What was the first Apogee/3DR Game you ever played?

[Joe Siegler]

For me, I'm pretty sure it was Crystal Caves. Bought it way back in the day, and pretty much everything that came out in that era.

[K100]

I'm not sure, I was young, but I think it was Wolf 3D, Duke 1 or Duke 2.

I've got a lot of memories with those games ! We played Wolf 3D a lot with my father back in the days !

And I was a fan of Duke 1 and 2 when I was young.
One day, a friend wanted to show me an FPS where you had to kill Pigs and Aliens. I was surprised to see that this was the third Duke Nukem game ! I had never heard about it before.

I can say that I have been a Duke Nukem/Apogee/3DRealms fan almost all of my life.

[smashed pumpkin]

Myself, like countless others, was first exposed to Apogee/3DR through Duke3D.

At the time, Doom, Heretic, Wolf3D, etc. was all the rage, and I had never heard of the company.

A friend of mine had the shareware version of Duke3D, and I remember going to his house and playing the shareware for hours on end. I eventually acquired the shareware myself and seemed to wait an eternity for the full game to be released.

Of course the great thing about Duke3D was that it came with Duke 1 & 2, and all of the shareware versions of the other games like Wacky Wheels, Terminal Velocity, ROTT, etc.

Glad I got to experience those too!

I do remember playing Wolf3D before I played Duke....so I guess Wolf was my first exposure to Apogee, even though I didn't really recognize it at the time.

[dan2091]

It sure was Jazz Jackrabbit... Oh, that bloody jackrabbit.

It was Agent. And I loved it the first time I played. I think I've never played the registered episodes, but finished the shareware one. If this 'Anthology' has Agent in it, I'll definitely finish that game. It's one of those loose ends in my life.

But when I played Duke Nukem 3D, the first 3D Realms game I ever played, everything changed forever.

[crunchy superman]

Duke 3D. I didn't even get into PC gaming until right around that time and it was a friend who turned me on to Duke. I guess maybe that's why the FPS genre has always been my first love.

[fast-1]

First game was a PS1 game, Duke Nukem Total Meltdown.

[Stevey Boy]

Duke Nukem 3D on my friend's older brother's PC.

[Damien_Azreal]

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold, though I also played Wolfenstein 3D at the same time.

Followed that with Commander Keen, and Rise of the Triad. And of course, in 1996 Duke Nukem 3D.

Duke Nukem 3D.

It was the first Apogee game I played and it was also the first FPS I ever played. It happened around Christmas 1996 when I got the Atomic Edition as a present!

I'd played only sidecrollers before as well as some beat 'em up games in the arcades... so Duke 3D was a whole new world for me. It had guns! And you saw them from the character's perspective! You could move around! And shoot things! It had scary aliens! And it had strippers too! Oh my...!

And I still play it to this very day. The game is just timeless. It's still funner and better than any FPS on the market today.

[The Dukenator]

Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project.

But I think I played Kroz back in the 90s on a Tandy.

[Crosma]

Monuments of Mars. Still a brilliantly addictive game. It's exactly the sort of game that no-one seems to make any more. Nice use of CGA colours.

I'm not sure if it was my computer's fault or the game was corrupted, but all of the text appeared garbled and I just assumed that it was meant to be in Martian or something.

[IceColdDuke]

I honestly can't remember which one I played first, I was like 3 or 4 at the time :P.

It was either Crystal Caves, or Blake Stone.

[ZuljinRaynor]

Wolfenstein 3D. It was also probably my first PC game. I can't remember though. Might have been Invasion of the Mutant Space Bats of Doom.

[Frenkel]

Secret Agent.

But you already know that if you've read the readme.txt file that came with the freeware release of Kroz

My first contact with Kroz was when I saw my brother playing it. I thought: 'What's this for an ugly game? How can this be any fun to play?' The first PC game I ever played was Secret Agent, so those bright and detailed 16 color graphics set the standard for me. My brother kept playing it so I guessed it must a fun game and I tried it myself. And guess what? When you get used to the graphics, it's a really entertaining game to play.

[Ras]

I think it was Goodbye Galaxy, but Tom Thumb had a whole spinner rack of shareware in little plastic sleeves, and I got a bunch of them around the same time. I quickly figured out that Apogee was in a higher league than a lot of the other junk on the same rack.

Funny thing was, Wolf3D was one of the last I bought. I had actually been a fan of Muse's Castle Wolfenstein, but the screenshots and word "shooter" made me think it was a Hogan's Alley-style gallery shooter! I finally bought it when there was nothing else left under the Apogee logo, and was blown away.

[Waiter]

Wolfenstein 3D. But later when I started playing Duke3D, I had no idea that it came from the same publisher. Duke and Quake were probably the first games I played where I started to think about who made and published them. Mostly because I joined this forum.

[Flaose]

For me, it was Commander Keen 1: Marooned on Mars (hence my avatar, I suppose)!

[Frederik Schreiber]

It's hard to say. My first Apogee "game", was a compilation of shareware floppies. 10 Apogee games, back in 1994. My earliest memories were from Commander Keen: GG, Duke Nukem 1/2 and Major Stryker.

[Lunick Fiore]

I vaguely think it may have been Duke Nukum, Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure or Crystal Caves.

[Nukkus]

Duke Nukem II was my first. Still holds up so well to this day.

[MrBlackCat]

I remember playing Duke Nukem (I) when it was uploaded to Software Creations BBS back then, but I really can't remember if that was first or not. It was Duke Nukem or Crystal Caves for sure though.
I just looked this up and corrected it... why do I remember Crystal Caves as Crystal Caverns? Different game, or is my memory screwed?

MrBlackCat

[Rider]

For me the first was probably Crystal Caves, followed closely by Secret Agent and Duke Nukum.

[Player Lin]

Wolf3D Shareware and RotT Shareware v1.2, then played DN1 and DN2 Shareware...

And later, DN3D v1.3d, pirate version for some reasons...(After many years later I finally got a legal digital copy of DN3D Atomic edition), I'm sorry for playing pirate games.

[Commando Nukem]

Wolfenstein 3D was the first game I played to have any association with Apogee (but I didn't know that at the time.) The first game I remember seeing the Apogee logo with was ROTT off the original Duke Nukem 3D game. So Duke3D was probably the first time I really made a 3D Realms memory, and it's been a love affair ever since.

Can't believe that Duke3D will be 20 years old in just two years... Holy sh*t...

[Cyrix]

I'm pretty sure it was the shareware of either Duke I or Crystal Caves. Though I do remember getting gifted Duke Nukem 3D for my 10th/11th birthday, parental locked ofc.

[Rapture_Rising]

My first Apogee game was Word Rescue, playing it on a school computer in grade 1.

First proper Apogee developed game was either Secret Agent or Rise of the Triad, i had a 2 CD set of 1001 shareware games, it had every Apogee sharware game. I found ROTT installed on my PC and played the absolute hell out of it. Now come to think about it, it could have been any Apogee game, Hocus Pocus, Alien Carnage, Wolfenstein 3D and Commander Keen.

It's funny, i never owned the registered version of Rise of the Triad until a few years ago and now have three different versions, GOG, Steam with the Throwback Pack and now the 3DR Anthology.

[Bad Sector]

Pharaoh's Tomb. I only had the shareware version though... which i never managed to beat (i think i went at most at the third level). It was one of my childhood games that i talked about with a couple of my friends at the time (another was Dangerous Dave - many years later, when i found John Romero's site, i was surprised to learn that there were more Dangerous Dave games!).

I remember thinking that since the PC speaker effects were almost the same as Prince of Persia's PC speaker effects, then Pharaoh's Tomb will most likely also support Sound Blaster sounds... :-P

[Ajaxx]

"Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons - Episode 1: Marooned on Mars"

It came with the Gravis PC Gamepad that mom got me for my (I believe it was 7th) birthday. Disappointingly, the 386XT I had at the time 1) did not have a game card for me to plug the thing into and 2) had a rinky-dink MCGA graphics card and not enough ram, so I couldn't play the game either. Ironically, to a weird degree, these things actually conspired to make me a bigger fan of the finer details of what was being kept from me than I would have been if I'd been able to just play the actual game outright. There was something extremely captivating to my 7 year old mind about the idea of some kid putting on a helmet, building a rocket out of junk and blasting off to space. I'm 32 years old now and all my most favorite heroes leading up to this point have unremittingly been space heroes.

In addition to that, Not being able to play the game also led to me fiddling around with the files in the game's directory. There, I discovered a simple ASCII-based catalogue of other Apogee games with equally enticing descriptions that I just knew I would have to look out for. It was roughly 2 months before I got to actually play that first episode of Commander Keen. And I played "Secret Agent" shortly after that, followed by "Duke Nukem I". With each new game discovered, I'd developed the habit of looking for that catalogue in each game's file directory to see what other new titles were out there.

"Wolfenstein 3D" was the first game I'd ever played with a Sound Blaster sound card and it fricking blew me away.
I've been a lifelong fan ever since.

[The Carnage Man]

My first game was Crystal Caves, Secret Agent and ofcourse Duke Nukem I. We had a computer with most of the shareware versions and i'd have played them all.
Ever since got involved with all the games 3DRealms made available including the Commander Keen series.
Can remember playing the games and when i've got killed to become so angry i could not play anymore. The games learned me to be patient what i'd so needed.
After finishing Duke Nukem 3d for the first time without being angry i felt so satisfied and happy my gaming experience improved to what i can do now.

For this i'd like to thank 3Drealms :-)

[NY00123]

I guess it's my turn! (Also a good chance to post here again for a little.)

After going over just a few lists of titles, and only thanks to a reminder I've had not long ago (6 months?), chances are the first Apogee/3DR title I got to see and try out is Commander Keen 5. I did get to try 4 and the (non-Apogee) 6 as well, possibly in this order: 5,4,6. Originally I played these with no sound card in use, so just the beeps. At some later point, though, a card was added and I practically got used to the AdLib sounds and music as the "natural" way up to this day.

I think I also got to try Word Rescue with no music and just the beeps, although I'm quite sure I saw any of Keen 4-6 first. I believe this also applies to the related (non-Apogee) title of Pickle Wars. On the other hand, again thanks to a totally random reminder, I'm sure that I got to play Pickle Wars (and Keen 4-6) before ever trying any of Keen 1-3. I also know I tried the latter three in this order: 3,1,2.

If anybody's wondering about Keen Dreams, I don't exactly remember when I originally saw that, but it should be later than 4-6 for me. For some reason I had problems getting it to run back in the day, but I'm quite sure I had a sound card back then.

Also after having a sound card ready, I got to try out Wolfenstein 3D. Weirdly enough, my first look at Wolfenstein 3D was actually a mod of the Shareware release (I later learnt the first two maps weren't modified). Only at the beginning of the 2000s I accidentally found out the mod, titled Barneystein. It does consist of the original maps and modified graphics and sounds.

[Micky C]

Duke Nukem 2 or Wacky Wheels, can't remember exactly. Had it on some shareware disks.

[ElectroPulse]

Wacky Wheels! As far as I am aware, that was the first computer game I ever played. My most treasured memories growing up are of playing Wacky Wheels with my Dad. I still remember sitting on my Dad's lap playing the "Shoot Out" splitscreen sharing the keyboard, then later side-by-side while using his joystick. Also, playing against my younger brother... We always fought over who got to use that joystick

Later on I remember playing Math Rescue, then running across my Dad's case of floppies and playing Commander Keen, Secret Agent, and Crystal Cave. Then, played the Shareware versions of Wolfenstein 3D and Raptor: Call of the Shadows (I haven't a clue how many times my brother and I played the co-op through on Raptor) that came on one of those "1000+ Free Games" CDs we got from Staples (or was it Office Max?).

[PimPamPet]

For some reason, Keen episode 5, which was (probably by mistake) on some shareware disc my parents bought me. I think I might have played one of the earlier Keen games at a friend's place before, episode 2 perhaps? After that, either Duke Nukem (1) or Blake Stone Planet Strike. I didn't play most of the other ones until years later. While I was aware of Duke Nukem 3D, I was so obsessed with playing Doom 2 that I hardly took notice of it. I've since rectified this. :-)

Also, welcome back Apogee & 3D Realms!

[PIGSgrame]

Commander Keen 4, which I got shared on a floppy disc from a classmate and was the second PC game I've ever played. It's still one of my favourite classics.

[Alyxx]

Duke Nukem was the first Apogee game I remember playing and honestly the first game I recall playing period. It was such a huge influence on my taste in gaming ever since and I have always enjoyed shooters and dark dystopian futures ever since.

[twelvepaws]

KROZ, which was the shareware version, probably the first shareware game in video games history. I got it around1991. It included three KROZ games. I still play them, since I bought the registered version back in 1996 or so, and now have Temple and Dungeons of KROZ as well. My original PC had around 35 mg total space, so programs had to make do with less than 1 mg, for the most part. It's amazing how KROZ managed the limited space and offered almost unlimited gameplay at the same time. Funny to remember those first PC's with dos commands and compare with today's with Windows and hundreds of GBytes.

[8IronBob]

It was between the shareware versions of Blake Stone: AOG and Bio Menace...can't remember which, since it was like...pfft, 20 odd years ago.

[moron]

Paganitzu I think
Omg I searched Google and accidentally found my old post from so long ago
http://forums.3drealms.com/vb/archiv...hp/t-2310.html I am really am old now