Farewell

So farewell, 3D Realms - or, rather, Apogee, as I always thought of them...

The second oldest computer games I really remember playing are Commander Keen and Crystal Caves, two of the classic side-scrolling platform games Apogee brought out under the shareware model it more or less pioneered, giving away a third or so of the game and charging you for the rest. In my desk drawers I still have five of the old brightly-colored instruction / advertising sheets they used to ship out with paid copies, for Commander Keen, Crystal Caves, Duke Nukum (yes, that's how it's spelled on the original), Wolfenstein 3-D and Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure / Word Rescue (that one was double-sided).

I was (and, technically, still am) the last maintainer of the official Wolfenstein 3-D FAQ - thanks to which Apogee would occasionally send me cool schwag, I still have a notepad and a copy of the original strategy guide at home - and Apogee offered me my first ever job in the tech industry, ironically doing much the same work I later wound up doing with Mandriva. (As it would have required relocation to Texas, and I was 13 at the time, I had to decline).

So, not really much to say except how cool and old skool I am. :) The unfashionable type of old skool as well - while the other kids were playing with their Italian plumbers or improbably hued hedgehogs, I was saving the galaxy in a bean-powered rocket. I wonder when I should put this stuff on eBay...:|

Comments

gingeremmie wrote on 2009-05-13 15:24:
Don't you dare ebay it. I played all of crystal caves again (the shareware section or is it freeware?) only last year :p
adamw wrote on 2009-05-14 05:03:
shareware...I don't think we have a copy of the full thing anywhere any more :\ the original disk should still be at home unless dad threw it out, but I don't think it works any more.