3D Realms

In 1994 Apogee created a new division, 3D Realms Entertainment, with the goal of developing innovative, interactive, immersive and of course fun 3D action games. The Apogee label, for all purposes, was slated to be phased out after having been responsible for nearly 30 PC games, including Beyond the Titanic, Supernova, Kroz, Pharaoh's Tomb, Commander Keen, the original Duke Nukem in 1991, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, Word Rescue, Math Rescue, Wolfenstein 3-D, Blake Stone, Raptor, Wacky Wheels, Rise of the Triad, Death Rally and Stargunner. (For a complete list of our games, visit here.)

3D Realms' first title, Terminal Velocity (1995), developed by Dallas-area developer Terminal Reality, was an arcade-style, fast-paced fully 3D futuristic flight combat game. This was the first shareware game to get on the cover of a major gaming magazine (Computer Game Player -- now defunct).

Next came Duke Nukem 3D in early Jan. 1996 (shareware only, with the full game releases in May). Duke's third adventure (the first two were 2D platform games) rocked the gaming world as if kicked in the rear-end by Duke's mighty foot. Duke's signature phrase, "Come get some," was exactly what game players did, propelling Duke to the number one seller status for several months in a row, and number four for 1996, even though the list that ranked Duke number four didn't include the 50,000+ copies of the game 3D Realms sold directly, and which would have put Duke even higher on that list--only behind a game (Warcraft) that had a full years' sells, compared to Duke's seven months!