This is Part 4 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 1995-1997.

1995 was a historic year, was the first game released under the 3D Realms branding, and also the only time we released a public beta of a game.

Terminal Velocity

Release Date: 1 May 1995

This was the first ever game released under the 3D Realms branding, which at this time hadn’t yet taken over the identity of the company.  It was written by the company Terminal Reality, who was founded by Mark Randel & Brett Combs.   It can be described as a “Combat Flight Simulator”.  That is an interesting term to me, as Mark Randel worked on several Flight Simulator games for Microsoft.

You flew a ship around a planet looking to destroy various targets and other planes.  You could in theory fly around entire planets, but the actual intended game play area was only on parts of the planets.  One level hid a secret message way far away from the action as an easter egg (was a picture of the TRI crew).   Was a fun game that while popular, never became the mega hit we were expecting.  That came with the next 3D Realms game.

Terminal Velocity was also the first game we released that had separate animations (cutscenes?) produced for a compact disc version of the game – also a first for us.  These cinematics weren’t in the floppy disc version of the game.  Additionally, the game used mod music, which we released separately after a time.

The game spawned two sequels, neither of which Apogee/3D Realms had anything to do with.  The first was Fury3, which was basically Terminal Velocity in Windows with different levels.   The second sequel was called Hellbender, which expanded on the game play and changed it up a bit.  Hellbender had Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame in it as the ship’s computer.  Additionally, Fury3 had its own add-on pack called “F!Zone”.  There were all Windows games published through Microsoft – none of which are still available.

Finally, in 2015, original Terminal Velocity programmer Mark Randel released the game on both iOS and Android, along with a third for the Amazon Fire devices, too.  The iOS version appears to be unavailable in 2020, although the other two still are.  We still have an old 2006 interview with Mark Randel online at the Legacy 3D Realms site, too.  (These appear to have been withdrawn as well based on the events of the next paragraph)

UPDATE Mar 2023: The game was re-released again (on 14 Mar 2023), only this time with a new tech update, and not a DOSBox shell around the original 1995 game.  Terminal Velocity was updated to modern tech with widescreen, further draw limits, etc… It was released on Nintendo Switch as well as PC.  The original game is now called “Terminal Velocity Legacy”, and is no longer available.  It has been replaced with a new 2023 edition, titled “Terminal Velocity Boosted Edition”. As of the writing of this update, additional versions will be coming for Xbox & Playstation.  This update was done by the original developer, and published by Ziggurat Games.

Current Status: Original no longer for sale
Updates: 1.1 – 30 May 1995, 1.2 – 7 Jul 1995
Links: [ Terminal Velocity Legacy Steam Page | 3DR Terminal Velocity Page | Legacy 3DR TV Page | TV Mod Music – 3DR FTP ]

Realms of Chaos

Release Date: 11 Nov 1995

Realms of Chaos is a sidescroller game written by Keith Schuler.   If you remember, Keith Schuler did the game Paganitzu with us a few years prior.  In fact, Realms of Chaos started life as a sequel to Paganitzu, when it was titled “Alabama Smith & The Bloodfire Pendant”.   That connection was dropped, although I can’t recall why now – and the game became its own standalone world.

It had a unique game play mechanism, in that you played as both a brother and sister, and the characters could be swapped out during game play at the player’s discretion – each one had different abilities, so it can definitely affect game play strategy.

I asked Keith Schuler why the connection to Paganitzu was dropped, and he responded with this..

I don’t have a good recollection of that, either. If I were to speculate, I’d say that around the time I was working on that, Apogee was shifting entirely away from puzzle games and focusing more on NES-style action games. Meanwhile, if “Alabama Smith” was a brand, then its brand was puzzle games. So, we might’ve decided we wanted to get free of Alabama Smith and create an entirely new brand for an action game.

Alabama Smith and the Bloodfire Pendant also started life as an EGA game, using an EGA scrolling engine. It was the same one that was used for Monster Madness. At some point, Apogee asked me switch to switch from the older EGA engine to a newer VGA scrolling engine they’d developed. This meant all the art in the game had to be redone. I think by then we’d already started shifting to a fantasy setting, but redoing all the art certainly cinched it.

It was one of the last platform games we released, as the winds were changing, and things were starting to dive into big 3D games at this point.

Current Status: Still available for sale from 3D Realms.
Updates: None
Links: [ Realms of Chaos Steam Page | 3DR Realms of Chaos Page | Legacy 3DR Realms of Chaos Page ]

Extreme Rise of the Triad

Release Date: ?? Nov 1995

Extreme Rise of the Triad is a retail product – it is an expansion pack for Rise of the Triad, released a year prior, give or take.  This is essentially a map pack that was created solely by Tom Hall and myself.  Both of us found a bunch of strange tricks we could do with maps since the original game release, so we made a significantly harder map pack.

It got released in retail around Thanksgiving 1995.  The release date is something that as I write this piece I’m still researching.   I know that I mastered the CD on 1 Nov 1995, and the CD’s were printed on 6 Nov 1995, but the actual street date of the retail product is unknown at this time.  I found a newspaper advert from Feb 1996 showing it for sale, so it was absolutely out by then, but no date info there.  After chatting with Tom Hall, it was likely around Thanksgiving (ish) – as we would have wanted to get in on Christmas 1995 sales.

After a time, the EROTT retail pack was discontinued (Nov 1997), and was later released as freeware.  A few years after that, we released the “ROTT Goodies Pack”.  The Goodies pack was basically all the other content that was on the EROTT CD sides the actual EROTT levels themselves.   The EROTT levels were released as freeware on 1 Sep 2000, and the Goodies pack was released as freeware on 15 Feb 2005.

At the time I made this, I had three ex girlfriends immortalized as levels here – their surnames were the names of levels, and one of them I eventually ended up marrying (and still am married to today).   I enjoyed this project more than any other I ever worked on at the company, because it was just Tom Hall and myself on this one – nobody else (since it was just a level pack) – the rest of the team had moved on to other projects by now (mostly the original incarnation of Prey).

Extreme Rise of the Triad was the only game in the entire history of the company that I got a royalty check on.   The majority of what I did in the game was background support and testing.  However, for ROTT I was a game mapper.  In the original game, I only did a handful, but in this one I did a lot more, so I got a royalty check.  Which was really cool for the first few months after being released.  Was cool getting a check like that.  However, EROTT was never promoted too much by us, and it led to the royalty checks dropping off fairly quickly.  After awhile, the last couple of checks were under $2.  George came to me and asked if I’d accept a buyout of my EROTT deal, which I took.   At the rate the checks were declining, I figured out that it would be about 2035 to recoup the amount of money I accepted in my buyout. :)

Much later on, I ran across a series of videos by Youtuber “Psychedelic Eyeball” where he went and reviewed every single level (and a few other things) for Rise of the Triad.  I absolutely loved these videos, as it was direct feedback.  There’s one in particular where he deals with the Warp Only levels in Rise of the Triad, and he goes into detail on my Vomitorium level.  He even does one on the EROTT sequel level, “The Grand Vomitorium”.  I loved this video A LOT, because he fully got and verbalized some of the things I was going for my (admittedly jerk) level design.  I was being a major annoyance to the player, and he took me to task for it in the video.  I LOVED IT!  You can check this video out here.

Current Status: Freeware
Updates: None
Links: [ EROTT Map Pack Freeware | Goodies Pack Freeware ]

 

Xenophage: Alien Bloodsport

Release Date: 29 Dec 1995

Xenophage is a fighting game written by Jason Blochowiak under his “Argo Games” name.   It is the only fighting game we ever produced in the entire history of the company.

It was mostly known for calling characters “Meat” after they were defeated.  Most of the characters were non human to try and differentiate it from other fighting games which were mostly people. I honestly don’t have a lot of memories of this game, because it came out during the leadup and reaction to the next game on this page.

It was the first and only game where we released a formal public beta (although we did use “Early Access” a bunch in the 2010s).  Why we did this I can’t remember now almost 25 years later.  The proper “1.0” version of the game was released on 26 Apr 1996, and there was a 1.1 update in July.  Oddly enough, the shareware version of the July update didn’t come out till December, which likely hampered things not having a demo/shareware out there for so long.

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

Current Status: Freeware.
UPDATES: 1.0 – 26 Apr 1996, 1.1 Reg – ? Jul 1996, 1.1 sw – 6 Dec 1996.
Links: [ Freeware – 3DR FTP | Legacy 3DR Xenophge Page | Internet Archive ]

In the end, it didn’t sell very well, and when we moved headquarters in 2002, we dumped almost all our stock of Xenophage CD’s in the trash.

1996 was the year everything changed.  We released the single most popular and best selling game in our history, and I got married at the end of the year.  A whole lot of fun and changes this year for sure!

Duke Nukem 3D

Release Date: 29 Jan 1996

What more is there to say about this game?   I’m not going to give you any huge special insights here.  The most popular game Apogee/3D Realms ever released – by far.  It’s still a big deal to this day, and very much still popular almost 25 years later.

I worked on this game, but primarily as a tester.  My other connection to the game from a personal level is with the voice of Duke.  For the bulk of the development of this game, Duke’s famous voice was not there.  In the previous Duke game, I was the first/original voice of Duke, and when we decided to give this game a voice, there was some brief discussion of having me be the voice here too.  However, it quickly became apparent that the demands for the voice would outstrip my skillset, so pro voice talent was needed.  Enter Jon St. John – who is perfect for the role. One of the earliest builds had a final boss battle with Dr Proton on the top of a tower, a very thin tower, and that was your big battle.  If you fell off the tower, you’d fall to your death, and since it was a very tall tower, we had this big scream that Duke let out.  That was my only attempt at doing a voice for Duke Nukem 3D before we moved on to Jon St. John.  I wish I still had build of that, as it was something I would replay a lot.  Not just because my voice was there, but I thought it was funny having Duke flail down the side of the building.  Made me laugh.

Much happened post release of this – we had an insane number of pre-orders, we had a live webcam set up in the room we would ship orders from, as it was the last release where we handled all the orders ourselves.  It was available in retail stores, but this was pretty much the end of our focus as ourselves as the primary sales point.  After this, we focused more on the retail market.  Shipping all those orders internally was so much fun.   We had lan parties (we even made an appearance as a company at one), so much fan artwork – it was the creative and sales high point of the company during my time there.

Updates: There were several updates to this game.  The first couple were the usual maintenance updates.  The initial shareware had some updates, and when we got to v1.3 of the game, I suggested calling it “v1.3d” to line up with the overall game’s name, and that was adopted.  v1.3d was the first version where we shipped the full version.  After that, we started working on an add on pack for the game.  We’ve done that kind of thing before (Wolfenstein 3D & Spear of Destiny, Blake Stone & Planet Strike), so that concept is not new.  What *WAS* new here is that the update was produced as a patch for the base game.  Spear of Destiny and Planet Strike were standalone products that did not require the original.  The 1.4 update for Duke3D that added a fourth episode DID require the original.  We created a patch which was sold as a retail product – that patch was called “The Plutonium PAK’.  After using that patch, your v1.3d registered game would be upgraded to 1.4, and the resultant game was now called “The Atomic Edition”.  There’s been some confusion over the naming of these things over the years, but this was the deal – the patch that upgraded you to The Atomic Edition was called “The Plutonium PAK”.  There was a later patch produced, a v1.5 update – but it didn’t add anything else, it was just bug fixes.

Other versions: The game was ported to a crap ton of various systems and consoles.  Most of them will have their own entries on this page, but one I wanted to mention here was the Mac version, which was released on 25 May 1997.  We had nothing to do with this port.  Duke Nukem 3D was also packed in with some other games (like a Duke3D/Shadow Warrior bundle we had for awhile), there were many updates and addons produced for the retail market.   We even had a retail shareware box, which was just Episode 1 in a box.  There was a screensaver sold in retail, there were add-on packs (like Nuclear Winter) that weren’t actually from us.  Duke was all over the place in 1996.

More recently: This game, along with the other Duke Nukem games became property of Gearbox Software in 2010, and as such, they control distribution at this point.  The original is no longer available, however, they did produce a “Duke Nukem 3D: 20th Anniversary World Tour Edition” game.   This took the existing 1.5 game, and produced a brand new fifth episode for the game.  They brought back several of the original developers to do it – Allen Blum, Levelord, & Lee Jackson.  It was quite fun, and really felt like we had produced it back in 1996.  That version came out on Steam, Xbox One, PS4, & the Nintendo Switch.  That is the only version of Duke Nukem 3D that is still available in 2020.  The World Tour version was released originally on Steam/Xbox/PS4 on 11 Oct 2016.  The Switch version was released on 23 Jun, 2020. If you’ve never checked it out, you should – it really captures the feel of the original game well, while adding something new to fans of the original.

One cute note – exactly one year to the day (29 Jan 1997), we released an early beta of Duke Nukem 3D under the title of “LameDuke”, as we thought fans would get a kick out of seeing how far the game had come for the final release.

There were a couple of iOS ports of the game made, too.  The iPhone variant was released on 11 Aug 2009, and an iPad specific version was released on 1 Apr 2010.  Both were discontinued a long time ago mostly due to their iOS versions being supplanted by newer versions, and the old builds no longer worked.  There was an additional Android port of Duke Nukem 3D released on 1 Nov 2011.

To sum up, it was a hellaciously fun game to work on, release, and watch the reaction to.  While Rise of the Triad might be my favorite overall game (as a game) we ever released, nothing was as big as Duke Nukem 3D, and nothing was as well remembered today.

Current Status: Unavailable in original form, rights owned by Gearbox.  See above.
UPDATES: 1.1 – 20 Feb, 1.3d – 24 Apr, 1.4 – Nov 27, 1.5 – 12 Dec
Links: [ 3DR Duke Nukem 3D page | Legacy Duke Nukem 3D Page | Gearbox World Tour Page ]

World Tour Purchase Links: [ PC/Steam | Xbox One | Playstation 4 | Nintendo Switch ]

Death Rally

Release Date: 6 Sep 1996

This was the first game we collaborated with Remedy games on.  They’re more well known for larger story based games now, but their first was Death Rally.  This was a fun top down car racing game.  It was perhaps not what we were known for, but remains one of my personally well remembered titles.   Probably because it was different.  This was the first thing we released after Duke Nukem 3D, and we kind of needed a palate cleanser of sorts.  Speaking of Duke Nukem, it was because of the popularity of Duke at this time that we decided to stick Duke Nukem in the game as a driver.   He was hard to beat, too.  :)

Had the traditional tropes of a racing game.  Make money for winning the game, use money to upgrade car, more races, better drivers, etc…    There’s not a ton of depth to that explanation, but that’s the core of the game, really.

The game was eventually made freeware by Remedy, and is available for download over on Steam.   I’m not sure of the exact date of this, but it appears to have been done around 29 Jul 2015.   The game was made available on Steam first on 5 May 2014, however.

There was a remake of the game in 2012 by Remedy as well (which we had nothing to do with).  The remake is more or less the same game, but with wildly upgraded graphics.  It’s still available today, and is really cheap.  Check it out on the Steam store here. The remake was released on 3 Aug 2012.

A side note, the game had two names before we settled on Death Rally.  The earlier names were “HiSpeed” and “Death Race”.  When Remedy had their 20th anniversary as a company a few years back, I dug up all the old logos (both the game and the company) and sent them out on Twitter.  Here’s the image I used showing all the old logos.

Finally, my interview with Petri Jarvilehto (then of Remedy) is still available on the 3D Realms Legacy site.

Current Status: Freeware
UPDATES: 1.1 – 1 Oct 1996
Links: [ Steam Death Rally (Classic) Page | 3DR Death Rally page | Legacy 3DR Death Rally Page ]

Stargunner

Release Date: 19 Nov 1996

This was the last game we released under the Apogee Software name, and the third in our (unrelated) shooter trilogy (not really).  This one was written by a team in Australia, led by David Pevreal.  David himself referred to the game thusly.. “Stargunner was an attempt to faithfully bring to life on the PC a style of game seen most commonly on the Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga throughout the 80’s; the good old days.”

A cute little factoid, when you go into the shop in the game to upgrade your ship, you’ll hear a piece of music.  In that music is a voice that talks. The voice that says “Spend MORE money!” in the ship accessories store is actually that of former President Bill Clinton, sped up so as to be unrecognizable.

I wrote about Stargunner a few years back on this blog, spending some time talking about the music for the game – including the original versions of the game where the developers sung – yes SUNG – a Stargunner theme tune.  Please, check out that article, too.  Finally, I had a credit for graphic design on this game in the manual – that was because I helped out a bit putting the manual together for this game.   You can view the manual on the legacy 3D Realms site.

The game was released as freeware on 22 Jun 2005.

Current Status: Freeware
UPDATES: 1.1 – 21 Feb 1997, 1.1 Reg – 11 Apr 1997
Links: [  Freeware – 3D Realms FTP | 3DR Stargunner page | Legacy 3DR Stargunner Page ]

1997 was the year that things started slowing down.  We didn’t have nearly as many new titles this year, and the Duke Nukem ports started showing up.  It was also the first year of internal development of Duke Nukem Forever, and Prey development was ongoing.   Those two games run through many years after this one.  :)

Shadow Warrior

Release Date: 13 May 1997

Shadow Warrior was our next internally developed game, this one led by Frank Maddin & Jim Norwood, both Apogee veterans in the past.  People wondered what we’d do next after Duke Nukem 3D, and this was it.  Shadow Warrior.    My personal perception was that it was Duke Nukem with a very eastern stereotype.

About the only thing I didn’t really care for in Shadow Warrior was the fact that it had a nuclear weapon as a weapon.  I mean I used it a lot when Deathmatching in the game, but it always felt like a weapon we should have had in Duke Nukem, and not Shadow Warrior.

This game had a lot of my friends work on it, too, so it holds a more personal feel than Duke Nukem did.  I felt more invested in Shadow Warrior, and once it got out and was being attacked for racial stereotypes, I felt more defensive of the product.

It never did the business we had hoped it would, but I thought it expanded on the concepts laid out in Duke3D in game play, level design, puzzles, and the like.  I always hoped we’d get a sequel to it, and that never happened.  There were a couple of expansion packs, but that’s not the same as a proper sequel.

There was a Mac version of Shadow Warrior released, but we didn’t do that.  It came out on 1 Oct 1997.  There were also two 3DFX patches produced for the PC game.  Those were released on 23 Nov 1997, and 27 Feb 1998.  The latter being an updated version.

There was also an iOS version of Shadow Warrior produced (by “General Arcade”). It was released on 19 Dec 2012, and updated to v1.1 on 21 Jan 2013. It was later discontinued, and is no longer available.  Apogee/3D Realms didn’t have anything to do with this version.

On 1 Apr 2005, 3D Realms released the source code for Shadow Warrior.  It is still available on our FTP site.

Much later on, Devolver Digital licensed the rights to Shadow Warrior and Flying Wild Hog put out a remake/reboot of the game, titled simply “Shadow Warrior“.  That was released on 26 Sep 2013.  After that game came out, Devolver purchased the Shadow Warrior IP from 3D Realms on 10 Dec 2014, and produced another one, “Shadow Warrior 2“, which was released on 13 Oct 2016.  Both were well received, and a third is under production now to be released in 2021 (Shadow Warrior 3).  I’ve played the first two, and they’re darned good games, you should check ’em out.

Devolver still has the original Shadow Warrior available for free, but they also have an enhanced version with some additional features and extras also available.  The latter is called “Shadow Warrior Classic Redux”.  It has remastered visuals, a remixed main theme, it includes the two original expansion packs, and compatibility with modern gaming PCs.  You can check out the Redux version here.

One fun little thing.  Back in the 90’s Lee Jackson wrote a song called “Lo Wang’s Rap” in which he pieced together Lo Wang speak into a rap.  It’s still darned funny now.  We have an MP3 of it on the 3DR FTP site, it is available on Youtube.  Finally, Lee earlier this year told a story of the song’s creation on his Facebook group.  Check all this stuff out.

Additional: A little over three years ago, I wrote an article about Shadow Warrior for its then 20th anniversary.  You can read that here.

Current Status: Still available for free, but not from 3D Realms
UPDATES: 1.1 – 26 May, 1.2 – 3 Sep
Links: [ 3DR FTP – Source Code | Shadow Warrior Steam Page | 3DR Shadow Warrior page | Legacy 3DR SW Page ]

Duke Nukem 64

Release Date: 16 Nov 1997

This was the first of the Duke Nukem 3D console ports.  There was quite a few of them.  3D Realms didn’t do any of them directly, they were all licensed out to various console makers.  In this instance, it was Eurocom who made this port for the Nintendo 64.

Given it was Nintendo at this time, a lot of things in the game were changed.  First off, the music was gone because of memory restrictions.  Many things from the source material were renamed or just removed due to drug and sex references.   Jon St. John re-recorded some lines to remove profanity in DukeSpeak.   Here’s some detail from our old page on this game:

• 32 graphically enhanced levels that maximize the advanced power of the Nintendo 64 system, each with a totally new layout and architecture never before seen in any other version.
• New, never before seen, bigger, meaner than ever, weapons, bad guys, and enemy bosses.
  Full 3-D modeled characters for improved graphic realism.
• 2, 3, or 4-player multiplayer split-screen action featuring deathmatch, Co-op, team play, and all-new “meltdown” mode– a multiplayer death-race to the end of each level.
• Fully compatible with the new Nintendo Rumble Pak force feedback joystick.

Current Status: Unavailable, rights owned by Gearbox.
UPDATES: N/A
Links: [ Amazon.com Page | Legacy 3DR Console Ports Page ]

Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown

Release Date: 8 Dec 1997

Duke Nukem Total Meltdown was a port of Duke Nukem 3D for the Playstation 1 console.  It was written by Nick Pelling (aka Aardvark Software).   It had the first three of the original Duke Nukem 3D episodes, plus an exclusive fourth episode called “Plug ‘n’ Pray”.  The new episode had six levels and its own secret level.

There were also several new enemies, including three new types of Pig Cops, and a new final boss, the CyberKeef. This version also features remixed music, some rearranged from the PC version, and some original, in streaming XA-Audio made by Mark Knight.  It includes support for analog pads and the PlayStation Link Cable.

I have a copy of this, but it’s just a CD, so there’s little to be gained by posting a picture.   As with all the other Duke Nukem console games, it’s been out of print for a VERY long time now.

Current Status: Unavailable, rights owned by Gearbox.
UPDATES: N/A
Links: [ Amazon.com Page | Legacy 3DR Console Ports Page ]

Balls of Steel

Release Date: 12 Dec 1997

Back on 4 Feb 1997, we announced a new “dba” name for the company, it was “Pinball Wizards”.  This was the exact same concept we did two years prior with the “3D Realms” name.   The only game we ever released under the Pinball Wizards name is this one, “Balls of Steel”.  It was written by Wildfire Studios in Australia.  This was the first proper Windows game we ever released – everything else was DOS up until this point.

The game as originally designed had five tables, but not the same five tables that were in the version we released.  The five released tables were: Darkside, Barbarian, Firestorm, Mutation, & Duke Nukem.  In the original design, Duke Nukem was not a table, the fifth was to be “Devil’s Island”.  However, given this game was developed in the post Duke Nukem 3D mania, Wildfire and Apogee/3DR decided to make a Duke Nukem table.  The Devil’s Island table was removed from the game for Duke.  We released this much in the same way we did our shareware games from the past, the entire Darkside table was given away for free.  The remaining four you got when you purchased the game.

The Duke table was quite fun, actually, as Duke characters would run out on the table, you’d hit them with pinballs, and they’d go “splat”.  This stuff made us be the first pinball game with a violence rating (maybe still the only one?)  In addition, Jon St. John recorded some new voice work for this table, including the amusingly funny “Now I DO have time to play with myself” (a reference back to Duke Nukem 3D).   The Duke table wasn’t the only fun table, though.  The others were all good too – each with a very unique theme.  While it’s the same pinball engine, the various tables are all different, so you get a very different feel playing all of them.  I always thought that was a great selling point.

Later on, Wildfire released the Devil’s Island table on their own.  Apogee/3DR has nothing to do with the independent release of Devil’s Island.

As time went on the game developed some tech problems with more modern systems, and was eventually discontinued due to that.  There was a user patch made available which solved some of the problems, but the “as sold” game had some issues, so it was withdrawn.  In 2020, none of the tables are available anymore, nor have they been made available as freeware.  Copyright is still retained on these titles.

I did an interview with Darren Baker of Wildfire as part of the 2006 interview series for the Legacy 3D Realms Site.

One fun thing – we had used the name “Balls of Steel” in a pinball machine way back in the original Hollywood Holocaust level of Duke Nukem 3D in Jan 1996.  Here’s a picture.

UPDATE Jan 2024:

On 30 Jan 2024, Balls of Steel was re-released, but by Atari.  According to this tweet by Scott Miller, the original developer (Wildfire) was granted full rights to the IP some time ago.  It was re-released by Atari on Steam for Windows (news update).  The Duke Nukem table was not included, but the other four from the 90’s release (Barbarian, Darkside, Firestorm, Mutation) as well as the extra table (Devil’s Island) are.  Additonally, they added two new tables based on Atari properties (Centipede & Missile Command) – all for $9.  Not a bad deal at all.

Current Status: Available from Atari. Pinball Wizards (1997): Withdrawn, but NOT freeware
UPDATES: 1.1 – 10 Feb 1998, 1.2 – 14 Apr 1999, 1.3 – 9 Apr 2001
Links: [ Legacy 3D Realms Balls of Steel Page | Atari Page | Steam ]