And that's because I was the prime mover of both Apogee and 3D Realms, signed & funded every game, and helped co-design them all. But the reality is that only Apogee can legitimately make the claim that we were involved with all of the hit games from the past. This new 3D Realms still claims a connection to the old hits, of course, because those older hits carry a lot of clout. You won't find their name in any credits for games from the 90's or 2000's, and they had nothing to do with the making or the release of any of those classic hit games. So, now I'm no longer with the Denmark group, and the people running and managing the new 3D Realms currently have no connection to the past history of Apogee. Later in the year, 3D Realms was purchased by the Embracer Group. Apogee was then renamed to Apogee Entertainment. The rights to the Apogee name were returned to myself and my Apogee partner, Terry Nagy. I continued to work with this new management team who was based in Denmark. (3D Realms was never a legally formed company.)ģD Realms was purchased by an investor in Denmark in 2014, with the idea of continuing to make games using the 3D Realms label. I didn't consider this a great name, btw, but back then 800 numbers were super important for people ordering our games directly from us, and so I wanted a name that also worked as an 800 number, and of all the names I wanted to use only 800-3DREALMS was available, so that's the name that was chosen and trademarked by us as our new label.Īnd from that point we began using 3D Realms for our big 3D releases, like Duke Nukem 3D, Terminal Velocity, Shadow Warrior, Blood (which we sold to Monolith during it's production), Descent (we sold the rights to Interplay during production), Max Payne and Prey.īut really, all along, the company was still legally Apogee Software, and 3D Realms was a trademarked marketing label that we used. During development, they chose to call themselves, Id Software.Īpogee went on to release dozens of games via shareware and in retail, including Duke Nukem, Raptor, Rise of the Triad and Wolfenstein 3D.īut it was clear that the gaming industry was moving in the direction of 3D games, so I wanted to create a new label to reflect this, and I came up with 3D Realms. I co-funded their first game, Commander Keen, and it was released in Dec 1990 after about 3 months of development. Shareware basically meant: release online, which at the time hardly anyone was doing back then, pre-world wide web. I officially launched Apogee Software back in 1990, and during that time I contacted some developers working at Softdisc magazine and proposed the idea of them creating a game for Apogee to release as shareware. I'm seeing numerous comments from people trying to understand the difference between 3D Realms and Apogee, especially since both companies lay claim to the same list of hit games, like Duke, Max and Prey.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |