3D realms

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Apogee Software, Ltd. / 3D realms

logo
legal form Corporation
founding 1987
Seat Garland , Texas , USA
management Mike Nielsen (President and CEO )
Frederik Schreiber ( Vice President )
Josh Olin ( VP , Publishing & Communications)
Website www.3drealms.com

Apogee Software, Ltd. (English Apogee for apogee ), better known under the current name 3D Realms , under which it occurs in stores , is an American PC game developer based in Garland , Texas . Apogee was founded in 1987 by Scott Miller , who published his games on Softdisk under this name .

history

Foundation and first successes

Apogee was the first company to bring shareware onto the market after it was founded in 1987 . In addition, Apogee published and marketed their games as shareware for other authors and teams at this time.

Apogee's Dark Ages from 1991 was accordingly the first shareware game with music and sound card support . Since 1991 Apogee has been selling its shareware games with a home bulletin board system (Software Creations BBS ) as a powerful sales network. BBS were the preferred selling platforms before the internet became popular.

In June 1991 the original Duke Nukem , a 2D shooter , was released and became the best-selling shareware software in 1991 and 1992, before it was replaced in June 1992 by id Software's Wolfenstein 3D, which was created on behalf of Apogee. After the success of Wolfenstein 3D , in August 1993 Apogee commissioned Tom Hall , the founder of id Software, who had since switched to Apogee, to develop Rise of the Triad, the first game that, in addition to LAN support and multiplayer functionality, also brought an adjustable youth protection function . In April 1994 came the game Raptor , a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up .

3D realms are created

In May 1995, Terminal Velocity was the first game from Apogee's 3D Realms division . "3D Realms" was originally the name of a division of Apogee that was founded in July 1994 for 3D first-person shooters. However, as this type of game began to dominate the game market shortly afterwards, the company soon appeared under this new name. The last game sold under the name Apogee was Stargunner , released in November 1996 .

3D Realms first became well known through Duke Nukem 3D in 1996.

Game releases as freeware and open source

3D Realms, together with id Software, became one of the pioneers in releasing games to the public that had reached their commercial end of life . From the late 1990s onwards, some of the older titles were released as freeware and offered on the 3D Realms website. From the mid-2000s, the source code of some games (e.g. Duke Nukem 3D , Shadow Warrior , Rise of the Triad , Word Whiz etc.) was released under the GPL .

3D realms in the 2000s

3D Realms' last releases were Max Payne (2001) and its successor Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003), which were developed under the supervision of 3D Realms by Remedy Entertainment and distributed by Take 2 Interactive and Rockstar Games respectively.

Another project by 3D Realms, the first person shooter Prey , was developed by Human Head Studios after 3D Realms had previously put the project on hold.

In June 2007, the company announced that it would maintain a new game called Earth No More , which will be developed by the developer studio Recoil Games .

Apogee Software, LLC

In 2008, a new company was created, Apogee Software, LLC , which adopted the Apogee brand name and logo. It sells old Apogee games, but also develops and sells new games under this name. The company's new developments are:

  • the Duke Nukem Trilogy , consisting of
    • Duke Nukem: Critical Mass
    • Duke Nukem: Chain Reaction
    • Duke Nukem: Proving Grounds
  • Rise of the Triad for the Apple iPhone

Financial ruin, drastic downsizing

The fourth part of the Duke Nukem series, Duke Nukem Forever , was first announced by 3D Realms in 1997, but its release date had to be postponed again and again. On May 6, 2009 it was announced that 3D Realms would be closed due to financial problems. The reason for this was the numerous postponements of Duke Nukem Forever and the immense development costs that had accumulated over the years. On May 18, 2009 it was announced that the company would be drastically reduced in size, as many employees had to be laid off, but would continue to exist. The development of Duke Nukem Forever was transferred to Gearbox Software in 2010 .

Finally, the game, now a running gag in the industry (see vaporware ), appeared in 2011 after 14 years of development.

Games

Some of the older titles listed here can be downloaded as freeware from the 3D Realms website. The source code for the games Duke Nukem 3D , Shadow Warrior , Rise of the Triad , Word Whiz, Beyond the Titanic, Supernova and Kingdom of Kroz was also released under the GPL . The titles released as freeware are: Adventure Fun Pack, Alien Carnage / Halloween Harry, Arctic Adventure, Beyond the Titanic, Bio Menace, Caves of Thor, Dark Ages, Kroz, Major Stryker, Monuments of Mars, Pharaoh's Tomb, Puzzle Fun Pack, Stargunner, Supernova, Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrade Pack, Word Whiz, Trivia Whiz and Xenophage .

Under the name Apogee

developer

Publisher

Under the name 3D Realms

developer

Publisher

In September 2005, 3D Realms released the "lost" add-on Wanton Destruction for Shadow Warrior on the official website.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Shadow Warrior Source Code Released ( Memento from February 27, 2012 on WebCite ) 3D Realms (April 1, 2005).
  2. ↑ a b SOURCE CODE ( Memento from December 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) “Selected games have had their source code released by us. These games are: Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Rise of the Triad, Word Whiz, Beyond the Titanic, Supernova, & Kroz. You can obtain these from our downloads page. " (English).
  3. ↑ Golem.de : 3D Realms is broke - Duke Nukem Forever is dead
  4. ↑ Golem.de: 3D Realms: Studio remains, Duke Nukem Forever "unfinished"
  5. ↑ Seth Schiesel: Duke Nukem Forever Is Released After 14 Years , NYTimes.com, June 18, 2011, accessed August 31, 2011.