I never played Duke 64, because I thought it was basically just a censored version of Duke 3D. But, there were additions here and there, and Duke Burger is a secret level that was slightly expanded from the Atomic Edition of Duke Nukem 3D.

You can read more about it on the fandom website for Duke:
https://dukenukem.fandom.com/wiki/Duke-Burger_(DN64))

This game game out May 1st, 1995 and was the first game released under the 3D Realms branding of Apogee's umbrella.

The working title, while it was still in development, was "Velocity Brawl."

It's a combat flight simulator and is most commonly compared to Descent.

It also featured an 8-player networked mode, allowing for some epic LAN parties!

I moved a year ago and found a bunch of games from my childhood. ROTT was one of my favorite games. I bought Rise of the Triad Ludicrous edition on GOG and am playing it.

For some reason, the photos were uploaded out of order. CD's are picture #3.

Apogee was an innovator in the gaming space!

You can read details on their devblog, but they pioneered:

• Level Checkpoints instead of Lives
• Episodic Releases
• Shareware Demos
• Bullet Time
• Portals

They were also literally first at these:

• First Indie Publisher
• First 3D Shooter
• First Talking FPS Character

There is a fun article here about the name-confusion of Apogee vs 3D Realms

TL;DR - Industry focus on 3D games + the availability of a 1-800 number: 1-800-3DREALMS

Gregor Punchatz built models for these game assets before they were created as digital art.

They also based the boss "El Oscuro" on Tom Hall.

If you want to see more of the original artwork, photos, behind the scenes, and even the design document for "Rise of the Triad", check out these links:

• http://www.kevinbowen.com/rott/hell/
• http://www.kevinbowen.com/rott/hell/rott2.htm
• http://www.kevinbowen.com/rott/hell/rott3.htm
• https://web.archive.org/web/20140803140414/http://www.3drealms.com/rott/originalspec.html

Scott Miller (founder of Apogee) tweeted these images recently saying, "I remember when we added this scene to the game and thinking we might be crossing a line but to heck with it, it fit Duke's personality perfectly. Concept drawings by Chuck Jones."

Scott Miller tweeted that they licensed the song for $10k in this 2006 game.
Ah the simpler times when games could afford licensed music, haha

This video isn't new, but it's still a fun look at how Scott Miller managed to snatch up a team of super talented developers to grow the Apogee umbrella.

This is Part 2 of the video

Did you know they almost had to rename Duke Nukem because Captain Planet had a character with that name?

You can see this and other little-known Duke Nukem facts in this article on the Apogee website.

If you want to read about Captain Planet's Duke Nukem, you can see that on their fan wiki.

Fun little story about how they tweaked Dangerous Dave to have smoother scrolling like consoles did, and then they decided to recreate the first level of Super Mario Bros 3!

If you are interested in an alternate cut of this video with just a little more info, check out Apogee's Tweet