[Richard Shead]

As most of us believe, Duke 3D was(and still is) a mind-blowing classic; an amazing chapter in the history of virtual entertainment. But, as with many mega-hits, there are those deceitful bastards out there who are only looking to leech off of its success. As a result, plenty of merchandise was released that didn't even come close to doing its namesake justice. I welcome anyone to contribute to this wall of shame...the only criteria is that the product must bear the name "Duke Nukem 3D", in at least some form.

Duke Nukem 3D for the Genesis - a rare illegal title from a Brazilian developer





Duke Nukem 3D for the Game.com - a failed handheld desperate to attain a more mature audience than the other "boy"





I'll just let this next video speak for itself. Whoever thought that a portable LCD-based game would be worthy of the Duke 3D crown....let's just say there's a special place in hell.

[Martin]

I think those two releases are the only condemnable ones, to be honest. Also, I have heard that 3DR actually did licence the Brazillian Mega Drive port. Who really knows? All the other ports back then were pretty good, given each host system's limitations. We had a topic on it. At the time I favoured the Saturn port, but have since changed my mind and I like Duke 64 best of the ports from that era.

Are there any other craptastic Duke 3D ports such as the Mega Drive and Game.com releases?

[TerminX]

I don't think Duke for the Genesis was illegal, I think GT Interactive licensed it to them and just didn't necessarily inform 3DR of it because they weren't obligated to do so. But it sure sucked!

I'd like to add the original Android and iOS ports to this list. It appears Machineworks NorthWest farmed them out to some guy who developed a renderer used in a lot of mobile shovelware games, and he pretty much got the game barely rendering and decided he was done. All of the sound effects are converted into .wav files at the wrong sample rates so nothing in the game sounds correct (they also sound like they get played one at a time through system sound APIs meant for notification sounds), none of the on-screen sprite rendering is hooked up correctly (there's not even a health or ammo display correctly implemented, just a cheap indicator bar that appears to draw a pixel or two for every point of health the player has), the controls are unworkable to the point of being nearly completely unplayable, tile animation speeds are screwed up and animating tiles frequently just vanish, the weapon firing rates are all wrong because the actual weapon firing occurs from a callback from the input thread rather than from the main thread and dictated by the game timer, etc.

[Martin]

Well there you have it - mobile ports!

[MrBlackCat]

I agree with the Game, COM version for sure, but the same electronics company, Tiger Electronics, responsible for the Game COM version also was responsible for the Duke Nukem 3D "Grip Game" version. This I believe is the worst iteration of Duke 3D ever made. I have a couple of them and have played them for hours... but will likely never play them again unless I am demonstrating to someone how "far" some titles get steam-rolled. This is less fun than my Donkey Kong wristwatch, no kidding.

(Note: This is not my video)



MrBlackCat

[Robman]

Yup that is horrible... I remember having a ninja turtles game kind of like this, not a grip game.. just as bad though and I loved it at the time.

oooh snap... found a pic.



I'll walk down memory lane if I like, I know it's not Duke, hehe

[Lunick]

TerminX, on 08 February 2015 - 03:23 PM, said:

words

You forgot to mention the censoring of the mobile ports too. That's not gonna happen with Hail to the King is it?

[TerminX]

Lunick, on 08 February 2015 - 08:32 PM, said:

You forgot to mention the censoring of the mobile ports too. That's not gonna happen with Hail to the King is it?

Hell no.

[Lunick]

TerminX, on 08 February 2015 - 09:27 PM, said:

Hell no.

[Marphy Black]

If you consider the Genesis and Game.com versions to be ports, then Duke Nukem Mobile for the Tapwave Zodiac should be a top contender as well, incidentally also developed by MachineWorks:



Duke calling the scorpion tank at 6:52 a bitch is quite radical, though, I have to say.

I guess this version was also re-released for phones under the title Duke Nukem Mobile 3D, now sporting actual polygonal model enemies:



Eat your heart out, HRP!

But MachineWorks's greatest work in the Duke lexicon is undoubtedly Duke Nukem Arena:



May as well just cancel multiplayer support in EDuke32 seeing as we've already got this!

[oasiz]

While pretty crude, like I've said before, I think that the MD port gets way too much hate for what it deserves.
Unlike some other FPS ports, it runs on unexpanded hardware with an engine that is more capable than wolf3D.
Stuff like elevators, parallax floor/ceiling texture support, crushing walls, etc..

Aside from maybe the choppy frame rate here and there or the awful music, I'd say that it's a pretty decent game and certainly playable.
Graphics actually look quite good on a real system as it dithers around the color palette, looks horrible on emulation but very high color when using composite output.
That MD video seems to be from a real system as it doesn't have that vertical dithering pattern present.

Worst port? I would have to agree with TerminX here, mobile systems like that have no excuse to be that lazy when it comes to quality.
They had the hardware and the tools to make it at least what the original release was but the result is closer to some proof of concept test that you'd find as a thread starter in some homebrew community.

[Lunick]

Those 3D models actually have me somewhat curious.

[Duke of Hazzard]

I'm surprised a game as complex as Duke3D can be controlled well on Android devices.

The Genesis one is the worst I knew, but that's because the system couldn't handle anything more than that, even Doom on the Genesis required the 32X, so for Duke the standard Genesis without its addons simply wasn't up to the task.

[N64]

Duke of Hazzard, on 09 February 2015 - 02:48 AM, said:

I'm surprised a game as complex as Duke3D can be controlled well on Android devices.

Beloko games make the best android port.

Duke Nukem 3D


See also https://play.google....id=Beloko+Games

[Lunick]

Is it really the best if it hasn't been released?

[The Commander]

I always thought that the crapy port on the mega drive was pretty well done considering the power of the console...

[Player Lin]

The Commando, on 09 February 2015 - 06:00 AM, said:

I always thought that the crapy port on the mega drive was pretty well done considering the power of the console...

Agree, but due to that, it still sucks.

[Steveeeie]

MrBlackCat, on 08 February 2015 - 06:21 PM, said:

I agree with the Game, COM version for sure, but the same electronics company, Tiger Electronics, responsible for the Game COM version also was responsible for the Duke Nukem 3D "Grip Game" version. This I believe is the worst iteration of Duke 3D ever made. I have a couple of them and have played them for hours... but will likely never play them again unless I am demonstrating to someone how "far" some titles get steam-rolled. This is less fun than my Donkey Kong wristwatch, no kidding.

(Note: This is not my video)



MrBlackCat

Woops accidental down vote

This is a cool video of a terrible game

[Evilman]

The Commando, on 09 February 2015 - 06:00 AM, said:

I always thought that the crapy port on the mega drive was pretty well done considering the power of the console...

Exactly, for this specific hardware, it's quite impressive. The game itself isn't awful otherwise, it plays fine, but it's damn simple, more like a Wolfenstein 3D-clone than a real Duke Nukem 3D port. Was there any other FPS attempt on the Megadrive beside this one ? Not including the 32x expansion of course so Doom is out of the way (and it sucked bad even with that, maybe more than Duke imo).

[Martin]

I suppose if you were a Brazilian kid with no access to better versions when it was released, it was probably a really cool Mega Drive game.

[gibfrag]

I really don't think the Genesis port is all that bad. The ending was ridiculous though, because it was a cliffhanger leading to episode 3.

It had a lot of cool features in it and it felt like an advanced Wolf 3d engine, though the game was really hard and the palette looked terrible.

[MrBlackCat]

Steveeeie, on 09 February 2015 - 01:00 PM, said:

Woops accidental down vote

This is a cool video of a terrible game

No problem... I just figured it was because I didn't read the title completely/correctly and missed "Ports"


Oops... sorry about my post of the Tiger Grip Game... I missed the word "Ports" in the title somehow.

MrBlackCat

[Daedolon]

I have always wanted to play those games Marphy Black mentioned, I mean really bad.

[Max Payne]

Robman, on 08 February 2015 - 07:57 PM, said:

Yup that is horrible... I remember having a ninja turtles game kind of like this, not a grip game.. just as bad though and I loved it at the time.

oooh snap... found a pic.



I'll walk down memory lane if I like, I know it's not Duke, hehe

hahah loved that thing when I was a kid played the hell out of it. Wouldn't be to fun now but it was a blast then.

[TheZombieKiller]

Marphy Black, on 08 February 2015 - 11:32 PM, said:

I guess this version was also re-released for phones under the title Duke Nukem Mobile 3D, now sporting actual polygonal model enemies:



Eat your heart out, HRP!

Looking at the page, the pigcop model is the one from DNMP. Which got me thinking, those models could actually fit in DNMP if they were extracted from the files and converted to the grn format. That is, if we had any exporters for grn.

[cpt_picklehead]

angelo86, on 09 February 2015 - 03:46 AM, said:

Beloko games make the best android port.

Duke Nukem 3D


See also https://play.google....id=Beloko+Games

Yes he does, but also seems to be quite harsh on his own ports ... considering he pulled his Rise of the Triad port twice from the playstore.

[Balls of Steel Forever]

Looks like Piko Interactive is selling a Sega Genesis re-release of Duke Nukem 3d...
Duke Nukem 3D Sega Genesis

[Hendricks266]

[Lunick]

They actually started selling it, I had been keeping an eye out to post the hilariousness of it.

[Marphy Black]

That's quite an unexpected development. Interesting, but I can't get over the prices they charge for their repro carts. Even Russian bootleggers got that beat. You're losing the Cold War there, Piko!

Also, isn't that version of the DN3D cover art a fan-made rendition? I suppose it's somewhat befitting to use knock off artwork for a knock off (but licensed) product.