Duke 3D is 30 years old
Happy 30th birthday to one of the seminal video games of my childhood. The game hasn't aged well in many regards with the misogyny and senseless violence, and the pop culture references that most people wouldn't understand now. Heck, I'm firmly middle aged and didn't know the "chew bubblegum" reference was from a movie when the game first came out.
I could see how some people considered it biting commentary for the time, but it also feels like the devs forgot that they were making a satirical game at certain parts. Cops turn into pigs, got it. But what else was there beyond that? Today it doesn't feel like it landed any real commentary and is mostly a lot of bathroom jokes (but I did like opening the door and killing the alien sitting on the toilet).
The game felt mature in the same way that teenagers thinking drinking and sex is mature. Sure, adults do that stuff, but adults know real maturity is more about budgeting and cooking and retirement planning, or taking care of young kids and aging parents. There was an element of "I shouldn't be playing this because it's too mature for me" that is absent on subsequent playthroughs now that I'm old. And while the first act still holds up really well, many of the others don't.
The Build Engine was a lot of fun and created some incredible verticality in FPS games that I hadn't experienced before, with flying cars and jetpacks galore. I could also blow up a building across the street, actually watch it melt away in real time, and then go explore the rubble for secrets. Certain aspects of the level design felt incredible to me in 1996, and honestly it's still impressive today.*
Duke 3D also came out when I was getting into programming. I bought the Level Design Book and tried my hand at creating new levels, even making one for an English project (what a great excuse to install Duke on a school computer so I could play it during lunch). It also came out when I had limited access to the internet so I could share levels with other people. I always enjoyed making my own levels in Excitebike, but this was a whole new level.
I'm going to celebrate Duke 3D's birthday by playing through the first act tonight, and then maybe I'll dig through the level pack that almost got Sierra sued.
*As an aside, I think there's less interactivity/destructibility in modern FPS games today than there was in the 90s and 2000s. It feels like, even with all of the improvements in engines and processing power, we've left that behind.