Some years ago when “my” version of 3D Realms was still going, there was a really active community of Duke Nukem fans.  There was a thread on the 3D Realms forums asking people to post their collections of stuff.  Initially I didn’t want to participate, because given my job there, I was likely to have more “stuff” than anyone else did.   But after some folks had asked, I decided to give in and post some pictures of my “Duke Nukem swag”.   I posted this back on the 3D Realms forums in 2008, and then on the Gearbox forums in late 2010 or so.   Today (Jul 24, 2015) I saw some tweets from people about Duke collections, so I decided to repost my old pictures here.  Just one or two of these aren’t mine, I’ll note which items weren’t from my personal stash below.  Here they are, with some descriptions as to what is in the pictures…

Group 1: The original shots

This first group of photos was taken on June 6, 2008.  This was done in the conference room of the 3D Realms offices.  Later on I realized I should have put the stuff on the floor of our lobby to make use of the really cool Nuke logo (which I’ve written about on my blog elsewhere), but I didn’t think of that at the time.  Here goes…

Oh yeah.  Any picture can be clicked on to see a larger shot.  If you want to bypass the “popup” pic and go straight to the giant version, right click on the picture and “Open Link in new tab”.  :)

Picture 1: “The Everything Shot”

I set up all this stuff on the table in the 3D Realms conference room. First off, I didn’t have enough room on my desk for all this stuff, plus I had two Duke posters behind this for the pic.

Picture 2: Action Figures

This is mostly a shot of the various original Duke 3D action figures… Nightstrike Duke, the Battlelord, SWAT Duke, and the Octabrain. Laying down is a boxed “regular” Duke.  This was my stash except the Nightstrike variant of the figure came from Scott Miller’s stuff.  We only had a couple of those, and I really wanted to present all the figures together.

Picture 3: Various Stuff

This is various stuff.  Here’s a list of what it is in clockwise order, starting with the Duke figure from the last photo (the items you you see to the right of the yellow paper plate are covered in another picture)

• Duke figure from last pic
• Duke Nukem coasters
• Music to Score by stickers (these were postcards that are also stickers that were made up for the release of the Duke Nukem: Music to Score by CD)
• Duke Nukem plastic plates (these were part of a promotional package made up for the Time to Kill PS1 game.
• Duke Nukem mouse pads (under the plates)
• European retail Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project retail box (a DVD case)
• Duke Nukem II Full Retail CD – one of the old FormGen retail cases
• Duke Nukem 3D game.com game
• Duke Nukem 64 box (with game in it)
• Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (with game in it)

Picture 4: Various Stuff

Various items.  Starting in the upper left hand corner and going clockwise….

• Duke Nukem 3D strategy guide. The original one, which covers Episodes 1-3 of Duke3D.
• The Plutonium PAK strat guide. Covers ONLY Episode 4.  Intended for people who bought the first one.
• The Atomic Edition strat guide. Covers Episodes 1-4 of Duke Nukem 3D
• Duke Nukem Does the Internet book.
• Duke Nukem 3D Level Design Handbook
• Duke Nukem Time to Kill disc
• Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition CD (original print)
• Duke Nukem 3D Atomic Edition CD (what we’ve sold for the last several years)
• Duke Nukem II Wizard Works retail CD (this came from Bryan Turner’s stash)
• Duke Nukem: Gameboy Color Box
• Duke Nukem Advance Box
• Duke Nukem Forever E3 2001 DVD
• Duke Nukem memory card for Nintendo 64 console
• Duke Nukem Forever Atari 2600 cartridge.  This was an April fool’s joke I did.  You can read about that here.
• Duke Nukem Forever casino chips – from E3 2001 fake gambling tables (the yellow and black ones)
• Colored Duke Nukem chips – these are chips George made up to have for 3DR poker games at his house.

Picture 5: Various Stuff

Various items.  Going from top to bottom (since some is in the last pic):

• Duke Nukem: Zero Hour strategy guide
• Duke Nukem 3D Plutonium PAK CD
• Captain Planet “Duke Nukem” figure (this was from Bryan Turner’s stash)
• Duke Nukem cap (I didn’t get a good pic, but you can see it somewhat in the larger “everything” picture)
• Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes disc
• Duke Nukem: Music to Score by CD
• Duke Nukem: Planet of the Babes pens (before name was changed to Land of the Babes)

Picture 6: Various Stuff

Various items.  Stuff in earlier pictures not referenced:

• Duke: The Apocaypse retail box – Contained two other Duke addon collections (Duke Xtreme & Duke Zone II) plus a T-Shirt. Came from Scott Miller’s stash.
• Duke Nukem 3D: Retail Shareware box (yeah, used to have retail boxes for shareware in the mid 90’s)
• Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition European Retail Box
• Duke Nukem Action Figure (standing up)
• Duke Nukem 3D Porcelain Statue (mine is #77 of 500)
• Pig Cop action figure (these things don’t stand up well on their own, had to lean it on the porcelain figure)

Picture 7: Box Time

Various Duke retail game boxes.

• Duke Nukem 3D: Australian/NZ Restricted retail box
• Duke Nukem 3D: Killaton Collection retail box (from Scott Miller’s stash)
• Duke Nukem: East vs West retail box
• Original Duke Nukem 3D Registered retail box (without Mousepad inside)
• Duke Nukem 3D: Retail shareware box (for some reason I put out two of this)
• Duke Nukem 3D: Screen Saver & Entertainment Pack retail box
• Duke Nukem 3D Plutonium PAK retail box

Picture 8: More Boxes

Various Duke retail game boxes.

• Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project retail box
• Duke Nukem 3D: Atomic Edition US retail box
• Duke Nukem II Formgen Retail Box (the Duke Nukem II CD from earlier up would be inside this box)
• Duke it out in DC retail box (from Scott Miller’s stash)
• Duke Nukem: Zero Hour backpack. This was a promotional item made never for sale, but as a giveaway type thing for retailers and the like back when Zero Hour was new.

Picture 9: Oops

When I was packing the stuff back away from the main picture, I found these couple of items I forgot to put, so this is the “Oops, forgot about this stuff” picture…

• Duke Caribbean Retail Box
• Duke Nukem PS1 Memroy Card
• Duke Nukem 96 Bumper sticker
• Duke Nukem 96 pin (these were goofy promotional items that GT Interactive made for Duke Nukem 3D’s release, there was a gag promotion going to get Duke Nukem voted as the President of the US then)
• Duke Nukem Forever Atari 2600 Cartridge – Red Label variant

Group 2: Additional Pictures

These other pictures were not part of the original “photo shoot” for reasons that will be obvious when you read about them.

Picture 1: Casino Chips

This first one shows several casino chips around Duke Nukem.   This picture was taken on June 20, 2011.  I got out all the Duke chips I had.  The two on the top came from the DNF Deluxe edition package.  The color ones in the second row were ones that George had made up for playing poker at his house, which was a frequent event.  The others were promotional items.  The black and yellow ones with the white parts around the edge were from a fake casino table that was set up on the Gathering of Developers lot at E3 2001.  There’s a picture of Lee Jackson playing the fake craps table here which shows several of the chips.  I can’t remember where the four black ones on the bottom came from.  I think that’s some other promotional thing that I can’t recall the origin of.

 

Picture 2: Duke Nukem Forever

After Duke Forever finally came out in 2011, I gathered together all my DNF stuff and took a similar picture as the pictures above.  Here’s that picture, with commentary..

• The “Happy Ending” items were things given away at the release party, which was a hell of a lot of fun, actually.  A poster, my lanyard, and a t-shirt are those items.
• PS3 / 360 / PC editions of the game.  While only the 360 version is shown in the deluxe edition, I’ve since acquired the others, too.
• The picture in the back was something they were doing at the release party where people could have their pics taken in front of that logo.  We gathered as many of the 3D Realms staff that were in attendance for that picture.
• There’s a super high quality DNF mouse pad in the lower right hand corner that Gearbox was selling for awhile.  It’s REALLY well made, and I still use it to this day in 2015.  Looks as good as when I first got it.
• The book in the middle is the hardcover version of the DNF strategy guide.  I’ve since acquired the paperback version, too.
• Had to get my Atari 2600 DNF cart in here.  :)
• One of the Duke Nukem Forever “Duke Nukem” action figures.
• Everything else I’m pretty sure was is the “stuff” that came in the “Balls of Steel” edition.
• I’ve since acquired a couple of DNF shotglasses that aren’t in this picture.

I also found copies of several old Duke Nukem T-Shirts we made up for various E3’s and all that. Decided not to take pictures of them, as I’d have to take ’em out of the plastic they’re in, and they don’t look good unless you take pictures of both sides, etc.. Basically decided to skip the T-Shirt pics, because they wouldn’t look very good.

Picture 3: Shadow Warrior

All of the Duke pictures above were preceded by my “Shadow Warrior” swag picture.  Not nearly as much stuff, but given I took the pic, I thought I’d include it, as well.

• Back Row: Shadow Warrior Macintosh box, East/West Pack, US Retail Box
• Front Row: Shadow Warrior Strategy Guide, Retail Shareware box, one of the Shadow Warrior fortune cookies, the European Shadow Warrior box, another fortune cookie, the two Shadow Warrior novels, and the only existing copy of a retail box for the Wanton Destruction expansion pack (it was a prototype).

Most people never even knew there were Shadow Warrior novels.  You can still buy them on Amazon.com.  Here’s a link for the first, and here’s a link for the second.  There was even a chapter from the first novel posted on the 3D Realms site.  You can read that here. :)

Summary

After my version of 3D Realms fell apart in 2009, and I lost my job..  I eventually had to sell off a lot of this stuff to help keep the finances working.  When you’re unemployed for over three years, there’s a cost.  But I kept some of the stuff, I couldn’t get rid of all of it.  That’s a look at my “Duke swag”.  If you have any comments, please leave them below.

Thanks to Matty Heritage & the crew at LazyGameReviews on Twitter; both of which got me thinking of putting this stuff on my blog.  :)