Duke Nukem

Despite the relative unimportance of those tangents... their commonalities on nukes do lead to somewhere... or something.

But, actually, more on the sense of someone.

Still, who could it be?

Not Nuclear Man, most assuredly. As that man... is strictly DC.

Lo and behold'em, it's really just Duke Nukem.

Top Gun: BVB is only situated at 17/18, after all.

Which means that 18/18 must have been filled.

Beach Stars could only be considered a comic-booking detour, and now the mystery is solved.

Furthermore, beach volleyball in April is considerably out of theme, isn't it?

However, with the Chernobyl anniversary coming up... and with Duke Nukem "coincidentally" popping up... Creed could be said to have redeemed themselves.

Only if one accounts a morbid profiteering off of a disaster to be praiseworthy, of course.

Granted, a question still needs to be asked... about who could this Duke Nukem be?

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He's obviously not a doctor who has changed himself into a radioactive, yellow, and rock-skinned mutant. A representative of the misuse of nuclear power.

Hence, Duke Nukem... probably...

Then again, he's not an Eco-Villain. Or the Thing in a Hawaiian get-up.

He's also not some guy who generates radiation, able to fire off radioactive blasts from his hands, and he's not possessing some sort of X-ray vision.

Making it so that his henchman doesn't have to wear a full-bodied lead hazmat suit to withstand his existence.

Alexander can at least tell people that much...

Not that he'll tell anyone for that matter. Nor would they know about 'Captain Planet and the Planeteers'. Which is that animated show.

This just worked more in his favor.

Unlike Apogee Software, the victim of this plunder, who had to loop some holes to avoid potential problems. Only to find that there was no problem to begin with.

The moral of that brief story would be that Alexander didn't have to go through the awkwardness that is Duke Nukum.

In any case, Duke Nukem.

A straight-out plunder but not really...

The game is set in the year 1997. Dr. Proton is a madman, determined to take over the world with his army of Techbots.

Duke Nukem, the eponymous hero, takes upon the task of stopping him.

The first episode takes place in the devastated city of Los Angeles. Aptly called, 'Shrapnel City'.

In the second episode, Duke chases Dr. Proton to his secret moon base. So... 'Mission: Moonbase'.

In the third episode, Dr. Proton escapes into the future, and Duke pursues him through time to hopefully put an end to his mad schemes. So, episode three is all about being 'Trapped in the Future'.

As for the game's main objective, it's just to get to the exit of each level, while destroying enemies and collecting points.

Be on the lookout for certain achievements in the levels, such as destroying all cameras.

Aside from that, there's many objects onscreen that can be shot... including boxes, obstacles, and blocks.

Besides points, some collectibles include health powerups, gun powerups, and some inventory items with special abilities.

Overall, it's just simply finding and defeating Dr. Proton.

Simple, isn't it?

That's because it isn't any different from how the original Duke Nukem was played out.

Then again, that's just a Wiki-esque description.

Alexander still had his way with some improvements and by the end, one can almost liken it to an almost Mega Man-esque game with quite the half-Contra mix to it.

Perhaps the most obvious disconnect that he did would probably be forgoing the horrendous DOS user interface that takes up more than a quarter of monitors.

Something that plagues most early computer video games.

Of course, for more Duke Nukem uniqueness... all the quotes are recorded and played out.

"Gonna rip 'em a new one" and "Eat shit and die" are just samples of the bunch.

Then again, he may have done some things but it's actually not much. Since he's not really strayed away from what it originally was.

After all, despite Duke Nukem being relatively dull overall, it still has an intriguing status as a special shareware for him.

However, like any other shareware, it was just distributed as a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost.

'Shrapnel City' was mostly free while the next episodes had to be bought.

What made this sort of special in Alexander's perspective is not because of its paltry moneymaking strategy.

Because it really is paltry, why else would he package all three episodes in one game?

Anyways, the focus should be more on the fact that he lifted the 15-dollar expansions or basically just stole 'Mission: Moonbase' and 'Trapped in the Future' with his burgeoning hacking skills...

Ah... to be young and experimental...

Granted, aside from moneymaking strategy, Apogee Software was really paltry at their shareware protection as well.

Making it to be the first of his many coding misdemeanors to come, which is why he's kind of sentimental when it comes to the mediocre Duke Nukem.

Maybe he's not the only one. As far as he could recollect, a number of people look at the early Duke Nukem games with fondness.

Even the widely lambasted Duke Nukem 3D had some fans.

Even more evidence is the onslaught of unappealing Duke Nukem remakes and offerings to follow.

It may be a middling franchise but some people don't really seem to want it to end.

Perhaps that's the charm of Duke Nukem... and maybe it's not just because of the name that rolls off the tongue.

Still, that didn't stop Alexander from thinking about the "improvements" and other routes he could've taken.

This Duke dude wasn't the only blonde Schwarzenegger of video games, after all.

If he wanted, Alexander could have overhauled the whole thing as the close combat-ing Thunder and Fox.

Or revamp it to be like that Riot game by NMK. Which could be mixed in with the same vein game of Spinal Breakers.

Ideas, ideas. With potential... but those could be projects for another day.

Maybe another month.

Could even be another year. Or more.

As far as Alexander's sure of, he held off on having this old MS-DOS game become Creed Games' entry into PC gaming...

It could have been the next step to his goal of All-round Emulation.

With PC, Home Console, and Handheld Parity.

Still, it's best to not be that ambitious just yet. For obvious reasons...

Like how home computers of this era are known to be the worst and introducing Duke Nukem with advanced graphics, smooth gameplay, and magical leaderboards would be too much of a DOS overkill...

IBM, Microsoft, Apple, NeXT, and a couple other giants are just not the kind of entities that he's capable of dealing with... at the moment...

Alexander figured that his plot armor must still be too battered to take on something like that.

At least, he needs to cool down just after bullshitting a whole slew of very, very influential organizations.

Without plot armor, how else would the Creed Chaos Systems with internetworking capabilities even make sense to the intellectuals of the world?

But, who was he kidding? He's no main character nor was he some hero that's favored.

None of his actions and motivations really constitute as morally good or saintly...

Accordingly, he'll just chalk all his conveniences up on the whimsical rationale that the rules of the world could be covering up for the mess that involved Chaos.

Which is really too high a concept to think about... and too much of a jump from the Duke Nukem that this train of thought originally ran with.

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As for something that's truly Duke Nukem related... the general consensus is actually quite scattered on him, or it.

On one hand, with the whole third episode being known to be titled 'Trapped in the Future'... some consider this to be a 'Back to the Future' promotion.

On the other hand, with Duke looking a bit too Schwarzenegg-y... a lot drew connection to the recently-revealed Arnold-starring production of Predator.

On the third hand, many still targeted their attention on the fact that this whole Nukem debacle capitalizes on a major nuclear catastrophe that happened around this time, last year.

Because... this 18th Creed Game is not without controversy, apparently.

It's a great game, like many before it. Yet some say it's only okay...

A few even consider it to be quite bad. Especially the cursing and foul language that the main character regularly lets out.

Sufficed to say, this one was quite divisive and polarizing...

But, regardless, when it comes to sales and numbers, Duke Nukem is a success nonetheless.