Scott Miller’s Post

From my 1982 issue of Electronic Games, this article covers the early dominance of Commodore home computers. I was a Commodore guy, starting with the PET, then the C-64, the the Amiga 1000--all stellar for their time. We no longer live in an era when a new computer would come out with exciting new specs that we'd pour over and dream of all the new possibilities this computer would allow.

Electronic Games ran a reader poll each issue. In Nov 1982, here's their list of the most popular games. A lot of Atari on this list! And Castle Wolfenstein is #4 on the computer games list. Little did they know back then that an unlikely sequel to that game would change the world. John Romero tom hall Apogee Entertainment

The last game Apogee made & released under our OG 3D Realms label (and in collaboration with the amazing Human Head Studio--now part of Bethesda) was the original Prey (2006). Here are few of my Prey keepsakes from that era. Apogee Entertainment

Dec 1994, the first new game to use the Doom engine is released: Heretic. Id Software was the publisher and would mail you the full 3 episode game if you bought it directly from them. Retail publisher GTIS later released a 5 episode version in stores. Several of the dev team on this game would later form Human Head Studio and work with Apogee on making the original Prey (2006). Apogee Entertainment

On Aug 12th, 1996, Carmack posted this plan file update. Even John was unsure whether to call us Apogee or 3D Realms, as by this time we had already released two games under our 3DR label. During this era the FPS market was red hot and publishers were eagerly funding any breakaway group of devs who wanted to form their own studio to make an FPS game--especially devs from studios with super successful releases already (and by this date Apogee had Rise of the Triad and Duke Nukem 3D under our belt). We were definitely sad to lose the talented guys who left to form Hipnotic, like Richard "Levelord" Gray, Robert Atkins and Mark Doctermann (I personally hired Mark and Richard). They soon renamed their studio to Ritual, and made Sin and a few other games. But I never could fault people for going off on their own to be their own bosses. Apogee Entertainment

When we started Max Payne in 1997, I told Remedy I wanted real-time bullet flights rather than instant travel (hitscan) bullets. Then about 18 months later we added bullet-time to the game and when we saw the bullets in flight it was mind-blowingly cool! Remedy Entertainment Plc Apogee Entertainment

More cool art created by ReSaurus, the maker of all of the Duke Nukem 3D action figures in the 90's. Here little piggie piggie... Apogee Entertainment

When Id Software & Apogee released Wolfenstein 3D May 5th 1992, we didn't think it was gonna change the game industry, but it did. The response to this game was simply mind-blowing across the world, from players and press both. It was the start of the Ferrari era, too lol id Software Apogee Entertainment

We made four wallpaper screens to include with Duke Nukem Manhattan Project (my second favorite Duke game). Back in 2002 a good wallpaper size was a 1024 x 768 image. Nowadays that's called a thumbnail. Apogee Entertainment

Some behind the scenes shots of the 1998 TV commercial our publisher (GT Interactive Software) made for Duke Nukem Zero Hour. Anyone know who the Duke actor is? Apogee Entertainment