I don't know why but I like the May 95 version a lot (starting at 19:48). It has everything needed to be a good game; cool weapons and enemies, immersive and well designed maps, good music... I think it could have already been a hit even if it didn't look and feel like the final version.
I love narrow sighted comments like this. When you're looking at a game from this time period six, seven months before its release, it's not finished. This game could have gone any number of ways and come out great. The way it came out was amazing, but lets not pretend that what we got was literally the only potential successful version of Duke3D that could have come to be. If Duke3D had come out with a darker cyberpunk dystopian look and with more cybernetic enemies? It still could and would have likely kicked all kinds of ass.
Glad the final version ended up the way it did, its a masterpiece of a game. Got my first windows 95 at christmas at 5 years of age. Parents not knowing i was playing doom 2, duke 3d and warcraft 2.. epic times
That was really interesting to watch, seeing the different stages of the game, and also how important sound design is in video games! I also loved the interview with John Romero!
We got Forever 2001 leaked and Gearbox does not appear to be interfering its circulation. If such game can be leaked so should more early builds of 3D.
3D Reals released lameduke all the way back. Not sure what this (these?) is, but whatever. My pet conspiracy theory is that Randy found out how much the community hates him and leaked the versions himself, just to get some manner of redemption.
At 19:55 is the first version of Duke 3D I ever saw. We had a GT interactive CD ROM with demos and videos (I don’t recall where from) but out of everything on that disc, Duke 3D looked incredible. Amazing to see the footage again.
Thank you for the compressed file with the assets! It's a shame all that stuff is only shared on Discord; it gets buried between the rest of the messages.
duke nukem 3d was much better than doom yet it doesn't get all the bells and whistles of the latter. it was really a masterpiece in all terms, sound, graphics, dark humour, variety of weapons... i still remember the ambience of the space missions it was really inmersive
Doom was actually much simpler tech in many ways, but Doom came first by THREE FULL YEARS. By the time Duke Nukem 3d came out Quake was already well known, Ken Silverman's genius was yesterday's tech by then.
In 1996 after dn3d and quake release nobody was talking about doom anymore except hardcore fans, now doom interest is mostly revived by Bethesda/id releasing new doom games
@@davidchez513 you didn't understand what I wrote and I'm aware of community alive for years, but general public wasn't interested in old doom until wave of new dooms and rise of retro gaming/retro computing
@@C64Lover Also incorrect lol Brutal Doom (even tho I don't like that mod) was very popular with the general public. Just the concept of Brutal Doom alone spawned a plethora of "brutal" mods for other games unrelated to the franchise. So no, it wasn't a niche thing. Maybe it was in the 2000's but once Brutal Doom came out, things changed for the popularity of the game.
Beautiful!! Seeing this you can really see just how much it takes to make a good game. There's not a formula. You gotta experiment, learn the power of your tools, how to use them, try what seems fun, and learn that there's a lot of re-starting and trying again. You can see how this team handled this project, and in a way, how they couldn't handle Duke Nukem Forever, with the changing of engines. DNF-2001 is extremely ambitious and very unfocused, just like these betas of DN3D are. Some of these early builds remind me a lot of TekWar, that game also tried a lot of things in a new, untested game engine, though with a very short development time
Really great analysis and commentary! I've always said that 3D Realms learned the wrong lessons from Duke 3D. Because it worked out for them to just goof around with numerous different ideas and re-iterate on things over & over for Duke 3D, they figured it would work again on Forever. Unfortunately, you can tell that it really irritated Broussard that they ended up releasing a sprite based game when the age of polygons was upon us and didn't want Forever running on "a dated engine" when it was released. Honestly a DNF running on Unreal 1 tech in the age of Doom 3 & Source Engine actually would've been a really good repeat because a lot of people didn't have the hardware for those newer engines in 2004, but Unreal 1 would've ran like a charm and still been very impressive with all the cool stuff 3DR had added to it.
@@wolfgangfrost8043 Thanks dude!! I really believe it would have been just like Duke 3D all over again had they not listened to Broussard. At the time I bet many people only played Duke 3D because they didn't have enough power for Quake, and found a fantastic game underneath a dated engine. Of course it helps to have it, but sometimes it isn't about technology, it's just about being a game where you can have fun playing. Think about it: How much would a game like Duke Nukem benefitted from having a 'better' engine? More polygons, fancy shadows, ragdolls, alright... but how does that change the gameplay and feel? I think this is why bigger game companies rarely stand out these days, because game design takes a step back for impressive features, and while that may 'wow' you into buying it, it's not memorable. Well I suppose all they really want is for you to buy it lol, but that way they'll never have a forever money-maker, worshipped game, like Doom is. A loss for them and for us really :p
Back then I couldn't figure out why the machine gun looked different in the screencap at the back of the box. Nowasays realized it an Alpha version of the game
Some of these earlier clips are honestly giving me Tekwar vibes. I can see why a lot of the game got reworked. Also, I find it interesting that the plasma rifle is labeled as "standard", implying that they wanted your primary weapon to be a projectile-based energy weapon, just like in the previous Duke Nukem games. Interesting.
The kids of Gamesmaster getting to play an early build of the game live on national TV is really something. The devs must've been pretty confident about showcasing it.
There's also some lameduke era footage in a PC gaming 101 kind of program/vhs starring Violet Berlin from Bad Influence, not sure if it was a spin-off of that show. Saw an upload of it on RU-vid years ago and for the life of me I can't find it anymore.
Marcolino123's Legacy Edition mod is like the final version of both the Alpha & Beta pre-releases of "Duke Nukem 3D." Very fun mod to play! It's just as good as playing the actual pre-releases of the game!
Cool stuff, with the resources available to modify Duke 3D one could just port the assets from the beta builds to retail and create a similar experience I'd assume. Some of the weapon ideas and level design would be interesting to delve into to get an idea what was going through their minds at the time.
I rather wish I could have seen this stuff decades ago; something to help me understand just how much games change as they go through development. I would have hlped me so much to not think that each asset is "final" once it is "done."
This is some fascinating stuff. The enemy A.I. being able to run away from the player after it takes enough damage is actually a pretty cool thing, although I can understand why it was removed in the finished game. This is a bit like the Doom alphas. Like those, you can absolutely see more ambition in the game design choices here than in the finished versions, but also where pulling back on those ambitions made for a more solid finished game. The early builds look and feel more like Witchaven and Tek War, which isn't surprising as they're running on a similar level of the Build engine, but it's clear the designers are having a ball playing with Ken Silverman's game engine and figuring out what neat tricks they can pull off with it.
I was a kid and got a release where there were the Duke Nukem 1, 2 and 3D. It had a pic in the back of the box where it was that cool af gun that looks like the ripper of the final release but with only one cannon. I was like 7 y.o and wondered for years what I was doing wrong or if my copy was "broken" because, well, it was a pic of this version. I looked so hard that I got like 98% of all secret zones and sh being a kid that didnt understand the language of the game...my dumb ass looked frustrately hard ahahah. Even dreamt I finally got it and it was some electrical thing that desintegrated enemies like in the Rise Of The Triad when you got the godhand. Aaaah good times. Your worries were a kind of easter egg that dissañointed you.
Hey man I would really liked that they left that kind of alternate ammo thing. Imagine the freezer being some multielemental gun. With air sending enemis flying and blowing against walls. Would have lotta crazy potential and I personally really dig when weapons have second use/can be modded in some way. Would be even more ahead of its time.
0:35 those rockets😂😂 And i like how the ejection port is configured for a left handed shooter despite the character holding it right handed. But the Duke not only has a balls of steel, he has heat resistant cheeks!
Такого я не видел,в пре релизной версии есть узнаваемые уровни,огнемет там хорош,из энерго пушки разрабы хотели сделать не то дробовик не то ракетницу,также показана версия с узнаваемыми врагами знакомым,похожим первым уровнем и кучей разновидностей оружия с которым экспериментировали разрабы.В конце разовое состязание в бета игры трех людей,и потом видео с Джоном Ромеро,где он хвалит игры в том числе Дюк 3д.
That host was the biggest dick I have ever seen on television. He was trying to tear the contestants apart from the beginning asking about girlfriends, telling one 'we suspect your rubbish'. The way he complained about the poor performance of the first two contestants, then saying 'it cost us a lot to get you guys out here and you completely trousered that'. When Samier asked the host to call him Aggie, the host responded 'Technically I can call you whatever I want because it's my show.' What a douche! If it is just the style of the show...
