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!

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

For many gamers, Duke Nukem 3D represents the very first time we discovered a toilet in a videogame. I honestly can't recall seeing a toilet in a game prior to this. And you never forget your first time. The toilets you're about to see can be found inside the movie theater in the game's opening level. Yes, this was the age of sprites, so the game's urinals, while functioning, appear to be drawn onto the game's walls with an old, dried-out Sharpie. Warning: Brace yourself for the surprise behind Door No. 2.

They also have a video showing the toilet in action. You can check that out here.

The "Duke Nukem Trilogy" will consist of three games (obviously) released one at a time. The first is scheduled to be released in September 2009 on the Nintendo DS & the PSP handheld platforms. Each game has it's own title, the first being "Critical Mass". Each title will have it's own setting, from the future to World War II, etc. While the Trilogy ends with World War II, the first entry, Critical Mass, begins with Duke in the future. The second title, Chain Reaction, puts Duke in the present day. It's not until the last game, Proving Grounds, that the action hero proves his worth in the Second Great War. Release dates for the second and third episodes are not available yet.

The games are currently being shown on the floor at GDC 2009, check out this news report for some thoughts about the games from GDC. You can also read about the game over on Shacknews here and here.

In addition there are previews for Critical Mass online at IGN and at

In other news, Apogee Software has now opened up a contest where you can become the next Duke Nukem. Apogee and it's distributor Deep Silver are running a contest where anyone can enter to be the next Duke Nukem actor. You might remember a guy who used to appear at trade shows as Duke in the late 90's and into the early 2000's. You could be that guy. Here's the details from the website for the search:

We are doing what no one in video games has ever done before. We are searching for the next Duke Nukem action hero. We're reaching out to the fans with a 3 city nationwide search to find the next real life Duke Nukem. Or you can click here to send us a your audition by mail. Deep Silver and Apogee Software are calling on all Duke fans to answer the call, to be The Next Duke Nukem.

We want you to come out and audition to be the next Duke Nukem. The winner will get to travel around the world representing Deep Silver as the new official Duke Nukem and get paid to do it. They will be the new face of the franchise and get to interact with the world like no other iconic video game character ever has.

However, we've been getting requests since then about the remaining titles that we no longer sell. Today we're here to bring the freeware releases full circle, so to speak. Today we are releasing five more games as freeware, and re-releasing three others as well! The one game that is most notable in this release group is Kroz. Kroz was our first ever game, it was the one that founded the company, and got everything rolling back in 1987. Hard to believe our first game is 22 years old now, but that's what was built out of Scott Miller's bedroom in Garland, Texas all those years ago. Here is a complete list of what is being released today:

• Kroz - Our first ever game, a text adventure game by Scott Miller [ download ]
  
• Arctic Adventure - a CGA based scroller game by George Broussard [ download ]
  
• Dark Ages - an EGA based scroller game by Todd Replogle [ download ]
  
• Monuments of Mars - a CGA based scroller by Todd Replogle [ download ]
  
• Pharaoh's Tomb - a CGA based scroller game by George Broussad [ download ]
  

We're also re-releasing some previously released freeware games.

• Beyond the Titanic - Text based Infocom style adventure game by Scott Miller [ download ]
• Supernova - Text based Infocom style adventure game by Scott Miller [ download ]
• Word Whiz - A text based trivia game from Scott Miller [ download ]

The reason we are re-releasing those is because they're being released with source code (under GPL). These were found when we were doing research into Kroz, which is also being released with source code, too!

There were a lot of Kroz games. Seven officially, but many of them had alternate names and variants. There's been a small, but persistant number of requests over the years for the Kroz source code. In the earliest days of the company, we used to actually sell the source code to Kroz (and other titles from that era). We were finally able to make it through the dusty old floppy disk archives in Scott Miller's effects. We found the Kroz source along with the source for these other games, so it's all been GPL'ed, and you can check it all out for free! Kroz has a rather complicated list of games and aliases and whatnot. We strongly suggest reading the readme file that comes with that download.

A few notes about these releases:

• These are all being offered as freeware (which is not to be confused with public domain or the illegal concept of "abandonware"). YOU ARE ON YOUR OWN WITH THESE Do not contact us for help with them, you will be mercilessly ignored.
• Given the ages of these things (the newest one came out in 1990), you almost certainly will need DOSBox to get them running. This is a free third party program that lets you run older DOS based games in newer OS's (especially Vista) when they wouldn't be able to otherwise. You can get that at http://www.dosbox.com.
• A huge thanks go out to two fans who helped out a lot with the restoration of the Kroz archives. This would be Frenkel Smeijers & Jeremy Wrezinski. We probably couldn't have been able to put out the release without their help, as some of the materials we no longer had in our archives. Thanks, guys!

You can download these releases via the links above, or visit our main downloads page where you can check them out as well as everything else we have available.

This bunch of freeware brings our concept of freeware releases to a close. The reason I say that is that of all the games we no longer sell, they've all either been released as freeware previously, or are in this batch (except for one, and that might be revived at a future date, hence no freeware release on that one yet). Unless we discontinue something new in the future, there's no more to come from this well. Make sure and read our games page for a list of freeware, discontinued, and whatnot games. You can also check out our timeline history page for more details as to when what was released.

We want to close out by giving you this really cool little extra. It's a flash based version of the "Kingdoms of Kroz II" game. It was put together by the aforementioned Jeremy Wrezinski and his friend Wayne McMahon. It's quite cool, and we spent some time here playing this for real. A big thanks to Jeremy for letting us host it on our site. It originally appeared on his site at this location.

You can also check out the game on our site at this page, which also includes instructions on playing the game.

P.S. Hi Bryan!

Also in the list is our company. From 1987 through 1996 we used our original name of "Apogee Software" (which has recently been revived, but that's a story for another time). We pioneered shareware distribution in games (something which id Software - also in this list was popular for). Here's what the PC Gamer magazine had to say about us..

Apogee: Episode 1: Birth of a Sales Technique

How long should a demo be? A level? Two levels? Apogee had different ideas. Starting with the concept of "shareware" (try before you buy), they pioneered the idea that a game could be successful by giving out anything up to a third of the full game for free, and encouraging gamers to pass on the disks. This was how Doom was first sold, not to mention Wolfenstein 3D, Duke Nukem 3D, and Traffic Department 2192, which we all remember fondly. Right? Unlike demos, these offered a full game experience from start to finish, and became the standard way for indie developers to get started. Sometimes it backfired when the demo experience was too satisfying to need the rest of the game. Descent suffered heavily from this, and the model was largely phased out when demos could be easily downloaded from the Internet.

It is nice to see our legacy remembered in such a fashion, although the inclusion of Traffic Department 2192 is odd, as it wasn't one of our titles. :) Anyway, go pick up the new issue of the magazine to see the complete list. You can also download all of our old sharware releases from our downloads page. They're pretty much all still available. If you'd like to see a timeline of our releases, you can check out our history page here.

However, one of them was not geared towards LIVE play. This is the replay system from the game. We introduced a feature where when you died, you were able to go back to any point in that level you had previously played up to that point, almost effectively negating the need for traditional save games.

Today we were told that this feature in Duke Arcade has caused the game to be nominated for an award in the "Best Innovation in XBLA" category of the second annual Xbox LIVE Arcade awards. The game is up against some heavyweights as Braid, A Kingdom for Keflings, and N+.

What is different about the awards this time is you will be able to vote for the games yourself. There are instructions on how to vote on Xbox.com here, and the voting period starts on March 3rd.

If you've never checked out Duke Nukem 3D for Xbox LIVE arcade, what are you waiting for? Christmas? You can read more about the game on our website here, and you can also go to Xbox.com and queue up the download for your Xbox 360 online at this link.

Available now is a preview of the game from IGN. You can check it out here. Here's a bit of what they had to say about it...

But definitely put Prey on your radar if you're a hardcore gamer.

Much like previous editions of Prey, the iPhone version has a good time with architecture.

MachineWorks has done a remarkable job with Prey thus far. The texture work is excellent, especially inside the alien ship where you can see an incredible level of detail in the metal panels.

They go into some detail on how the control mechanism transfers from the original PC version to the iPhone. We do not have a release date for it yet, but it's supposed to be shortly. You can check out our archive of screenshots by clicking on the one shot below.

Stay tuned.

• DVD - 1 Disc
• DVD - 2 discs
• Blu-Ray - 2 disc set

All three versions of the release contain both the theatrical and a new, unrated edition of the movie. What exactly is new in terms of movie scenes in the unrated version is not known to us, but if we find that information out, we'll be sure to pass it along.

The standard one disc version will have a commentary from the movie's director, John Moore, production designer Daniel Dorrance, and Visual Effects Supervisor Everett Burrell.

The two disc "special edition" will include all of the above, plus add a picture production featurette (Part 1), a Michelle Payne animated graphic novel, and a digital copy of the film.

The Blu-Ray release will contain all of the info from the standard releases, but will also have English 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio. Further Blu-Ray exclusives are a Walkthroughs & Cheats - Making Max Payne featurette, picture-in-picture interviews with director John Moore, and a Picture Production Featurette (Part 2).

A note: These discs are for sale from Amazon.com's US store. The single and double disc DVD's are Region 1 encoded, and the Blu-Ray is "Region A" encoded.

In the meantime, we head out to Christmas break with this small treat for you. Due to (how shall we say it), "popular demand", here is a new Duke Nukem Forever wallpaper image.

We have several image sizes available. You can click on your selected image size to download the one you want.

Those of you who follow our forums regularly might remember this image turning up in a posting from George's twitter feed. It was used on wrapping paper by Allen Blum in our company gift exchange.

The original trilogy of Commander Keen games came out on December 14, 1990 under the banner title of "Invasion of the Vorticons". One year and one day later, the second trilogy game out under the title of "Goodbye Galaxy" (the third episode came out as a separate commercial release, but we won't quibble about that now). We're here to mark this birthday with a few Keen goodies of recent vintage (and a few that are not):

First is a birthday retrospective by Nova Barlow over at the site The Escapist. This is part of their regular "This Week in Gaming" segment on their site, and speaks of the now 17 and 18 year Keen birthdays that are up now. They cover the original Keen games, Keen Dreams, the second set of games, and even the Gameboy Advance Keen which came out in 2001. It doesn't go into great depth, but it is obvious the person who wrote it really loved the old Keen games. Check it out.

Second is a new image we were told about which takes a quite different slant on Billy Blaze. It's called "Commander Keen: The Undead Return". It was done by Kristof Minneart over at the Australian site "CG Society". It's quite cool, and we showed it around up here as well as letting Tom Hall & John Romero know about it. All thought this was quite cool. You can check out the thumbnail and a local copy here.

That's it for the "new" stuff. Let's turn back the clock a bit.

It was eighteen years ago (on Dec. 14, 1990) that Apogee released id Software's Commander Keen: Invasion of the Vorticons. The story of id started several months earlier when Scott Miller, Apogee's founder, contacted John Romero who worked at Softdisk, Inc. (a company that developed a monthly disk magazine with articles, small utilities and applications, and small games) about the possibility of creating a shareware game that Apogee would release.

As luck would have it, John Carmack, also at Softdisk, had just written an EGA smooth scrolling engine capable of doing Nintendo style platform games like Mario Bros. Romero sent Miller a demo of this technology, and very quickly a deal was struck to develop an original game, Commander Keen.

Tom Hall, also at Softdisk, wrote a brief story about the game, which Miller approved. Part of the approval was id's request for a $3000 advance, which at the time was quite a risk for Miller. In hindsight, of course, it was one of the deals of the century, as id and Apogee also had a publishing relationship for id's next Commander Keen series, as well as Wolfenstein 3-D. The Apogee-id relationship or the early 90's enabled both companies to quickly rise to fame, and earn enough money to avoid signing bad publishing deals with more mainstream publishers.

Click here to see the original proposal from id Software (then known as IFD -- Ideas From the Deep) sent to Apogee for Commander Keen. The four signatures are John Romero, John Carmack, Tom Hall and Lane Roathe.

Here are a few last bits you probably will want to check out. They've both been on our site for some time now, but are worth pointing out. The first is the life story of Commander Keen done in the style of A&E's Biography, or E!'s True Hollywood Story. It's called "Commander Keen: 10 years on". It was done by a fan named Andrew (don't know his last name). It's quite awesome, and includes several pices of original art, and has a fictional history of Billy Blaze (aka Commander Keen). Don't know how else to intro it, so just go and check it out.

The last item is our "real life" Keen 10 year retrospective, originally published in 2001. This tells the real life story of the creation of Keen with input from the original id team responsible for bringing the game to life.

We hope you have enjoyed this short look back at the history of Commander Keen. If you have never played the games, they're still available, actually. The original Keen games have been passed on technology wise, and as such require some help with more modern computers and operating systems (like XP & Vista). You will need to use the third party program DOSBox to get 'em running. Below are a set of links for you to check out to whet your nostalgia whistle.

• Our Page for Keen: Vorticons
• Our Page for Keen: Galaxy
• FTP Download of Shareware for Keen Vorticons
• FTP Download of Shareware for Keen Galaxy
• 3D Realms Online Store Link for Purchasing Keen Vorticons & Galaxy
• DOSBox Home Page - Required to play the game in modern OS's - Free.