Ah, shooters. Spawned from the minds of sadistic game designers since the days of Doom, Wolfenstein, Quake and……… Duke Nukem?

3D Realms has recently shut its doors for business, bailing out on the development of the appropriately named, Duke Nukem: Forever.With that in mind, I’ve decided to look back this week at the (arguably) best of the early FPS games, Duke Nukem 3D.

Come get some, after the jump-diddly-ump.

Duke Nukem began as a 2D scrolling shooter. The character didn’t realise his full potential, however, until he entered the immersive world of First Person Shooters. At the time, the FPS genre was dominated by Doom and Wolfenstein. So much so that I can’t even remember any other FPS games that were around at that point. But where those two powerhouses were straight-up shooters, Duke Nukem 3D brought with it a whole new level of character. A wise-cracking, womanising, alien-hating muscle man, Duke embodied every young lad who brimmed with testosterone and yearned for a world of entirely unrealistic violence.

All Duke wanted to do was kick ass and chew bubblegum, except he was all out of gum! A situation we could all sympathise with, I’m sure. Often were the times that I would find myself out of gum, and so decided to visit strip clubs and kill the alien patrons as a result.

I can remember the day I got my once-innocent hands on Duke Nukem 3D. The year was 1996, and I was a mere 13 years old. The game had an age rating of 18, but this was a time when video games were still considered by the “uninformed” parental units to be nothing more than toys that would keep your kid sitting still. I convinced my dearest mother to buy me a copy since we had just got our first PC in the house and I was promised any one game of my choice. The PC was a P75 (yes, 75Mhz processor!), and the game was… well… twofold (I blagged Command & Conquer as well).

Upon getting home I installed the game, and ran it through DOS (I told you it was old!). The menu screen had one of the most rocking tracks ever to be in a video game to date, and after several minutes of bobbing my head along to it I jumped into the game proper (on Easy of course, I was young and scared of difficulty). I had never heard a video game character curse before this, so imagine my adolescent enjoyment when I hear Duke utter those now infamous words, “Those aliens assholes are gonna pay for shootin’ up my ride.”

One explosion and several dead pig-aliens later and I was hooked! This was the greatest game I’d ever played. The first-person view sucked you into the character’s shoes, the weapons began standard and got more ridiculous as the game rolled on, the card key and button combination mechanics allowed for a puzzle-like feel. Plus, strippers! The entire first level is coated with posters of naked women, as well as a cinema screen showing a repeating erotic scene, but the second level lets you into a strip club! Hitting the use key would flash a dollar at the stripper, at which point she would flash her, well, I did say I was young and impressionable, right?

Duke Nukem 3D introduced me to gore, macho action heroes (in video games), pixelated boobs and genius level design all in one fell swoop. And I loved 3D Realms (formerly Apogee Studios), for it. I enjoyed the experience so much that I bought it again on PS1 when it came out, back when an FPS control scheme would use R1 and R2 to look up and down, and Left and Right would turn you and not strafe you. When it came out on Xbox Live Arcade last year I jumped at the opportunity to play with a more up-to-date control scheme, and I’m glad I did. This is a game that I, and I’d imagine many others, can happily jump into again and again despite it being 13 years old. Hmm… 13 years old… that means it’s been around for exactly half my life, that’s awesome. I mean, I’ve actually spent half my life playing this game on and off because it’s that damn fun, even to this day.

Duke Nukem 3D is available to buy on Xbox Live Marketplace in the Arcade section. There are several achievements that accompany it, as well as a slightly hilarious-looking multiplayer mode. The first two levels of the game are also available as a free trial.

Do you remember the day Duke Nukem 3D entered your life? Did you ignore it in favour of other games? Or have you somehow missed it because it was “before your time?” Drop us a comment, and reminisce the glory of 3D Realms’ Klassic.

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