New Version of the Apogee / 3DR FAQ Online

Which of these games used to be Apogee projects?

* Doom
* Descent
* Cyril Cyberpunk

Did you know that these games had other names during development?

* Death Rally (Hi-Speed)
* Rise of the Triad (Wolfenstein 3D Part II)
* Major Stryker (Strike Force)
* Terminal Velocity (Velocity Brawl)
* Raptor (Mercenary 2029)
* Shadow Warrior (Ninja Master)
* Realms of Chaos actually was the third name for that project!

Answers to these questions, and many many others are available right now in the the Apogee / 3D Realms FAQ. Written by Apogee fan Sam Stoddard, this FAQ is the single best source of information available about us, our people, and our games. The first version came out in August of 1994, and it's been updated with our games and projects ever since - a special thanks to Sam goes out for continuing the work on this FAQ all these years. This new version, v7.2 can be found in our FAQ area. There you can find a link to a text version of the FAQ, as well as an HTML version of the FAQ on Sam's servers.

Here's some other other information covered in the FAQ:

* What's the difference between Duke Nukem & Duke Nukum?
* "Call Apogee & say Aardwolf" - What's that?
* Who designed each of the 176 officially released Rise of the Triad levels?
* What do Fury3, Microsoft, & Hellbender have to do with Terminal Velocity?
* Was there really a v1.3 of Wolfenstein 3D?
* What was Duke Nukem: Endangered Species Hunter?
* What was the name of the abandoned RPG that Apogee was working on for awhile?

If you've ever played any of our games, or if you've ever wondered "Why is that?" - then you owe it to yourself to check out the Apogee FAQ today. Spend some time and read it all, you'll be amazed at the amount of information in here.

BTW, all the games listed in the first question used to be our games at some point. The FAQ will tell you a little about that.

NOTE: Please take care to note that this FAQ is not ours. It's not written by us. We just host it on our site as a convienence. And no, DNF is not cancelled - to those who wrote in regarding that in the FAQ, make sure and read closer (Hello Apache). :)

Posted by Joe Siegler at 2:02 PM

Max Payne Fan Video Updated

A couple of years back, we were sent a fan video made about Max Payne entitled "Max Payne Hero". At the time we thought this was a fabulous video (and still do). However, recently we got another email from Chris Chen, the video's creator saying he had updated it. Here's what he told us about the update:

I want to let you know, in case you're interested, that I've always wanted to incorporate as much of the Max Payne game as I could into my short film and in my spare time, I revisited Max Payne: Hero and added some dialogue & sound FX straight from the game.

Since my previous webhost had limited bandwidth, numerous downtimes, and lost emails, I just switched to a new webhost and now the movie is available straight from my homepage in the Download section.

You can download the movie in multiple sizes and in various formats such as:

- Quicktime 7
- Quicktime
- Windows Media
- Sony PSP

We thought you'd be interested in this update. If you liked Max Payne, go check out Chris' work at the video's homepage, http://www.maxpaynehero.com. If you'd like to read a little background on the video, check out our news story on the original release back from March of 2003.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 1:45 PM

Wanton Destruction for Shadow Warrior Released!

Over the years we've been asked several times whatever happened to the Shadow Warrior add-on pack, Wanton Destruction. This add-on was produced by a company called Sunstorm (featuring DNF developer Charlie Wiederhold). The add-on was completed, but then shelved by the distributor. It wasn't our choice, and it wasn't Sunstorm's choice. So the product sat. Eventually Sunstorm went out of business, and the product essentially died. As time went by, we at 3D Realms had thought the product was lost. We never had a copy ourselves of the add-on, and with the company non existent, the chances of releasing it were pretty much zero. We tried to locate it a few times over the years, but pretty much gave up hope, and wrote it off.

Fast forward to this Monday, and we get an email from Anthony Campiti, the former President of Sunstorm. Anthony tells us that he discovered a CD called "Add-on Archive 1". Much to his surprise (and ours), this CD contained the completed version of the Wanton Destruction add-on. A few emails were exchanged, and a CD arrived at 3D Realms HQ on Thursday afternoon with the materials!

So now we bring the file to you. Available now for download after having been thought lost all these years is the Wanton Destruction add-on for Shadow Warrior. If you still have your copy of the registered version of Shadow Warrior (that is required), fire it up, as there's some new stuff to check out. You can download the add-on from the links below. If you don't have a copy of Shadow Warrior, and want one, we still sell it, you can get one at our online store here, or you can just read more about Shadow Warrior here. In honor of the release of Wanton Destruction, we've reduced the price of Shadow Warrior from it's previous $19.95 to $10, so if you were thinking about it, now's the time!

Here's a few (newly written) words about the add-on from both Anthony & Charlie (then of Sunstorm) about Wanton Destruction:

Anthony Campiti: When Shadow Warrior was released, it quickly became the favorite game in the office. Who could forget those damn sticky bombs! When we were given the chance to create an add-on for SW, we jumped in determined to make it the best add-on product on the market. Our level designers did incredible work and stretched the limits of the BUILD engine.

Unfortunately, due to various circumstances Wanton Destruction was never released. Years went by and we moved onto dozens of other projects. But, recently I was going through our software archives and I found a CD-R labeled 'Add-on Archive 1'. I'm happy to say it includes a complete archive of the Wanton Destruction project. I quickly sent and email to 3DRealms so they could get into the hands of the Shadow Warrior fans! Enjoy more Lo Wang!

---

Charlie Wiederhold: "I want to thank Anthony Campiti (who founded Sunstorm Interactive and gave me my first professional gig in the industry) for finding and passing along a CD of Wanton Destruction he found recently. We've been looking high and Lo for it for years but it seemed lost to the ages. I personally think this is the best Build Engine add-on Sunstorm ever produced and I was always sad the Shadow Warrior fans never got to enjoy it.

Duke It Out in DC, Duke Carribean and Cryptic Passage were all created by a handful of people (literally, you could count them all on one hand). In 1997 Sunstorm was contracted to do two add-ons at the same time, so we decided to hire level designers from the Build community as contractors for the majority of the levels and Robert Travis and I worked with these designers to pull the whole thing together. When you read the credits list you might recognize a couple of them as they have gone on to professional careers in the gaming industry.

The Wanton Destruction add-on was completed and approved by 3D Realms, but unfortunately didn't go any farther. Shadow Warrior was a dream to build levels for so I'm happy that the work all the designers put into it will finally see the light of day. Even if a little late. Enjoy!

Here are the download links for the Wanton Destruction addon. We hope you enjoy it!

• 3D Gamers
  
• Fileshack
  
• Fileplanet
  
• Worthplaying
  

Please note that this add-on requires an unmodified v1.2 registered version of Shadow Warrior. In other words, if you're using the JonoF Windows port, you'll need to have the original DOS game available in order to get this installed.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 5:10 PM