What made me addicted to this game on N64 was the fact that I could split screen co-op with my lil bro at the time when i was a kid that was the coolest shooter, to finally stop killing my brother and allow him to fight side by side with me killing aliens lol
Same here. Except for those extremely boring sports games that all look the same. To be honest, I just skip through them and only look at the beginning and the end.
Not enough good things can be said about the narration dialogue you have for every N64 game video that you've put out, I know it has to be so time consuming, speaking as a viewer who hasn't missed a video in this series, I (like i'm sure many others) appreciate and respect your work, Great work Thab and editor!!
It wasn't a bad port, just turned down to PG. They actually added some cool new weapons and levels for the N64 version. I loved the Turok-style controls most N64 FPS games used. As someone who has played this same game on the PC, N64, GBA, Switch, etc over and over for the last 25 years, I think you were making it too hard trying to aim so directly at enemies above or below you. The Z-plane wasn't really a thing for the original game. You can shoot like 10 feet below an enemy in the air, as long as it's the right direction, it will still hit them.
Love the video by the way! Excited to see you play through my old favorites. Can't wait for Turok 2, Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon and Duke Nukem: Zero Hour.
Yeah, you can change control scheme in this game. Oe of them works especially well on the Hori mini pad controller because the D-pad to change weps/items is right next to ur thumb.
I've always felt that the N64 levels were better than the PC ones. The PC ones feel a bit bare bones at times because what they usually did was dissect some levels from PC and then attach the parts in sensible locations for the N64 versions. The secret levels on N64 also seamlessly blended into the main levels if you pay close attention. The ammo types were really cool and the grenade launcher was way more interesting and fun too use than the RPG from the PC version and you still get a proper rocket launcher later with different mechanics. Only thing the N64 version really lacks is the freeze thrower.
Not only that but game design doctrine for FPSes at the time was likely set by John Romero's precedent for Doom. He made all the other levels for the game first, then went back and made the first episode so that they would be the best levels, and episode 1 is indeed considered to be the best by most players.
On stream you made it sound like you were gonna lambaste this game, but I thought you did a great job of pointing out the cool level design, and the other good things about it (alongside the unforgiving controls, no music, and bad checkpoints). Nice work as always, Thab and Craw!
This is totally wild. So 1997 was long enough ago that I could barely read when this game came out (bless my mom for letting me rent it from blockbuster anyway). So I had absolutely no idea it measured the babes and secrets you discovered, it was just another wall of incomprehensible text that I clicked through. Lmfao😂. The other "literally illiterate children" that I played this with used to just pass the controller back and forth amongst one another while we tried desperately to figure out what was going on 🤣. When one of us figured out that you could pee, we did it every time we played the level because we thought it was funny😅. It's strange and difficult being a child gamer but I love the memories it created
I beat it recently and man once you get past the controls it is absolutely a blast. About 30+ levels if you find all the secret ones. Lots of content, fun gameplay loop.
Still got this game and my n64. Brings back memories. Don't remember having issues with aiming but maybe that's because I have always been more of a console gamer than PC. This, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and many more. Loved them all. Also the reason that death happened to you when you used the jetpack across that chasm was because of the physics of the game. Played this all the time co-op with my brother when we were kids and we learned quickly that just like when you are small and you grow big you will die; if you maneuver Duke into a tight spot in just the right way the game will read it as him being squished and he will die. That's what happened when you were underwater with those gears too. Difficult to figure out games like this with multiple paths to complete each level forged and refined me into the master gamer I am today. Hail to the king baby 😎
@@kevinprager1139 No one kills me in Perfect Dark. I 1 v all; I win. Especially in infection mode. I kill you and my own team. I run up to you, I punch you in the face, I take your gun; I shoot you in the face. You become skeleton. I win. I am king. 😂
@@Jmnzz you've never been able to sneak flank or punch a dark Sim in your life unless it was through a door in the facility. 😂 I rock the double blast shotgun straight into their mouth hole. Coconut their head backwards straight into the wall. I am the guy who created infinite death.
This was actually my first n64 game. I wanted Mario64 but it was sold out so I got duke at about 8/9 years old lol. I used to love that humor, and heck, I know it has not aged well, but I still appreciate it. Specially when he peed and said “uhh I needed that” lol. Also, I never actually finished it, it was too hard for me as a kid, but I played the hell out of it in the multiplayer vs, splitting the screen in 4 with my neighbors using the shrink ray and all that. It was hilarious. Great vid!
I remember in co-op that there was a chance for a monster to ONE SHOT YOU! (didnt matter what difficulty) i remember it was in hotel hell and a flying monster shot from above insta killing my friend! and one time i was put to 1hp from 200hp from one shot! idk if its like rng or just a sneaky co-op thing.
Shame that the port seems so shoddy. Duke Nukem 3D was actually a really revolutionary game for its time and a major milestone in the history of first-person shooters -- it's the first real, actual 3D game with proper three-dimensional levels (even Doom was actually a 2D game, or 2.5D I guess; all the levels are two-dimensional but just displayed so that they *appear* 3D), and so many of the things we take for granted today were really mindblowing -- how much freedom you had to navigate the levels, all the secrets you could find, all the furniture that you could just destroy to find new routes... hell, even the fact that you could see yourself in the mirror! And, oh yes, the juvenile humor -- sure, much of it probably hasn't aged that well and it obviously hit better when most of the players were juvenile teenagers themselves; but I think the worst thing is that you saw the bland, "cleaned up" Nintendo version of it. Duke Nukem 3D was so unapologetically raunchy and overly explicit with the humor, you just go along with it and have a laugh. When you have a version like this that censors or removes most of it and waters down what's remaining... what remains is just awkward. With intentionally tasteless, intentionally offensive, intentionally juvenile humor, you gotta go all the way or not do it at all. Love the series, man, keep it up!
Doom 2 for the SNES was worse. You should try that. And then after 10 seconds ragequit due to the framerate being... uhh... measured in frames per minute instead of frames per seconds.
What? This was such an awesome port. I played it a lot and it had the best multiplayer mode of any N64 game. We played this over Goldeneye and Perfect Dark all the time. So many crazy weapons, and ypu could even play it coop.
It wasn't that revolutionary, Quake came around and did it better literally five months later. The main reason Duke Nukem stuck around was sex and violence. The original Duke Nukem platformers (I played all of them) were just as unremarkable to the point that people don't even know they exist. Literally looking up and down is the only revolutionary thing about Duke 3D. The gameplay was poor, the art direction was awful, and Duke himself is just a mediocre voice actor reading a bunch of lines the designers stole from various movies. The only reason the lines ever seemed good to anyone is because 11 year olds looking to see some tiddies hadn't seen these movies. Not sure why Duke needed to come back for Forever. Was better left as an artifact.
I don't remember having nearly this much trouble navigating this game as a kid, I remember it all being pretty straightforward but maybe just because I played it so many times. The part with the gears you just have to swim through as the Grey line comes around
this was one of my first games playing on a console. i played duke nukem 64 growing up so much that i still remember the controls C buttons: movement thumb stick: look (fun fact: this is one of the games why i play with invert aim to this day) Z: fire L: use equipment R: jump B: crouch A: open doors/activate switches D-pad left/right: select weapon D-pad up/down: select equipment start: pause/menu i always thought it was convenient that duke nukem 64 utilised every button on the controller effectively.
The original Duke Nukem 3D was released when keyboard + mouse wasn't really a common input combination for 3D games on PC. I'm not really sure if the original MS-DOS version supported mouse input or if it was only intended to be played with keyboard. At least the perspective didn't really work well for mouse look and wanted you to keep the camera level for most of the time. I also don't know how aiming was changed for the N64 but in the original you only aim horizontally. It was intended to be played with the arrow keys, left/right turning and up/down moving forward/backward. You'd only use page up/down occasionally to look up/down but usually without moving at the same time. You'd just turn until the aim lined up vertically with the enemy and it would automatically aim at it, no need to look up to aim for flying enemies.
@@nicolasrancourt3958 Nah he's right, in Duke3d you didn't need to aim on the z axis. Mouse aiming can be enabled, but the Build 3D engine doesn't support it well, the image gets visibly distorted when looking up. We all used to play with keyboard only when it came out. I think it was Quake that made keyboard + mouse the standard?
@@nicolasrancourt3958 The mouse was supported all the way back in Wolfenstein 3D. But yes, neither Wolfenstein nor Doom allowed vertical aiming - Wolfenstein had no elevation change at all and Doom had a vertical autoaim.
@@the_kovic I think Doom was the first id game where you could circle strafe, since you could bind a key to strafe left and another key to strafe right, while using mouse to aim. Wolfenstein 3D had a strafe modifier button, which changed the turn controls to strafe controls. Also in DN3D you could jump/crouch(default A/Z) unlike Doom.
Playing the original PC version on and off for the last 25 years, I've never once seen the episode 2 boss fire its weapon lmao. Also the cinematic after that boss fight is toned WAAAAAAY down in the N64 port; in the original, when Duke first encounters that boss, he says "I'm gonna rip off your head and shit down your neck", and after the boss fight, we see he meant it literally.
Last video i mentioned Ogre Battle, but i'm aslo curious to see what Beast has to say about Hybrid Heaven! Perhaps i'm one of the dozen people that really liked it.
Is anyone going to tell Thab he was using the Look wrong? Like, you're not supposed to aim up, just like in the PC version. It's just there to be able to look up and down a little, but you don't need to aim up or down with your gun. The enemies are on a 2D, like Doom. So you can shoot 10 feet below an enemy and it'll still hit.
The secret level you found was originally in the secret level of the episode 4 "The Birth" added into the Atomic Edition of Duke Nukem 3D alongside the protector drone(the fast xenomorph like enemies) released in late 1996. It replaces a Tier Drops a trippy Non-Euclidean level made possible by the feature of the Build Engine. Launch base was also original the secret level of Episode 1, which was made mandatory and the Secret Level is the second level of Episode 4. You missed a secret level entrance in hotel hell which is pretty much Duke going to the stadium level. The problem with the music is likely due to the original game coming on CD; while the game didn't use CD quality Audio instead using Midi audio the game was still larger thatn the most economical cartridge for a third party developer. I'm fairly certain that Duke Nukem 64 is likely using a 12 Mega at best to fit everything in.
When I think of throwback FPS I think about duke nukem,this specific version to be exact,still remember playing 4 player deathmatch with my friends + the bots this game had were hilarious
Gotta love how Doom and Duke Nukem have "bonus" stages that only gives more potential to die again and again without actually getting real powerups for the next levels. It feels like you're being punished for finding secret exits.
Duke Nukem 64 is my favourite version of the game. I especially like some of the changes to the levels, some of the changed weapons (pus you now have alternative ammunition for some weapons, such as explosive bullets!), and that you can save the abducted ladies here, which you can't do in the original game (which is surprising - why can't you save them in Duke Nukem 3D? Duke is supposed to be a hero, after all). And it has four player splitscreen deathmatch with (very stupid) bots, which was fun at the time. Plus there were slight improvements to the original's graphics, such as 3D explosions and smoke, and the textures/architecture don't warp when you look up or down. Though the graphical improvements (minor as they were) mean nothing nowadays of course, as on any PC released in the past couple of decades you can play DN3D with very high resolutions, which will clean up the graphics, whereas of course the N64 game is still stuck running on 1996 hardware at 320 x200 (or whatever the game ran at). On the minus side, DN64has no in-game music, there is no parallax background (so in the space levels there are no stars, sadly, which just looks stupid :o( ), no working mirrors, and, as you said, no in-level saving. The latter was common in first person shooters on consoles at the time, as the consoles' game-save memory packs didn't have enough storage space to store all of the attributes and variables of a level and it's contents. DN64 was also censored, of course. This bothered some fans, but I didn't care. Just being able to save the babes, I think, more than compensated for any censorship, since it meant you could play Duke as a traditional hero. Regarding aiming in DN64, I didn't have any problem with it, but the auto-level (where when you stop aiming, the view returns to being vertically aligned with your eye level) was annoying, and the game should have had an option to turn it off. There is a fan-made patch for the game rom, that disables auto-leveling, but since it alters the game rom, then you either have to play it on your N64 using a flash cartridge (such as the Everdrive 64, or the 64Drive), or on a PC/Mac/etc based N64 emulator.
Growing up I had both pc duke 3d and duke 64. The pc version came first, then my dad eventually bought me duke 64 because "it saved space on the computer". In all honesty I preferred duke 64 over the computer version. I like the gun models more, and awhile it is censored, the censorship does not actually take away from the game for me. The n64 version also added a few extra touches here and there. For example at the beginning of second level of the game, you see a subway above you to the right. Later in the game episode 3 when you are in the subway level you can look down back at episode 1 level 2. Another is the ability to save the babes instead of killing them. Little touches like this gave the game more class.
11:26 How the hell did you not have a jetpack by The Abyss to save yourself after falling down?! You definitely should've picked one up during regular gameplay by that point, even without finding the secrets. Edit: So you did have a jetpack & it was Build engine jank that killed you that second time.
5:36 They censored a strip club into a burger shop??!! Blasphemy!! Seriously, the series' raunchiness was one of its main appeals, the lighter tone and frivolous content putting it into stark contrast with dark, serious, horror-style Doom and Quake.
Weirdly enough Nintendo didn't mind when Duke Nukem: Zero Hour came out which had an implied sex scene and set pieces like the erotic cake shop. Who knows with these kooky clowns in suits.
The ground breaking part of this game was getting the babes to strip on PC. I remember having fun with the multiplayer on n64. It was kind of fun playing with friends similar to Golden Eye
to say there were a few people on pc back then that have played it is the most ridicolous thing i have ever heard about this game. this game was (after doom) the most groundbreaking fps that was made and prepared the way for half life. without the interactions in this game we would not have the modern shooters from today.
Amen brother. almost everyone I knew with a new pc for the time had duke nukem 3d. Since the 1990s was a period of wider pc adoption vs the early and 1990s, I actually knew more people with duke 3d than doom.
The guy in the prison cell is Hannibal Lecter. Silence of the Lambs was relatively new when the original version this game was ported from came out so it would've been more obvious back then. But yeah, it's Hannibal Lecter.
That was an "edited" for nintendo version of level 2 which originally was hosted at a Red Light District. They never changed the back room's personal adult peep shows. Haha they did change up the images as they were also a little more explicit in the PC version. Great run through Thab. Been waiting for this one!
Totally fair that you scaled it back to Piece of Cake. Without finding the secrets, the maps are way harder. That was part of the FPS gameplay loop back then. After you kill everyone? Run around picking up stuff to replenish health / ammo, then look for cracks in the walls or things to press "use" on to reveal a secret area before you exit.
This version of the game is really cool in that it gives you alternate versions of Duke's classic weapons. That was my favorite part of this game. And the explosion effects in this version look cool too.
When i was a kid i also ran into the same situation with the health on lvl 2. I kept trying until i discovered you could drink water from the destroyed fire hydrant, or destroyed toilets, you can also take a piss for healing.
"wots your beef speccy" is apparently something that one of the develepors used to say to others at work when he would put his nose into their business so they just threw it in ther
When we were playing this game as kids, we didn't even care to think of what this could be representing. This was first and foremost a unique corridor with booths and screens in them, some of which contained monsters or pickups. ...Oh, I stay corrected. It crossed our minds that this could be a gaming club (which were also a big thing in the 90s). Why did it have doors? Who knows! Maybe gaming clubs are like this over there in the West!
The juxtaposition of playing Mario 64 and this at Christmas was awesome. I was such a fortunate kid. That guy standing there is Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs. Creepy
One of my favourite games as 13 year old. I seem to remember you didn't actually have to point the gun directly at the enemy if they're flying and you'll still hit them. I spent far too much time looking at the babes and pissing.
Same. If I'm going to do the campaign, I honestly prefer 64 to the original. The gamepad controls have no right being as good as they are, I've always found it a real pleasure to play through.
You could have made the 2nd level much easier by shooting the fire hydrants and healing yourself by pressing action on the water. It's slow but you can heal to 100% using them.
I guess since he is in a grind to get through these games as fast as possibly for his series, that he is not taking his time to learn the control scheme and the subtle quality of life mechanics duke has to offer. My head was starting to ache when he was not shooting the fire hydrant to drink lol.
I felt your pain watching you summarize this game. I played it for two seconds when I rented it at a blockbuster when I was a teen. It sucked then too.
I remember a friend of mine traded me Duke Nukem 64 because he didn't like it and I became a fan as soon as I played it. Reminded me of Doom, loved the silly dialogue and shooting aliens. I also got Duke Nukem Zero Hour which IMO is severely underrated, it was a lot of fun, clunky but fun. Then I waited like 12 years for duke nukem forever... And I would wait 12 more for another Duke game
This game was a DOS game, not a windows game, so there was no mouse support...You could manually preload your mouse drivers and hack them in, but it was far from native and didnt work well...but most people likely played it without mouse. You would use WASD for movement and the arrow keys to look. On the original PC version, and the switch remaster you dont actually need to aim vertically, you just align yourself horizontally and shoot, and duke will automatically look up or down to shoot the enemy in front of him Water heals you, so if you had held action button on the toilet you would have kept healing, fire hydrants etc also heal you... Well done on the playthrough!
So that's not entirely true, it was a DOS game, but it did have mouse look, you had to set it up in the setup program and have a mouse driver installed. The reason why I said not entirely true is because the mouse look only warped the view, it was really the equivalent of hitting pg up or pg down, it was not very good, so barely anyone used it.
Duke Nukem 3d is much easier once you know where all the secrets are. Early weapon pickups, lots of health, armor and ammo and secret jetpacks. And you're right the PC version is much better for several reasons, saving and better controls at the top of that list.
