32:55 Morphix returned in Duke Nukem: Critical Mass where his mechs were instrumental in supporting Proton's army along with the united forces of the Cycloid Emperor and the Alien Queen.
Shout outs to Katie for the dedication to find that "Medicare in a lockbox" line. Edit: Boy, did this age well, considering the Realms Deep 2024 video.
Oohh man! Duke acknowledging the player before the boss fight so that both can kick some serious ass together. I'm not so easy emotionally moved by video games, but that line got me, some duke fans most have melt hearing it the first time.
This is precisely why we need another proper Duke game in this "woke society" we life in, however it's precisely why we will never get another Duke game, let alone a proper one. Maybe when Randy Greasefork steps down/retires. What's worse, is an EPIC looking Duke was in the works but forced to be canceled because they wanted Forever to shine. Which is shame because it was garbage.
@@doejon9424 Maybe Gearbox will get tired of holding onto duke since they're doing absolutely nothing with him and sell the series back to the newly reformed 3D Realms since they make good games again that would be pretty nice.
@@revenantproxy9100 from what I heard the relaunched XFL was actually doing pretty okay until covid took it out back. Maybe it actually will finally get off the ground next season. But probably not.
Through hindsight, I found the ending to Manhattan to be poetic. The last good incarnation of the Duke blows the head off of a giant, overblown, robotic version of himself used in an attempt to kill the Duke, by a greedy, unskilled, knock off of a man. *Randy.* Manhattan and Sunstorm developmentally destroyed 3D Realms/Gearbox’s garbage patch work version of DNF with a 2.5 side scroller.
That ending really brought a tear to my eye. Duke breaking the 4th wall, addressing the player like a trusted brother in arms and both of them going one final time to kick ass and chew bubblegum. This is the way how we should all remember Duke. He saved the world and flew off into the sunset.
I remember years back, a friend of mine who is a huge Duke fan told me he'd never played Manhattan Project before. I told him it had the best version of Grabbag and he called me a liar, at least until he played it. No joke, he spent upwards of about ten straight minutes on the title screen just listening to this game's version of the theme song.
TFW a random 2D spin-off made years earlier gets the ethics and tone of your character better than the 3D magnum opus that took 14 years to complete and still felt rushed.
In fairness, it took 14 years because an idiot man-child wanted every new gimmick and shiny new bit of tech that came out over its life. The Forever we actually got is effectively a Frankenstein of that start-and-stop development.
I will wholeheartedly admit that I love Civvie's videos where he is having fun and loves the game being played. Suffering is a little funny, but his enjoyment makes the whole thing just kickass.
The ending of this video made me feel nostalgic. I miss the days where Duke Nukem wasn't a complete joke. It's wild to think it's been two decades since the last GOOD Duke Nukem game (that wasn't a re-release)
Shockingly fun game, despite the flaws of course. I think it's hilarious that of all the references this game could make, Final Fantasy 9 was the last one I'd expect.
You know... If you pretend Forever didn't happen, this makes the perfect end for Duke. Takes him back to his roots, keeps the best parts of 3D, and has none of the mismanaged garbage of Forever. Shame it wasn't his final outing.
When I was in college, a classmate who was a few years older used to regail me the tales of how awesome Duke Nukem was while talking about how excited he was for Forever and the Balls of Steel edition. Fell out of contact with him a few months before DNF actually came out but couldn't help but feel bad for him regardless. Videos like this though - make me realize I missed a era.
I’m not sure you hear this often, so here it is: thank you for taking the time to not only play these retro games, but also upload videos about them so that people don’t forget about these gems. You’ve done more for some of these franchises than you probably are aware of; publishers/game developers can polish up and refine these classics and/or fans can run their own source ports, but it all means absolutely nothing if people like you don’t get the word out. You and your editor do amazing work and I hope you both have a good day.
I actually like the skybox glitches from the fov. Along with the more cartoonist graphics it looks like it's the imagination of a kid playing with Action figures in his custom built box cities
@@plainlake I guess that's one way to look at this character. But the Duke is a parody of 80s and 90s action movie heroes. Just like Lo Wang is a parody of all the kung-fu/karate/ninja movies of the 80s/90s.
@@amberbaum4079 I don't think those two things are mutually exclusive. As a kid, I loved both Duke and Lo Wang's silly, awesomely over-the-top macho antics, and the similar silliness of the action and action-comedy movies that were popular when I was growing up. As an adult, I enjoy them for the nostalgia and the fond memories, while also seeing a new layer of parody in the aforementioned excessive, bombastic nature of it all. That last one might just be my imagination, but hey... entertainment is art, and art is open to a variety of interpretations, yes?^^
2002: "Don't talk to strangers on the internet." 2022: "Yo fuckface, upload a photo of your ID card so maybe we'll grant you a lo'icence to watch a RU-vid-video"
@@seanb.6793 google straight up won't let you watch youtube videos with mean words in them without uploading your fucking government issued ID if your account is tied to australia, because we're living in Mega Nanny One
I'm confident that the voice actor for the main bad guy also voiced Megatron from Beast Wars. Also Wozma? Looks and sounds like Ozma, another secret boss from Final Fantasy 9, who looked like a giant ball. Strange
Months late, but I don't see a credit for David Kaye (Beast Wars Megatron's VA) on this game, looking at IMDB. It's not impossible that he went uncredited I guess, but I don't feel like looking up the nationality of the other VAs (David Kaye is Canadian, and the VA work on Beast Wars was a Canadian joint in general) to see how likely that would be.
I always assumed that was from an earlier game, but yeah, awesome line. Also love the "Makin' bacon!" and "The other kind of white meat" when he kills pigcops. :P
@@D0Samp I'm pretty sure Postal 2 had an "I'm an equal opportunity lunatic" line. That might've still been a reference to Manhattan Project, but who knows.
When Duke said "You are the missing link. Goodbye" I think that might have been a reference to the game show The Weakest Link, where the host says to the person who gets voted out at the end of each round "You are the weakest link. Goodbye"
Not gonna lie that chopper bossfight at the top of a building combined with the early 2000's graphical fidelity gave me VERY strong Devil May Cry 2 vibes. Thank god the gameplay is good on this one.
33:19 And here I was thinking that Wholesome Duke was a Gianni thing, that actually felt nice, one last send-off for a franchise I've been playing since I was way too young to be playing it. For some reason, this game is also still available on Xbox One, and every time I see it on the store page I'm still baffled Gearbox hasn't vanished it.
@@dr6559 Wozma is a reference to Ozma, a hidden boss in ff9. Technically the strongest boss in the game depending on who you ask because he hits ridiculously hard unless you cheese it by equipping items that absorb his strongest attack, plus iirc he's got the highest possible health in the game.
One more of my fave Duke lines: "Half Man, Half Animal, All Dead!" He says it when mutants die and I go rewatch Vivisector just because Civvie used it in that video.
I love how Civvie's sentiments align so precisely with my own, for example with the flavour text and Duke's one liners. You must be 18 or older to ride...
Duke saving babes was introduced by Eurocom's Duke 64, and continued in their Duke Zero Hour, before bleeding into games like this. I always liked the shift because it made Duke a lot more likeable protagonist. It deflated some of the edginess and reinvented Duke as a grub, but a sincere grub. I really wish we'd get an official re-release of Zero Hour. Or a fan remake. Or SOMETHING.
Since we got Doom 64, I'd ask for Duke Nukem 64, but, you know. Randy. He has to ruin everything he touches unless it's DLC, which he's somewhat competent at.
@@Supperdude9 Randy "We can't re-release Megaton Edition and the 2001 DNF build without charging full price for it" Pitchford, when I'm pretty sure Megaton Edition was $20 _when it was new._
Thank you for this. All the sweet nostalgia reasons aside, here's something funny in it for me. I've beaten this game many times when I was about 10 years old, but as a young Russian boy (who also had little to no internet access) I had no idea what the characters were saying most of the time. I can *still* repeat all these lines in my head, in gibberish, with the same intonations etc, but this video here is the first time in my life I actually get to know exactly what they're saying. I'm having so many "oooooh..." moments here you have no idea. Thank you!
Really aprecciated all the work, but most importantly, that you left the whole song till the end of the video, nice detail. I haven´t played this game like for 14 years, that song reminds me a lot of stuff of that times. Still one of my favorites games of that time. Good video man, always supporting!
MP is the example I cite when it comes to explaining the "power" of Duke Nukem. The thing that makes Duke as a series special (or made, I guess) was the ability to take what would otherwise be just a fine typical game with no real flaws or no real highs, but then just fill it gallons of charm and personality that elevate it above what it would be without. MP is quintessential Duke in that way. Purely by itself, MP is a fine game. Don't misunderstand me; it's perfectly competently built with a few hiccups here and there. But what makes it special is the part where it's Duke Nukem. You get the one-liners, you get blowing things up just because, you get the kick, you get the ego system rewarding you for being awesome, you get JSJ's arguably best performance as the character, the return of some interactivity, you get humor, you get charm, and the list goes on. Aspects that tie not just into the atmosphere but even seeping into the gameplay. You get so much mileage out of being a _Duke Nukem_ game that it raises what would otherwise be an average game to a favored entry in the franchise, bordering on cult classic.
The first minute of this video alone has had me in stitches, you're a goddamn gold mine Civvie. Also, expert blue-balling with the SPACE! clip, excellent work.
That's the kind of line that seems to either age like milk or wine depending on your perspective, maybe like a MilkWine seeing as The Rock is planning on bringing it back next year.
I think COVID has more to do with that joke being relevant than Vince tbh, the XFL was doing ok until COVID shut down most forms of live sports for those first few months it went insane.
@@Plague_Potato I was being sarcastic. If you actually did a simple search you would see ivermectin is extremely well researched. It's even shown scientifically to be a cancer treatment. But I can't link anything because youtube blocks all links to keep you ignorant. So you'll have to research yourself as I've done, if you dare.
I remember getting locked in a loop in this game where I got shot dead, Duke fell back through a door and the game set a checkpoint in the next room, so Duke kept dying the instant the checkpoint loaded, forcing a level restart.
Sometimes I stop watching your channel but then you drop a video like this that makes me go through and watch all the content I've missed. Good show civvie.
The docks, tanker and oil rig levels are my personal favorites because of the atmosphere they deliver. That gray barren sky, rusted metal and dark seawater are just something magical. The sole reason why I keep replaying this game so I can plow my way through the levels and be "rewarded" with the sight of the docks again. Also, chopper battle theme is hands down the best multi-stage boss battle music ever.
Bless your boomerjuice-fueled heart for going through the whole thing again just to show the ultra-secret boss at the end (which I had no knowledge of as well). We don't deserve you, Civvie
"Now... about that beer I owed ya!" ~Barney Calhoun 20XX (I originally had something witty say before the quote, but then i got distracted by a cheeseburger and forgot what i was going to say.)
This was actually the first Duke game I played, and it certainly stuck enough that I think about it once a while and even replayed it two years ago. It's really good, like surprisingly good.
I LOVE how Civvie doesn't even say anything at 25:24 as he recaps the BS footage of a scuffed hit box. He just lets the clip speak for itself. XD LOVE IT
I remember playing this on Win98 with a Voodoo 5 while feeling like it was clearly a quick distraction to help tide us over during the wait for Duke Nukem Forever...
@Civvie11 i want to thank you for all the hope and joy you have brought me these past couple years you got me into doom duke nukem and a lot of old and good games so far I've beaten duke 3d doom all on the difficulty you did as well as the pultonia experiment on ultra violence I consider you my favorite yt and wish nothing but the best for you
This slid into my subscription feed so fast that there's only one place we could've gotten all that grease from. Manhattan Project was my very first Duke game! Awesome to see you do a video on it!
I love watching civvie talk about Duke. And I wish there was more Duke just so civvie could make more videos for me to enjoy more than actual Duke games lol
Of all the games to have a Final Fantasy 9 reference, wow. Ozma was that game's secret boss, only accessible after doing a pretty bullshit minigame over the course of your entire playthrough. And yeah, he was just an orb that did an unreasonable amount of damage.
Yeah, when Wozma showed up in this video, I was like, "That has to be a FFIX reference; it's way too similar." Would never expect a reference like that in a Duke game. Very cool!
17:33 Love that detail of how non serious this game is. Besides the talking mutants, mutant rats and martial arts anthro mutant alligators. It's funny seeing a dance club with gator guards and you find gators in the background dancing and doing hand stands casually with normal people. A foreign mutant threat is attacking their city and kidnapping their babes yet people have already gotten used to the monsters and hang out with them. Also the mutant monsters are so self aware and normal that they have independent thought and mingle with humans. Wholesome and awesome.
Also wow, I never stopped to think about how this game perfectly blends Original Duke Nukem gameplay with the aesthetic of Duke Nukem 3d. It might be the most faithful successor to the original games. They should revisit this kind of Duke Nukem game.
I swear, almost every single Civvie video makes me aware of some old-ass game, and he makes it seem so cool that I want to play it. I gotta thank him for expanding my tastes and creating videos on games that I would've never known or care about before hand.
For real. I didn't know about Shadow Warrior until watching Civvie. Now, I'm so good at Shadow Warrior, I can breeze through the hardest difficulty and punch out the shadow ninjas like they're nothing. My boomer shooter skills skyrocketed thanks to Civvie.
1:35 LOL thank you for the Walmart reference. That's exactly what happened to me. I was 17 years old. Walking through a Walmart with my mother and saw this on a shelf in electronics. Looked at her because it was Rated M. She said "Sure! Why not?"
fun fact about Wozma, it's a reference to an equally hidden boss from Final Fantasy IX called Ozma. Wozma is probs a little easier than Ozma though, Ozma can kill your entire party with a single move unless you grind your butt off.
@allen5974 Nah. Wozma even has the same meteor style attacks as Ozma, and both are a super secret boss that is a giant floating orb on a small terrace of land. Also just like Wozma, most people who play FFIX will probs never know Ozma exists lol.
30:26 Shout out to Katie for the most layered joke I've seen on this channel. 1st, watching this video, 2nd knowing the Duke always ends in space, 3rd knowing Red Alert 3 and finally, enjoying some Rocky Horror Antici...
I want to say in that game though, it was just a fancy name for a standard health meter? But I could be wrong, the only PS1 Duke game I know is Time to Kill and even then only vaguely so at this point.
@@LonelySpaceDetective No, in Land of the Babes, Duke restores his EGO similar to Manhattan Project. When he kills enemies and interacts with/saves babes, his EGO goes up, when a babe dies, his ego goes down etc.
@@LonelySpaceDetective Time to Kill. I have rose tinted nostalgia goggles for that game due to getting it as a Christmas gift when I was 5. I would love for Civvie to cover it just to see what kind of joke he comes up with in regards to Duke just being a reskinned Laura Croft.
This was indeed badass, it's incredible when people make retrospectives about Duke Nuken they just skim everything from 3D to Forever and are like, oh yeah, Sunstorm made a sidescroller, it's like the old original games but we are not sure why even bother, but you showed us this is a very important entry in the series too!
I'm glad I caught your endorsement of the Rigel engine. I've been looking into playing Duke Nukem 2 lately and using Dosbox has been kinda clunky, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to use it because I heard there might be some gameplay inaccuracies.
Now I have to wait to see how long before Civvie plays Duke Nukem: Zero Hour? In my opinion, one of the better Duke Nukems of the entire series. Very nostalgic for me :D
Hell Yeah! I loved Duke Nukem Zero Hour. It's one of my N64 games of all time and my favorite Duke Nukem game. Found it better than the other two PS1 spinoffs
@@Dzuno18 I feel you there, the controls in Zero Hour have aged a lot better than Time to Kill... I was just thinking I would love to see Civvie do Zero Hour too.
@@dethmasheen8683 True. The controls in Zero Hour feel a bit like future 3rd person shooters like Max Payne or even Gears of War whereas the Playstation spinoffs plays more like the original Tomb Raider
Somewhere on one or two of your duke videos I practically beg you to do DN:MP Thank you civvie11, you just made waking up this morning worth it. And yes, I was the kid tugging on your purse saying “but civvie11 you promised!” < 3 you civvie.
Talk about awesome childhood nostalgia, that theme music hits hard 😮 1 of my favourite side-scroll ever & thanks for informing it’s also avail on mobile now *LET’S ROCK*
I like to imagine Duke downgrades the names of all of his rapid-fire bullet weapons to match how he uses them. So LMG is an assault rifle to him, an Assault Rifle becomes an SMG, and an SMG becomes like a meatier pistol or something.
I'm surprised Civvie 11 didn't talked about that you stack toss those pipebombs by holding down the button. The more Pipebombs the, bigger the explosion and I'm not talking about minor increase noooo... its like setting up a nuke that shakes the screen so much it can cause an epilepsy.
Now I can't unhear Duke saying "You are the missing link. Goodbye". It sounds so dumb that it works perfectly for Duke to say. Scratch that, the two lines at 28:10 are next level. They're like something Gex would say.
The missing link line is actually pretty on brand with Duke quoting popular culture. There was a gameshow in the 2000s where contestants would be told this when sent off. I don't think it took off as much in the US but it was definitely around.
@@Batchall_Accepted That would be The Weakest Link, and it was revived on NBC in the States in 2020. It got a second season this year, so it’s definitely popular enough to be profitable.
@@NerfPlayeR135Yeah that's the part of Duke's line that makes this silly, how he says "missing" and not "weakest". I don't remember Bigfoot anywhere in this game.
I got bored of this game and uninstalled roughly 10 years ago, I regret that decision. Watching this video convinced me to reinstall it and start a playthrough, thank you for going through with this process Civie. You're the coolest RU-vidr, even cooler than Gman Lives
"You Five-Below-BITCH" has to be one of THE best roasts... Civvie, they gotta hire you to write Duke's lines the next time they decide to put out a game they might actually want to sell units
This was my favorite childhood game as a kid. I remember bringing the disc literally everywhere with me and installing it on every PC i got my hands on and replaying the game on it every time I reinstalled it for the nth time. The fact that the actual game's levels were all so memorable I remember every single level from the watching video (sans the bosses, they really do suck that hard) speaks volumes to how many times ive replayed it. But the most surprising factor about all of this is that this game fucking rules just as hard as I remember it when I was a kid.
