Duke is a can-do hero who realizes that sometimes innocent people have to die in order to save Earth, so accuracy of gun fire is not a real concern to him. :) Official Website
Ah, a true American hero.
Duke Nukem was among the first virtual stars, and the first on the PC. Earlier Nintendo had proved with their plumber Mario that video games can create such virtual stars just like comics and animation can. In 1990 it was found that more children recognized Mario than Mickey Mouse (unfortunately I do not know where this survey took place). Duke Nukem first starred in two arcade shooters 1991 and 1993, programmed by Todd Replogle, but his true claim to fame was this 3D game.
Duke Nukem 3D is one of the few ego shooters I really liked. It adds a touch of humor the others lack, and the settings are more attractive than most. I especially like the space station of episode 2.
3D Realms (bless them) released the source code for Duke Nukem 3D on April Fools' Day 2003.
The Duke Nukem 3D Plutonium Pak was the only add-on by 3D Realms. It came out the same year as the main game, 1996, and contained 11 levels, 3 new enemies, a new weapon (the Microwave expander), new one-liners, windows 95 themes, screen savers, and a multiplayer bot feature. In the Atomic Edition, it is already eincluded. As far as I know, there have been the following three official add-ons for Duke Nukem 3D by other developers:
There have been at least two independent commercial level collections, Total Meltdown by Sierra and Duke!ZONE by WizardWorks, and countless fan-made levels exist, since the editor for the Build Engine was included in the full version. It was probably for the first time that players could create their own levels with full approval of the game's creators.
