Prey Invasion is Live!

In case you missed it, Prey Invasion is now live in the App store and the reviews and buzz so far are outstanding.

Here is official PR Line:

Prey Invasion, the follow-up to the innovative "masterpiece" (Game Informer--9.5/10 rating) console hit, finds Tommy in an all-new adventure on your iPhone and iPod Touch! Tommy takes no prisoners as he plows through new level after level of alien mutations and horrors in search of his girlfriend.

All of the original Prey's innovations are here, including Spirit Walk, Wall Walk and Death Walk. Two fully customizable control schemes are on-board to make your mobile gaming experience a snap, in addition to Prey Invasion's high-performance, super-smooth 3D engine and TapShoot(tm), which allows you to quickly and easily aim and shoot without the frustration of trying to line up your weapon perfectly (a fixed-fire option is available for hardcore players).

Seriously, the TapShoot feature changes the way 3D shooters are played on touch screen devices, removing the frustration of precise aiming, and adding the visceral feel of tapping the screen to mow down enemy targets. Almost assuredly, most future 3D shooters released on the iPhone will copy this feature.

"This is cheap alien-killing fun. No, make that, this is good-looking, cheap alien-killing fun." -- IGN (rated 8/10)

Take a look at these screens -- and yes, this is the iPhone!

Posted by Bryan Turner at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Discuss this story on our forums
News Categories: Prey

3D Realms Online Store overhaul

...bet you thought that Goodbye meant there will be no more updates ever? That was a Goodbye from the development team.

Anyway, I'm here to report on an update I have posted to the 3D Realms online store. As some of you may have noticed, 3D Realms ceased shipping physical product right around the time we posted the Goodbye story. We went to downloads only, and we're here to report that this will remain the same. 3D Realms will no longer ship physical product of any kind. We are however, continuing to make available our older titles via registered download.

Available now in the online store is our new product line of registered downloads, most at new lower prices. This is a complete overhaul, too. It's not just the same files we had in our old store in a new store. All of them have been redone with a new installer, and most importantly a new DOSBox wrapper. Our previous downloads were the original DOS games, which for a lot of people who weren't familiar with the original DOS commands was a difficult thing. DOSBox gets around that, and all of the old games have this included, so you will be able to run them from Windows quite easily. The new installers will install the game through Windows (even works in Vista), and you can click on them with icons, and all that good stuff. :) This was no easy task to rebuild the entire product line like that. A major thanks goes out to former 3DR staffer Joe Siegler for doing all of this on his final two days at 3DR. Also, a big thanks goes to Peter Veenstra from the DOSBox crew for helping out in testing the builds. There's no way this could have come together so quickly without these two guys.

But that's not all! In addition to all the games we previously had in our online store, we've also made some available that we never sold as registered downloads before - or just haven't sold in awhile. New additions to the 3D Realms online store include Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior, Terminal Velocity, Death Rally, & Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project! Also available again after a rather long wait is Balls of Steel! You can buy all of these, plus all the previously available titles by visiting our online store by visiting http://www.buy3drealms.com.

And if that wasn't enough, don't forget that we have released several of our legacy titles in the past via freeware. Check out our list of freeware releases here.

Posted by Bryan Turner at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Discuss this story on our forums
News Categories: About Site

Goodbye

Thanks for being fans and for all your support.

Edit: We've had numerous people inquire as to who is in the photo, so to that, here's a list of who is who in the photo:

SITTING/KNEELING L-R: Chris Cummings, Randy Forsyth, David Riegel, Pat Jones, Pete Knepley, Jay Brushwood, Dave Ratti, George Broussard, Allen Blum, Chris DeSimone, Brian Hook (pink tie), Quinn DelHoyo (GDC shirt), Scott MacLean, Rob "MacGuvyer" Faison, Andrew "Sonic" Kerschner, Bryan Turner, Steve Blackburn, Kaiser the dog.

STANDING L-R: Brian Lawson, John Pollard, James Houska, Andrew Baker, Eric Von Rothkirch, Chris Skelton, Mark Skelton, Gary Buchanan, Kevin Green, Joe Siegler, Rick Huenick, Chris Smith, Ben "Too Happy" Eoff, Trammell "T-ray" Isaac, David Carter, Bryan Brewer, Layne Johnson, Brad Jacobs, John Anderson.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 6:20 PM | Permalink
News Categories: About 3DR / 3DR Staff

Wolfenstein 3D turns 17

Seventeen years ago, Wolfenstein 3D's intial shareware release came out. If you are reading this story, you know the history of Wolfenstein 3D. Authored by id, published through us when we were going by the name "Apogee Software", Wolf3D was responsible for a great number of people and companies doing what they do. The influence of this title goes way beyond what the mere pixels on the screen.

Today the granddaddy of shooters turns 17, as it's original 1.0 shareware release was on May 5, 1992 on the PC - something we still sell to this day!

Since then, the game has been ported to a ton of various consoles and systems. The list includes the Super Nintendo, Atari Jaguar, Macintosh, 3DO, Acorn Archimedes (huh?), Gameboy Advanced, and the Apple IIgs. Most of these ports have long since been out of print, the links above mostly go to Amazon.com where you can try and get a used copy if you're interested.

However, most recently the game was ported to the iPhone by id Software. You can read about the iPhone version over at id Software's website, or you can go straight to the page for it in the iTunes store. In researching this article, this author noticed that the iPhone version is on a special sale right now for just $1.99!. That's a limited time "anniversary price", so you should move on that price quickly. If you have an iPhone, you should check it out.

There were other games, too. Going way WAY back, you have the original "Castle Wolfenstein", and it's sequel, "Beyond Castle Wolfenstein". These were games that originally appeared on the Apple ][ (and later elsewhere). The original game was the major inspiration for Wolfenstein 3D (which is frequently called Castle Wolf3D, which it is NOT really called). Appearing after Wolf3D was a true sequel game, called 'Spear of Destiny" (which had it's own addon packs). There were other titles named "Return to Castle Wolfenstein", "Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory", and most recently, "Wolfenstein RPG", a game for cellphones from id. Plus, in the future is a title merely called "Wolfenstein", so this franchise is not finished yet!

As we were heavily involved in the original all those years ago, we have several things we have lying around which we're bringing to you in celebration of the anniversary.

The first is something called the "Wolfenstein 3D Super Upgrades". The Wolf Super Upgrades was an addon pack for Wolfenstein 3D that we sold during 1994 and 1995. It comprised several addons for the game, including a map editor, multiple hundreds of maps, a random level generator, and some other related items. We originally released this as freeware on May 22, 2006, but we have something new to add here. Today we are releasing a document which we sent to our registered customers back in late 1994 about the Upgrades. In this pdf (which you can download here), you can see the sales letter we sent out, the original order forms, as well as a letter sent to people who bought the game. If you have the old DOS Wolfenstein 3D, check out the Upgrades pack, there's a lot of cool stuff there, and it's free!

Finally, we have a document which was our internal sell sheet for the game back in early 1992. If you want view that, click here. The sell sheet refers to two "trilogies" - this version of the game was long since discontinued, and sold as the more well known "six episode" version of Wolfenstein 3D. A bit of trivia, episodes 4-6 had their own name, "Wolfenstein 3D: The Nocturnal Missions".

As we said earlier, we still sell the original all these years later. You can check out our page for the game, download a shareware version of the game, and buy a classic!

Happy birthday William J. "B.J." Blazkowicz! I guess you're now a Teen Wolf. har har har.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 11:36 AM | Permalink | Discuss this story on our forums
News Categories: The Classic Games

Max Payne 1 & 2 on Xbox Originals

One of the lesser noticed features on Xbox Live is something called "Xbox Originals". This is a feature where complete Xbox 1 games can be downloaded from the Marketplace, and you can play them on your Xbox 360. If you'd like to read more about the details of the originals program, you can do so here. Microsoft used to give this away for free for awhile via "Backwards Compatibility", and that still does work, but they stopped working on free updates to that right about the time that Originals came out on the 360.

Anyway, available now on Xbox Originals are the first two Max Payne games. These games were both released some years ago when the Xbox 1 was the current console from Microsoft. They've been out of print on physical media for some time now. You can occasionally find them for sale cheap still when a store decides to clear out old inventory. But starting now, you can get them any time you want digitally for 1200 Microsoft Points each.

If you click on the two box art images below, you will be taken to each game's respective page on the Xbox LIVE Marketplace. From there you can use another little known, but very cool feature where you can buy the game online, and then the next time you turn on your 360, it will start downloading immediately. That works for anything in the Marketplace online. Check 'em out:

Posted by Joe Siegler at 10:47 AM | Permalink | Discuss this story on our forums
News Categories: Max Payne

Duke Nukem 3D XBLA now on Amazon.com

For those of you who haven't bought Duke Nukem 3D for Xbox Live Arcade, or wished you could buy a copy for a friend, there is a new option available to you.

Effective immediately, you can buy Duke Nukem 3D for Xbox LIVE Arcade via Amazon.com. Amazon has an Xbox LIVE store where you can buy the game through them and you get a coupon code which will allow you to download the game over XBLA. This has a couple of advantages over buying directly through your Xbox 360.

• If you want to buy a copy for a friend, you can do that now.
• You don't have to use "Microsoft Points" (this uses real dollars), so you only have to spend exactly the amount of money you want, not have all those extra points unused in your MS account.
• You can use Amazon.com gift certificates to buy the games.

So if you are in need of Duke Nukem 3D, check out the page for it on Amazon.com, or their entire Xbox LIVE store here.

Posted by Joe Siegler at 4:08 PM | Permalink | Discuss this story on our forums
News Categories: Duke Nukem 3D