Duke Nukem - Little known facts

Apogee first started working on Duke Nukem back in 1991. It was the third Apogee project lead by coder Todd Replogle (his first two were Caves of Thor and Dark Ages). The first two Duke platforming games were released under the Apogee name. Then, in 1994 I read a highly influential marketing book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, which got me thinking of creating a new branding label for Apogee, and eventually 3D Realms was the brand we chose for our future 3D games, including Duke Nukem 3D. (The current 3D Realms leadership, bought by Embracer Group last year, was not part of Apogee when we released hits like Max Payne, Prey, Shadow Warrior, the many Duke games, etc.)

Duke almost had a dog

We thought a lot about the idea of Duke rescuing a dog in Duke Nukem Forever who also became a helpful fighting and fetching companion on several levels. Duke didn't name the dog and just called him "Dog". Dog AI is hard though, so this idea never made it into the game.

Duke started as Heavy Metal

Heavy Metal was the original proposed name for the original Apogee Duke Nukem platformer. I hated that name. I remember telling Todd Replogle that we should do what they do with comic books and name the game after a lead character. Soon after I proposed the name Duke as the first name because it's a strong sounding name. Not long after Todd proposed the idea of Nukem as the last name and a character name was born.

The original voice was NOT Jon St John

Our online manager, Joe Siegler, was the first voice of Duke Nukem, saying the line, "I'm back", at the start of Duke Nukem 2. After that game, we used Jon St John as Duke's highly memorable voice in all future Duke games.

Duke University was anti-Duke

After we released the first Duke platforming game in 1992 it wasn't more than a few months later that we got a legal letter from Duke University telling us we were violating their trademark. DU wasn't happy and tried to get us to change the character name. Apogee's attorney successfully beat them back because [1] Duke University didn't have any conflicting video games, and [2] Duke University and Duke Nukem are hard to confuse. We got DU to back off by agreeing to always use the full Duke Nukem name in all of our marketing materials, which satisfied their attorney.

Then came the Captain Planet incident

We also had a short-lived legal spat with the Ted Turner Network. After releasing the original platformer we got a letter from them saying that we violated their rights to the Duke Nukem name, because they had a Duke Nukem character in their Captain Planet TV show. We panicked and released a game update that changed the name to Duke Nukum. But after we had our attorney look into the matter he saw that the TV show had not trademarked the name, plus we were using the name in a different market (video games), so he felt it was safe to keep using the original spelling. We never heard from Ted Turner Network again.

The Phantom Duke

Duke Nukem Forever's 2001 E3 trailer is a beat-per-beat copy of the trailer for The Phantom Menace. Run them side by side and see for yourself! George Broussard had the idea of copying The Phantom Menace because it was such a strong trailer in terms of pacing and some minimal storytelling. To this day this is likely Apogee's best trailer ever made.

Duke from Duke Nukem

Duke smiles like a champ

George Broussard gave Duke his winning smile. George wasn't a part of Apogee at the time, but I knew he was a good pixel artist, so I brought the sprites for Duke over to his home and had him take a crack at making Duke more appealing. The final result nailed the right look we wanted for Duke.

Duke's sidekick

I created the Bombshell character after watching the Pamala Andersen action film, Barbwire, in the late 90's. She was to be Duke's companion in Duke Nukem Forever. The idea was that you had buddy-buddy missions on some levels, and you'd even play as her a for a level or two. In a later blog, I'll post one of my original description sheets about Bombshell from many years ago. She's now the star of Ion Fury by Voidpoint, the best Build engine game since the original Duke Nukem 3D.

Bombshell Concept (2003)

I am vengeance

The sequel to Duke Nukem Forever was going to be called Duke Nukem Vengeance (DNV). We thought a lot about the idea of Duke appearing to die after saving the world at the end of DN4, as an act of sacrifice. And in DNV you might start off playing as Bombshell until Duke is discovered by her still barely alive, trapped under rubble. I'll also have a later blog going into more detail about DNV ideas.

Who could possibly beat Duke?

We gave this question a lot of thought, and one of the best answers we had was a Duke clone called NegaDuke, who had all the skills of Duke but was genetically modified to be bad. We had him wearing an all-black outfit and he would have had a lot of new mocking one-liners. We were going to allow players to play as NegaDuke in DNF multiplayer modes, too.