This is Part 2 of 8 of my History of 3D Realms / Apogee series.  When originally published, it was a single post, but over time WordPress ended up not liking a post that was 33,000 words long.  This segment covers 1992-1994

1992 is the year when Apogee exploded with the release of an industry changing game.  It is also the year I started working for Apogee, and my life changed, too.

Secret Agent

Release Date: 1 Feb 1992

Secret Agent is a game with a fairly similar play style to Crystal Caves.  However, the plot is loosely based off of James Bond and Secret Agent type things.  This extended to things in the game being parodies of James Bond names like “Dr. No Body” and you being agent “006 1/2”. The object is to destroy a satellite dish in each level so you can escape.

It was written by Peder Jungck – his only game for Apogee/3D Realms.  It was one of the final games I bought before starting to work for Apogee later this year.

I did an interview back in 2006 with Peder Jungck as part of the Apogee Legacy interview series.  It is still online, you can read it here.

Current Status: Still available for sale from 3D Realms.
Updates: v1.0a – 24 Oct 2005
Links: [ Secret Agent Steam Page | 3DR Secret Agent Page | Legacy 3DR Secret Agent Page ]

Word Rescue

Release Date: ?? Mar 1992

Word Rescue was the first of two games in Apogee’s “Edu-Tainment” line.  This game was written by Karen Chun (nee Crowther) for her “Redwood Games” company.  I liked this idea – while I recognize I wasn’t the target for the game, I thought it was a great idea for Apogee to expand into this kind of thing.  Shame the idea didn’t last, only one other game was produced here.

The game was non violent, nobody got killed, and was designed to teach you words.   One of my favorite stories about any game during my time at Apogee was Word Rescue.  It was a complaint we got from a teacher who identified themselves as an “inner city teacher”.  They complained that Word Rescue was inappropriate for children, and their reasoning was solely because the first word they saw in the game was “gun”.

There was a sequel later on called “Word Rescue Plus” (which was basically more levels – the gameplay is identical), but that was available only from Karen’s company directly, Apogee/3D Realms never sold Word Rescue Plus.

Current Status: Still available for sale from 3D Realms.
Updates: 2.0 – 1 Aug 1993
Links: [ Word Rescue Steam Page | 3DR Word Rescue Page | Legacy 3DR Word Rescue Page ]

Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure

Release date: 18 Mar 1992

Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure is the next game from Todd Replogle and Allen Blum.   This was such a fun game.  I absolutely adored the attitude of this game.  It was a sidescroller like many others we did, but the light, fun feel to it was great – kind of like Commander Keen in that regard.  The game didn’t have speech, but Cosmo would have “talk bubbles” for things he’d say.  I loved that attitude.  Was very Road Runner.

Also a big deal here was Bobby Prince’s music.  The theme song was well, “ZZ Top”, and the main Level 1 music was so bubbly it made you happy just to play the level(s) that it appeared in.

Of all the games we produced, this was one I always hoped a sequel would be made for.  To date, it never has been.  Although Cosmo (the character) was revived in 2019 for the “Radical Edition” of our Rad Rodgers game. Cosmo was playable there.  So perhaps there’s hope?  :)

Current Status: Still available for sale from 3D Realms.
Updates: 1.2 (15 Apr 1992), v1.1 is unknown.
Links: [ Cosmo Steam Page | 3DR Cosmo Page | Legacy 3DR Cosmo Page ]

 

Wolfenstein 3D

Release Date: 5 May 1992

Wolfenstein 3D is a masterpiece of a game written by id Software.  There’s not many people who know about classic games and don’t know about Wolfenstein 3D.  This game changed my life for sure, its existence is part of the reason why I moved to Texas.  This was the last game that id Software put out through Apogee software, their next game (Doom) they went to doing it on their own, although Doom did start life as an Apogee game.  Anyway, I digress..

The reason there is no v1.3 is down to me – before I started working here, I contacted Scott Miller of Apogee about a “porn” version of Wolfenstein 3D – I contacted him, and they got it removed but it said it was a “v1.3” of the game (1.2 was current then).  Anyway, when they came out with the next/final update, they skipped 1.3 and right to 1.4 to avoid confusion with the “porn” version.

Still a classic. Schustaffel!

Mimicking what id Software did with Keen Galaxy, they produced a special “episode” of Wolfenstein 3D specifically for retail – it was called ‘Spear of Destiny”.  Apogee did technically sell Spear of Destiny (although not in the retail box), but that was due to a licensing deal, we didn’t produce that game.

Additional: I wrote a short piece about Wolfenstein 3D for it’s 25th anniversary in 2017.  You can read that here.  I also wrote a lengthy article in 2016 about the “Call Apogee and Say Aardwolf” secret message and contest.  You can read that here.  One thing I did for Wolfenstein 3D myself was figure out the bloody Aardwolf maze on a map, and created an image that we used to mail or fax to customers when they wanted a map.   You can see the picture here, and read a lot more about it in the story I mentioned above.  You can also read the 2006 interview with John Romero that I did for the Legacy 3D Realms site.

Apogee/3D Realms sold Wolfenstein 3D in shareware from 5 May 1992 until 9 Jul 2020, when the original shareware deal between Apogee & id Software from many a moon ago was finally brought to a close.

Current Status: Still available, but not from 3D Realms
Updates: v1.1 (25 Jun), 1.2 (29 Jun), 1.4 (1 Jan 1993) – there was no v1.3
Links: [ Steam Page – id Software  | 3DR Wolfenstein 3D Page | Legacy 3DR Wolfenstein 3D Page ]

Math Rescue

Release Date: 1 October 1992

While not a technical sequel to Word Rescue from earlier in the year, it is basically the same concept, except with math, and not spelling.  The game play mechanism is exactly the same.  Like Word, Math Rescue was written by Karen Chun (nee Crowther) and her “Redwood Games” company.   It was the second and final educational game Apogee/3DR ever produced.  Given they bookended Wolfenstein 3D, we know what got the most attention.

Like Word Rescue, it too had a “sequel” called Math Rescue Plus, which Apogee never sold.  The “Plus” version was basically just more levels.

A personal note.  After I was accepted as a beta tester to Apogee back in the Summer 92, this was the main game that was in testing at the time (along with Major Stryker), so I played it a LOT.  The educational stuff wasn’t a personal attraction, but I was so jazzed to be a game company beta tester, that I didn’t care!

I did an interview back in 2006 with Karen as part of the Apogee Legacy interview series.  It is still online, you can read it here.

Current Status: Still available for sale from 3D Realms.
Updates: 2.0 – 1 Aug 1993
Links: [ Math Rescue Steam Page | 3DR Math Rescue Page | Legacy 3DR Math Rescue page ]

1993 was my first full year of working for Apogee.  Starting at this point, I was there for everything released by the company.  The first game of this year was the first new game released after I started.

Major Stryker

Release Date: 15 Jan 1993

This is the first solo game by Allen Blum, who previously worked on several of Todd Replogle’s titles.  It’s a vertical shooter – the first of three such games Apogee put out over a couple of years (despite none of them being related).

This was the other game that was in testing when I was just a beta tester, and not technically working for Apogee.  I remember the first beta we ever got.  It might have been the hardest thing I ever played.  When you’re on a beta team, there’s always differences of opinions. Some like things, some hate things, most are in the middle.  However, with this first beta of Major Stryker, the entire beta team was universal – they hated it.  Not the game, but the difficulty level.  Not a single person liked it, because it was too brutally hard.  You started off the first level near blind.  You had no vision cone or vision at all.   If I remember right the idea was you had to buy an upgrade to be able to see, but we all complained and got it changed for beta 2.

This game also had one of the hardest cheat codes to activate of any of our games.  Most were a command line parameter, or a strange sequence of keys to press.  This game required you to press five different keys simultaneously to activate the cheat mode.  The five letters were C,H,E,A,& T.  :)   If you want the full procedure, check out this old tech note from the Legacy 3DR site.

Personal Note: This was the first game Apogee released after I started working there, and I remember well the stress of unleashing it on the world.  It was the first thing I did in my position as “Online Support Manager”.

Was discontinued some time ago, and released as freeware on 14 Mar 2006.

I did an interview back in 2006 with Allen as part of the Apogee Legacy interview series.  It is still online, you can read it here.

Current Status: Freeware.
UPDATES: 1.4 – 20 Feb 1993. 1.1 & 1.2 are unknown, and there was no 1.3
Links: [ 3D Realms Freeware FTP | 3DR Major Stryker Page | Legacy 3DR Major Stryker Page | Internet Archive ]

Monster Bash

Release Date: 9 Apr 1993

Monster Bash was a side scroller game written by Frank Maddin – was his next game for Apogee after Crystal Caves.  This was a total Halloween theme, but unlike most Halloween games, it’s got a “cute” theme.  The goal here is not zombies or something like that, it’s to free captured pets.  You are a kid whose weapon is a slingshot.  I always loved this game – in fact it’s my favorite side scroller that Apogee ever put out – even over the original Duke Nukem or Commander Keen – as much as I loved those.

Another complaint story.  We got a complaint from someone saying the game was not appropriate for their kids due to a pair of “upside down feet” they saw in the game.  Not anything violent or not.  The complaint was the implication was that the dead character feet were having sex.

One other thing, there was a shareware version called “Monster Bash Lite”.   That was released on 27 Jul 1993.  The difference between that one and the standard shareware was that we felt the original was “too large”.  The shareware version of Monster Bash was the first of our games to be larger than ONE Megabyte.  At the time we felt it was a barrier to folks downloading the game, so a “Lite” version was produced with about one third of the levels and a smaller size.  This concept was never repeated again, as we found that people downloaded the standard version of the game significantly more than the lite version.

Additional: A little over two years ago, I wrote an article about Monster Bash for it’s 25th anniversary.  You can read that here.  It contains more detail on the dead character feet thing mentioned above.  :)

Current Status: Still available for sale from Apogee Software LLC.
Updates: 1.01 – 10 Apr, 1.02 – 12 Apr, 1.1 – 26 Apr, 2.0 – 11 May, 2.1 – 23 May
Links: [ Monster Bash Steam Page | 3DR Monster Bash Page | Legacy 3DR Monster Bash Page ]

Bio Menace

Release Date: 3 Aug 1993

Bio Menace was a side scroller put out during our prime side-scroller years.  It was written by Jim Norwood, and was I believe the first licensed use of an id Software engine – the same one the Keen Dreams used (which was later expanded on for Keens 4-6).  John Romero confirmed the tech licensing to me when I asked him during research for this article.

It did however have some odd tech problems where people had to edit their config.sys and autoexec.bat files to run the game.   These tech problems eventually caused the game to be discontinued, because as computers progressed it became harder to run the game out of the box.  Even the DOSBox guys had to put special programming in DOSBox to account for Bio Menace. Since the DOSBox guys put in code to help with that, it’s not a problem in 2020, as DOSBox is pretty much the only way people play these old games anymore”. :)

I always thought the character here was an “Angry Cosmo”.  Jim Norwood said that was not the intent, but could see why I thought that. :)

There was also a fun hidden room in the registered version, “The Apogee Room”, which contained Bio Menace-ized versions of Scott, George, & Jim Norwood.  Contained items from previous games to that point – Duke Nukem, Commander Keen, etc.   Always loved that joke.   I also was one of the names in the default high score table in the game, that was also amusing to me.

However, tech problems aside, it’s a fun game, check it out if you never did.  We eventually released it as freeware on 23 Dec 2005.

Years ago I did an interview with Jim Norwood as part of the Apogee Legacy interview series.  It is still online, you can read it here.

Current Status: Freeware.
UPDATES: 1.1 – 24 Aug 1993
Links: [ 3D Realms FTP | 3DR Bio Menace Page | Legacy 3DR Bio Menace Page | Internet Archive ]

Halloween Harry

Release Date: 10 Oct 1993

This was a fun side scroller game by John Passfield & Robert Crane through the companies “Interactive Binary Illusions” and “SubZero Software”.

It used mod music (as opposed to Sound Blaster, which was the thing at the time).  It gave the music a different feel than what we had done before this (which was mostly Adlib / Sound Blaster music).  The game play style is a somewhat of a cartoonish style – so much so that the final boss was a Zombie Elvis Presley who swung a microphone at you.  I always loved that boss, was surprised a Zombie Elvis didn’t get more attention than it did.

It was a fun game much in the style of Commander Keen and the original Duke Nukem, just with more up to date tech.  If you liked those games, you’ll probably really love Harry/Carnage.

As is well known, we changed name of the game to Alien Carnage a year later.  I will get into that a little more in the section for Alien Carnage.

The Halloween Harry game that Apogee released was not the first game to bear that name. John Passfield, who was the lead designer on Halloween Harry also released a game on his own in 1985 called “Halloween Harry”. It came out for the Australian Microbee computer system, and was sold commercially. Here is a screen capture of that old version of Halloween Harry, which is now 35 years old.  Apogee had nothing to do with that version.

Current Status: Withdrawn, replaced by Alien Carnage.
UPDATES: 1.2 – 7 Nov 1993 (There was no 1.0, so 1.1 was the first public release)
Links: [ See Alien Carnage section for links ]

Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold

Release Date: 3 Dec 1993

People always wondered when we’d come out with another game like Wolfenstein 3D, and this was it.  Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold was not a sequel to Wolf in any way, but used the same tech.  It was created by Mike Maynard, Jim Row, & Jerry Jones, whose company was called “JAM Productions”.

It was far more colorful than Wolfenstein 3D ever was, and was a sci-fi themed game.  We thought it was genuinely going to be massive, but one week later, the original Doom was released, and Blake was easily eclipsed.  It’s not like Blake Stone did poorly, it had some innovations that were nowhere else.  One of which was the concept of switches and locks opening doors didn’t have to be on the same level – some switches unlocked doors on different levels of the game.  At the time, that was unheard of.  It was also the first Wolfenstein engine game to have NPC’s.

There were several updates to the game during its life, and not simple ones, either.  The concept of textures on the ceiling was not there in the earliest versions and added in later (for v3.0).   The manual for the game came with a Blake Stone comic book, a first for us.  You can see this manual and comic at this link from the Legacy 3DR Site.

One other thing – we released this and Duke Nukem II on the same day.  When they were coming close to finishing, there was some discussion about which one to release first, and how much time to leave in-between releases.  It was my idea to release them on the same day – something that I don’t believe had been done since.  I always liked that they took that suggestion of mine.  :)

Speaking of a personal connection to Blake Stone..  In the fall of 1993, after I had been with Apogee for less than a year, they decided to send me to Comdex on my own to show off Blake Stone on a show floor.  That was really fun for “the new guy”.  I can’t lie, it was fun.  However, in the same room was Jay Wilbur of id Software who was showing off Doom at the same time.   Blake got attention, but I could see even then that it would be overshadowed by Doom which was released 7 days after Blake Stone.

Additional: In 2013, I wrote an anniversary piece looking back on Blake Stone & Duke Nukem II.  You can read that here.  You can also read an interview I did with Mike Maynard as part of the Apogee Legacy Interview series.

Current Status: Still available for sale from Apogee Software LLC.
Updates: 2.0 – 11 Feb 1994, 2.1 – 15 Jul 1994, 3.0 – 2 Nov 1994
Links: [ Blake Stone Steam Page | 3DR Blake Stone Page | Legacy 3DR Blake Stone Page ]

Duke Nukem II

Release Date: 3 Dec 1993

… and the sequel to the original Duke Nukem takes the stage.  I was a customer of the original game, and when I got to Apogee roughly a year before this, I was overly excited to be able to work with Todd Replogle and the guys on the sequel, as I really liked the original Duke Nukem.   That extended to one of my greatest moments at the company, I was invited to be the original voice of Duke Nukem.  I said just two words (“I’m Back!”), but that’s part of my credits, and I’m happy about that.  You can hear me say “I’m Back” in this video which has the opening titles to Duke II.

The game itself was similar to the original Duke Nukem, but was more advanced.  Duke could look up and down, fly in ships, fly with a flamethrower, etc.  It was in my opinion a perfect “two” game.  What I mean is that it was clearly a sequel to the game that came before it, yet expanded the game play of the original in many different ways.  It also had music by Bobby Prince, again sounding like some popular music that was known (Megadeth anyone?)

The game was released on iOS devices on 3 Apr 2013 by Interceptor, but that version (as well as the original game) became unavailable when the rights to the Duke franchise went to Gearbox.  The iOS version also forced in sunglasses on Duke Nukem when he didn’t have them originally.  I personally never cared for that modification, although I loved hearing my own voice come out of my iPad.  :)

Additional: In 2013, I wrote an anniversary piece looking back on Blake Stone & Duke Nukem II.  You can read that here.

Current Status: Unavailable, rights owned by Gearbox.
UPDATES: None
Links: [ 3DR  Duke Nukem II Page | Legacy 3DR Duke Nukem II Page ]

1994 was one of my favorite years of working at Apogee/3DR.  Two of my Top 5 games by the company were released here (Raptor, ROTT), and the first game ever with a Dopefish cameo was this year too.   I was so into working on Rise of the Triad, I skipped going to a Pink Floyd concert to work on ROTT levels.  I probably should have gone to see Pink Floyd, as it was their final tour.  :)

It was also our most prolific year, as we released a total of 8 unique titles this year.

Raptor: Call of the Shadows

Release Date: 1 Apr 1994

Raptor is the second of the three (vertical) shooter games that Apogee released within a couple of years.  Of the three, Raptor remains the most popular.  There’s many people who still play the game today, and some (myself) that keep hoping for a true sequel.  I’m still friends with the author, and I mention it to him from time to time.  :)

Anyway, this was released on April 1 1994 (again my idea for a release date).  Our marketing at the time played on the fact that we used a dinosaur word – “This ain’t no Dinosaur game”.  In some ways Raptor reminded me of a much updated version of the old Atari 2600 game “River Raid“.

The game still holds up in 2020, it’s a fun game that looks good.  Not every game from this era is still viewed as looking good.  This one does. Raptor has been ported to a few platforms over the years – but none of these ports were by Apogee they were either done by or authorized by the original Raptor author Scott Host.  I am mentioning them here for completeness’ sake.

Here’s the port details:

1999 – Windows (no longer available)
2010 – Windows (newer version, also no longer available)
2010 – iOS (no longer available)
2011 – macOS (available on Mac App Store)
2015 – Windows (still available on Steam)

As a reminder, Apogee/3D Realms has nothing to do with any of these ports, but we do still sell the original 1994 version, which has had a DOSBox shell added to it, so it does run in Windows.

One funny thing about Raptor.  It was the first game we had where there was a trigger based on the computer’s date.  If it was the birthday of some of the developers, the normal Apogee intro music would get replaced with what I called the “Drunk Raptor theme” (they weren’t really drunk).  It was Scott Host and the Raptor team doing their own “interpretation” of the Apogee theme song.   Scott also recently sent me a screenshot of the code from Raptor’s source that triggered all this – I posted it on Twitter.

Finally, you can read the interview I did with Scott Host back in 2006 as part of the Apogee Legacy Interview series.

Current Status: Still available for sale from Apogee Software LLC.
Updates: 1.1 – 1 Jun 1994, 1.2 – 26 Sep 1994
Links: [ Raptor Steam Page | 3DR  Raptor Page | Legacy 3DR Raptor Page ]

Hocus Pocus

Release Date: 1 Jun 1994

Hocus Pocus was written by Mike Voss with his company “Moonlite Software”.  It was the only game he ever did with us.

Hocus is an interesting entry in our archive of scroller games.  This one has a magic theme, and for some reason I never understood, it never got the attention of the others.  I always liked the game and wished it got more attention.  You can rectify that, and check it out – as Apogee/3DR still sells it – see the Hocus page link below.

I did an interview back in 2006 with Mike Voss as part of the Apogee Legacy interview series.  It is still online, you can read it here.

Current Status: Still available for sale from 3D Realms.
Updates: 1.1 – Oct 5, 1994
Links: [ Hocus Pocus Steam Page | 3DR Hocus Pocus Page | Legacy 3DR Hocus Pocus Page ]

Mystic Towers

Release Date: 15 Jul 1994

Mystic Towers was written by Lindsay Whipp and his Animation/FX company.  It is one of the most unique games in the company history due to its isometric game play.  I remember fielding numerous complaints from customers due to the control scheme, since it used a slightly different keyboard layout.   During testing, it took me some time to adjust to it.

It’s the only game I can think of where the lead character farted.  That happened when you did nothing and the character just stood there – something that was in many of our games.  The goal is to lead “Baron Baldric” through a bunch of towers and rid them of monsters.

This game is officially a sequel to an earlier title simply called “Baron Baldric” – the earlier game is not a game Apogee/3DR had anything to do with.  Also, ages ago, I did an interview with Lindsay Whipp who did Mystic Towers.  It is still online, you can read it here.

I did an interview back in 2006 with Lindsay Whipp as part of the Apogee Legacy interview series.  It is still online, you can read it here.

Current Status: Still available for sale from 3D Realms.
Updates: None, but the first public release was 1.1 (there was no 1.0)
Links: [ Mystic Towers Steam Page | 3DR Mystic Towers Page | Legacy 3DR Mystic Towers Page ]

Wacky Wheels

Release Date: 17 Oct 1994

Wacky Wheels was a fun racing game written by Andy Edwardson & Shaun Gadalla of Beavis Soft Software.  It was pretty heavily “inspired” by Mario Kart, and to this day remains a fun game.  It has a sense of humor that not a lot of games do.  I mean, for example, you throw hedgehogs at the other cars during a race.

It was also a historic first in Apogee/3D Realms games.  It was the first game to have a Dopefish cameo.  It’s definitely a game I would love to see ported to modern consoles, but no upgrades, reboots, or changes.  Putting it on the Nintendo Switch “as is” would be badass.

Speaking of that, there was a sequel of sorts in 2015 called “Wacky Wheels HD“.  It was basically the same game, except updated with better visuals.   Apogee/3D Realms had nothing to do with that, and it was also later withdrawn and is no longer available.

I did an interview back in 2006 with Andy Edwardson as part of the Apogee Legacy interview series.  It is still online, you can read it here.

Current Status: Still available for sale from 3D Realms.
Updates: None, but the first public release was 1.1 (there was no 1.0)
Links: [ Wacky Wheels Steam Page | 3DR Wacky Wheels Page | Legacy 3DR Wacky Wheels Page ]

Blake Stone: Planet Strike

Release Date: 28 Oct 1994

Blake Stone: Planet Strike is a sequel to “Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold” from the previous year.  It was written by the same folks who did the original.  Planet Strike had new aliens with new sounds.

It was a similar style release like Spear of Destiny was to Wolfenstein 3D – meaning Planet Strike was the first ever Apogee game in a retail box.  Some of the earlier games (chronologically)  had retail boxes created later on, but Planet Strike was the first one to make an appearance on a shelf.

An interesting story about the box itself.  Given this was our first retail box, we didn’t have a lot of clout in pushing for things.  Two examples of this are the game logo itself, and the girl on the cover art (see photos below).  Both of these things were items decided by the folks at Formgen (who did the heavy lifting of actually making the stuff).  They wanted a girl on there, because they thought it would get people’s attention on the store shelves.  Nevermind there was no girl in the game at all – but they felt it should be on the box.  Additionally, the game’s logo is on the bottom of the box. At the time it was the custom to put the game logos near the top of the box art.  Formgen’s thinking with this was that if they were on the bottom, it would make the game easier to see if retail stores stocked the game on the bottom shelf and you wouldn’t have to contort yourself to read the game’s title down there.  We disagreed with both of those, but lost both battles.

I remember some talk around the time of a third Blake Stone game, but it never came to pass.   An interesting story about the new characters… The designers were up against memory limits and there was no space available to add new sounds for most new characters.  They got around it by taking the sounds for the old characters and play them backwards for a “new” sound.  :)

If there ever is a third Blake Stone game, will the girl finally make an appearance?

Current Status: Still available for sale from Apogee Software LLC.
Updates: 1.01 – 28 Oct 1994 – the only “day one” patch in our history.
Links: [ Planet Strike Steam Page | 3DR Planet Strike Page | Legacy Planet Strike Page ]

Alien Carnage

Release Date: 2 Nov 1994

Alien Carnage is Halloween Harry.   In the fall of 1994, we realized sales for Halloween Harry were not what we thought they should have been, so the decision was made to change the name to the rather generic sounding “Alien Carnage”.  The logic behind this change was that we thought people were thinking the name Halloween Harry made it a Halloween themed game, which it wasn’t. The game itself is unchanged from its time as Halloween Harry, the only change is the title.  In the end, we probably should have left it well alone, as it didn’t significantly impact sales.

One interesting quirk.  The full game had a total of four episodes, and the shareware episode had two, so we gave away a full 50% of the game for free.  However, when we changed the title from Halloween Harry to Alien Carnage, we re-ordered the four episodes, which meant that one of the two we gave away for free with the Alien Carnage shareware episode wasn’t the same that we gave away with the shareware version of Halloween Harry.  So basically if you took the shareware versions of both titles and put ’em together, you had 75% of the full game for free.  Another oddity in the product lineup.

I did an interview back in 2006 with John Passfield as part of the Apogee Legacy interview series.  It is still online, you can read it here.

Current Status: Freeware.
UPDATES: None
Links: [ Freeware – 3DR FTP | 3DR Alien Carnage Page | Legacy 3DR Alien Carnage Page | Internet Archive ]

Boppin’

 

Release Date: 15 Nov 1994

Boppin’ was a fun puzzle game released in the fall of 1994.  It was written by Stephen Lepisto and Jennifer Reitz of Accursed Toys. It was sold in two versions, Basic Boppin’ & Super Boppin’.  The main difference was number of levels in the game.

One of the things I liked most about Boppin was it’s wide variety of game play styles.   Most puzzle games have a basic structure in the puzzles and the objects and characters, but Boppin’ rewrote that quite freely.  The basic game character (you) remained the same, but some of the worlds were wildly different from each other.   I felt it lent quite variety to it.

The name itself comes from something in game that was called “Bopping Blocks”, they were the active parts of the map you would use to solve the puzzles.

The game also had a level editor, where people could make their own levels, but I only ever recall seeing a few of those around the game’s original release.

The authors of the game had a stabbed bleeding teddy bear as their logo, and the 1.1 patch of the game had these things removed by default, as Apogee didn’t agree with that in a puzzle game aimed at kids.  They Boppin authors didn’t agree with our choice here, and that disagreement eventually led to them requesting that we stop selling the game.  We granted the request, so the game was discontinued in the summer of 2001.

The original authors released the game themselves as freeware after updating it to work in Windows.  That release is still available today here.  Please be aware that Apogee/3D Realms has nothing to do with this version.

I managed to get a hold of one of the Boppin team in researching this piece.  I inquired about any additional Boppin materials and they told me there was never another sequel, nor did they make any more levels themselves.  That bums me out a bit, as I always hoped there would be more.  The controversy aside, it was a fun puzzle game.

While the Boppin’ pages have not been on the 3D Realms website in almost 20 years, there is an old archived version from the year 2000 you can view at the Internet Archive.

Current Status: Withdrawn at request of author on 31 Jul 2001.
UPDATES: 1.1 – 9 Dec 1994
Links: [ Archive of Apogee Boppin Page | Internet Archive ]

 

 

Rise of the Triad

Release Date: 21 Dec 1994

This was the first ever game Apogee produced in house.  Prior to this all the games were produced elsewhere, or if in Garland, at someone’s house.  But this was the first ever “in house game”.   So much fun.

Probably my single favorite game we ever released during my time at the company.  For any number of reasons, but one of them was getting to work directly with one of my heroes, Tom Hall.  There were plenty other reasons (the game was fun, was my first and only game where I was a direct developer), but I the primary reason was I REALLY enjoyed working with Tom.

The game had its shareware release right before Christmas in 1994, and the full version shipped in February of 1995.  A couple of extras were released later on.  We released the source code on 20 Dec 2002, and on 15 Feb 2005, we released “The ROTT Goodies Pack”, which was a collection of various extras for the game.

There was an iOS port of Rise of the Triad that came out on 6 Feb 2010, but was later discontinued (due to iOS advances).

This game came out in retail a few months after Blake Stone: Planet Strike did, and we had similar problems with the box art there.  One was the same thing – if you look at the retail box image, the logo was on the bottom – something we still were not in a position to fight.  However, on the print manual, we were able to put the logo where we wanted (on the top).  If you bought the game back in the day, you got one of these manuals.  Formgen let us do that because it wasn’t on the outside of the box.

The other issue with the ROTT packaging was about the art.  In the final version everyone knows, Thi Barrett was on the cover, and her pants were ripped – and she showed a lot of cleavage.  While cleavage is always nice to look at, it had no purpose here, as there was zero sex appeal in the game.  The original version of this image we wanted had no cleavage and no ripped pants, but Formgen made us change the art – they thought it needed to be sexier.  I have a picture somewhere of the original version of the art, but I couldn’t find it for this article.  I did, however find the original art concept that was produced for the game that we rejected and replaced with the art you know – you can see this pre-release art concept here.

Additional: I’m not spending much time talking about the game here, as I’ve written about ROTT a lot elsewhere on this blog. In 2014, I wrote an extremely long piece looking back on Rise of the Triad for its 20th anniversary.  You can read that here.  I also had an additional smaller article the year before in 2013 about the “You Do Not Belong Here” sign/art in Rise of the Triad.  You can read that one here.

UPDATE: After I wrote this section, it was announced during Realms Deep 2020 that Rise of the Triad will be re-released as a Remastered pack.  No info on a date or other materials, but there was a quick reveal trailer by 3D Realms here.

Current Status: Still available for sale from Apogee Software LLC.
Updates: 1.1 – 8 Feb 1995, 1.2 – 17 Feb 1995, 1.2a – 25 Feb 1995, 1.3sw – 8 Aug 1995, 1.3reg – 18 Aug 1995.
Links: [ Source Code – 3DR FTP | 3DR Rise of the Triad Page | Legacy 3DR Rise of the Triad Page | ROTT Goodies Pack ]