Discussion
There are games that can stand the test of time because of their design – Super Mario Bros., Tetris, and Pac-Man by example. There are those that can weather the decades due to a great sense of humor, like Maniac Mansion, Monkey Island, and the like. For some games however, survival is based on a simpler platform – boobs and dick jokes.

Thus, the legacy of Duke Nukem was born, and eternally retold.

Now, we can safely side-step all the Duke Nukem Forever jokes since, for the love of god, that is finally coming out. The real question though is, for that game to be mired that far down in lore, comedy, and controversy, how well does it’s source material hold up? The truth is rather surprising.

Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown on the PlayStation, and Duke Nukem 3D on the Saturn are probably one of the best examples of how bizarre game play design can still function perfectly in the modern era. This game was a sequel to Duke Nukem II on the personal computers, which were actually 2D side scrolling games. The ship that Duke crash-lands and ejects from in the beginning of this game was the one he stole from the defeated aliens in II. From there, it’s all about kickin’ some alien ass.

With the 3D element added in at the time, the problem of control comes into play. With the console versions, in order for Duke to look up or down, you would have had to hold the shoulder buttons, since dual analog control for first person shooters hadn’t truly kicked in yet. The catch though – is that you technically don’t need it during shoot-outs. The game is programmed to auto-aim at anyone out of Duke’s forward view. Meaning if you’re looking at a guy on a crate, and your reticule is on the crate below him, when you fire, you’ll hit the target, not the crate. While it may seem cheating at first, it helps immensely with characters in flying cars or partially obscured by level elements. It also allows you to strafe more often, which is always nice in the game’s open areas. Ironically, this lack of required angle changing allows you to then spend your time looking around for the game’s many secret areas.

This is actually where the game’s legacy can come into question depending on how you like your secrets. Like Doom and other games at the time, Duke’s secret areas are mix of coy hints and completely wild guesses. By example – in the first level, you can leap onto a crate, and then with some quick looks realize you can hop a building’s edge to another building ledge and discover an RPG. Yet, a level or two later, you need to know which random bookshelf to go up to and hit the action button. This randomness includes in-game items, like Access Cards. I was stuck for about 20 minutes in the bar level when I realized I had to Action a counter and then kneel down to grab the card hidden in the bar’s lower cabinets. Combine that with the game’s peculiar level design (blowing up a building just to find an Access Card) and the trip down memory lane can be either confusing or enlightening.

What hasn’t changed over the years is the game’s bizarre sense of difficulty in terms of damage ratios. I tried both versions on the hardest setting and got stomped on from all sides. If there are even just two characters on screen, death is swift and unforgiving. I had to use the Saturn’s built in God Mode and a PlayStation GameShark cheat just to play through for the screenshots. I suck at video games, okay? : ) If you hang around the Medium difficulty settings, the game can becomes a challenging, not frustrating experience.

With the Sega Saturn version, Lobotomy basically started from the ground up, redoing the game on their SlaveDriver engine. This move has both positives and negatives, but the positives far out weigh the losses. For the bad side, a lot of minor details went missing, or the texture artwork is completely different that the source material. The NetLink features are now useless, so all that’s left is the Urea 51 area exclusive.

On the positive side, if you are Sega Saturn junkie, this game, like PowerSlave, truly shows what the Saturn could do when programmers had the right tools and enough patience to weed through the architecture. It’s a smooth frame rate, great control, and slightly larger sprites in some areas. If you’re a purist, you’ll wince every so often, but if all you want is a freaking fun (and sometimes hard) time on your dusty Saturn, this is fun as hell.

Granted, the game is available on the PC in its native state or now available on the Xbox 360 with modern day Dual Analog controls, which sort of renders this version technically outdated. If you only play the consoles, I’d say stick with the 360 version.

Come get some.