years ago and while I enjoyed the game, the level design isn't as good as Duke3D. Some levels are ok but others are kinda meh and I get bored pretty easily. Although I finished the main game once on Who Wants Wang, I have also finished its expansion Twin Dragon but again once and one of the levels was bugged and didn't end, so I had to warp to next level with sword and it was painful until I recollected my weapons. I will play Wanton Destruction as soon as I'm finishing with the main game on No Pain No Gain but the laptop controls made it quite annoying to play (as I play the original version in DOSBox with keyboard controls) and I managed to reach level 6 and stopped there as I lost interest. Mind you, I haven't played it since last summer. :D Maybe I would get more interest in the game if we would finally get a proper source port and then maybe it would get more mappers interested in the game too.

In the end both Blood and SW are good games that I'd highly recommend playing (in case of Blood, judging from the videos/reviews I have watched on YouTube) but they just weren't as good or as popular as Duke3D.

Now for Redneck Rampage...

Quote

As to the original question, as others have pointed out - Duke did it first and Duke did it the best. Shadow Warrior and Blood were too late to the party, came across as "Duke clones" (which they sort of are), and their themes were more niche than Duke's. Redneck Rampage was just a terrible game from the start and did better than it deserved.

Pretty much this! I know I ranted quite a bit about RR before in two different topics (after having played through main game, addon and sequel) but it AMAZES me how did this piece of shit of a game become so popular! I have looked on YouTube on reviews of the game and even user reviews and surprisingly, a LOT of people appear to enjoy the game but I'm sure back then a lot of reviewers gave the game a low score, while these days some people are wearing the nostalgia goggles and drooling over the game, ignoring ALL the issues that the game had. Seriously the game had so many issues that felt like a poor Duke3d clone or some sub-par game but even then somehow the game sold so well that it warranted an expansion AND a sequel (although to be honest the sequel improved the game a lot but it still felt shitty)! Meanwhile SW didn't even have the expansions released in stores and even then only Twin Dragon was released initially as a free download in 1998, followed later by Wanton Destruction (initially thought to be lost) also released as freeware in 2005 and I'm positive Deadly Kiss will be released one day. I know I may be exaggerating a bit but to me it just felt like a poor game, maybe not one of the worst games ever but it sure doesn't compare with the Big Three Build games!

Now back on topic and focusing on Duke3D.
Unfortunately after DNF was released, a lot of people in mainstream media started disliking Duke Nukem and think negatively whenever they hear the name Duke Nukem. The thing that pisses me off the most isn't that DNF was a poorly received game that killed Duke as a character (personally I think it was a MEDIOCRE game, not the worst from what I played but I agree it harmed the character and the series) but what pisses me off is that nowadays a lot of gamers when they play or just think at Duke3D, they say it's outdated and that it hasn't aged well (in my opinion it AGED fantastically, much like the classic Doom games) and whatever other insults they give to shit on the game and character just because of DNF that destroyed Duke's reputation. I know someone posted around the forums something similar in past few years (I can't find the topic anymore where was this posted) but basically what I'm saying is that since when DNF was released, it changed the way people perceive the series, even the classic Duke3D, like how it was shown/proved when Duke3D World Tour was released in 2016, many people had mixed views on the game and kept saying that Duke as a character isn't relevant anymore and that he should stay dead. I'm sorry if I couldn't explain what I meant exactly but I tried my best.

EDIT: Minor spelling fixes.

This post has been edited by RunningDuke: 11 March 2019 - 09:10 AM

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User is offline   axl 

#56

Probably well know around here, but I recently found out that John Romero himself once put Duke Nukem 3D in his top 5 games of all time !

I knew he was a fan of Duke Nukem 3D as he was eager to play the 5th episode at the release of World Tour, but that he once put in at number 2 was quite the surprise.



This post has been edited by axl: 11 March 2019 - 12:00 PM

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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#57

That's actually news to me.


How neat.



I question whoever assembled the video itself, though. I see exclusively the console versions of some of the games mentioned, including even Doom.
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User is offline   leilei 

#58

Not really surprised.
Attached File  romeros.jpg (28.63K)
Number of downloads: 13
Again, E1L2.
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User is offline   Ninety-Six 

#59

That is a classic moment.
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User is offline   MusicallyInspired 

  • The Sarien Encounter

#60

I'd really like to see Romero make a Duke3D level. I wonder what he could do with it. I know it's a whole new system to learn and so not that likely, but still.

This post has been edited by MusicallyInspired: 12 March 2019 - 07:38 AM

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