Duke Nukem

The Good
In 1991 it would seem like there would be an abundance of platformers. What Apogee did that was so special was that they took everything that was great about scrolling shooters and just packed it all into one game. The story isn't much to brag about. It's there but basically as an excuse to blow up a thousand Tech-Bots before you can kick Dr Proton's ass, again and again. This game is just pure fun. You can blow up a lot of the stuff on screen, including a massive dose of power-ups, and the levels aren't really that frustrating. I rarely got lost. Good graphics for the time as well. Despite being EGA, the graphics still look great today in my opinion. Everything looks like what it's supposed to be.

The Bad
The PC speaker sound effects can be a real pain after a while. Although I'm a fan of PC speaker effects, they are obviously a relic of the past when there wasn't anything more sophisticated available for IBM computers. I think most modern gamers will be put off by it. I think sound-wise, Duke Nukem would have been better on a Sega MegaDrive or a Commodore 64. The controls are a little annoying as the character moves in 8x8 blocks instead of pixel-wise like in most platformers.

The Bottom Line
A fun platformer with a lot of replay value. I highly recommend it.