After a bit of a break, I’m back (hasta la vista, baby) to talk about the next part of the Duke Nukem series: the Tomb Raider clones. Welcome back to THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM, and today I’ll be talking about three Duke Nukem games: Time to Kill, Zero Hour, and Land of the Babes. I just wanted to note that my format is going through a bit of a change; in fact this week I was writing some other posts in advance and I’ve gotten used to that new format, so there’ll be a bit of change in style when it comes to the writing. Other than that, we’re ready to rumble!
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| From the creators of... uh. Image Credit: Amazon |
To recap the last few posts in a single sentence, Duke Nukem 3D was released in its full form on May 5, 1996, it was very successful, and from here it received various ports and expansion packs from different companies. Flash forward to 1997 and it had only been a few months since Core Design (remember Fighting Force?) hit Tomb Raider had been released on Sony’s PlayStation console. Despite being a newer company with only two credits behind their name (one of which had a very bad reputation), American developer n-Space was asked by GT Interactive, publisher of Duke Nukem 3D’s ports on the PlayStation and Nintendo 64, if they were interested in developing an all-new Duke Nukem title. n-Space accepted the offer and began development, under the working title of “NewDuke”, as can be found in the game’s files. The game was also jokingly referred to as “Duke Raider” by the developers, because of its similarities with Core Design’s original Tomb Raider game. At least a year after development started, NewDuke was released on the PlayStation under the title Duke Nukem: Time to Kill on September 30, 1998. It generally received quite positive reviews, and was the first of two n-Space games released that year (the other being a Rugrats game, based on the cartoon of the same name).
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| I forgot to mention that there are a lot of Easter Eggs. Image Credit: GBHBL |
Time to Kill changed the formula of Duke from a first-person shooter (which in itself was changed from a side-scrolling platformer/shooter) to a third-person shooter, inspired by the third-person gameplay of Tomb Raider. The game takes place over 28 levels in three different settings: then-present day LA, common in the Duke Nukem series; the Old West; Medieval Europe; and Ancient Rome. The graphics, which have the classic jagged-edge look of many PlayStation games of the time, are rendered in full 3D, unlike (ironically) Duke Nukem 3D, which had 2.5D graphics to simulate a 3D effect. Like Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown (as a reminder: Duke3D’s port to Sony’s PlayStation), the game is lite on story but does have the occasional FMV along the way to give it some semblance of a plot. One certain improvement of Total Meltdown is the appearance of a two-player split-screen multiplayer mode, which allows two players to Duke it out it on one single screen. Time to Kill eventually received a sequel, but first, another similar game was released on the Nintendo 64.
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| Kicking ass and chewing FMV. Image Credit: LHG / YouTube |
On August 31, 1999, another third-person shooter, like Duke Nukem: Time to Kill, was released. Called Duke Nukem: Zero Hour, the game was developed by UK developer Eurocom (remember Cruis’n World?) on a modified version of the also Eurocom-developed Duke Nukem 64’s engine (i.e. a modified version of Ken Silverman’s Build Engine). The game follows a similar plot to Time to Kill, with Duke travelling through time to stop the aliens, although its more mature this time around with settings being then-present day New York, post-apocalyptic New York, the Old West, and the Victorian Era, where Jack the Ripper has just murdered Mary Jane Kelly. Cutscenes are now in-game, and multiplayer was expanded to feature up to four-player split-screen (albeit in first-person this time). Thanks to the N64’s Expansion Pak, graphics were much better than Time to Kill’s, and can be further improved thanks to this High Resolution Texture Pack for the game made by NUKEMDAVE. The amount of levels was also increased to over 30. To conclude this Duke Raider series, one more game was released the following year.
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| I'll always love this cover art. Image Credit: PalitomanBass / SoundCloud |
After two games earlier that year, specifically Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas (a sequel to the game adapting the Die Hard trilogy of films) and Danger Girl (a game adapting the comic of the same name), n-Space’s third game of 2000 was released. This game, titled Duke Nukem: Land of the Babes, acted as a direct sequel to Time to Kill and ran on that game’s engine, or at least a modified version, with similar third-person shooting gameplay (although with less emphasis on the “Duke Raider” side of things). Interestingly, the game was originally called "Duke Nukem: Planet of the Babes", but was renamed to avoid conflict with the upcoming 2001 Planet of the Apes film. Rather than focusing on time travelling through multiple periods like Time to Kill and Zero Hour, Land of the Babes instead places Duke years into the future where the world has been taken over. All men were killed, and all women became slaves. The player, as Duke, must save the women and, as the only male, repopulate the planet alongside all the women that were saved. Phew. Graphically, the game is about on par with Time to Kill, and is also lite on story. It has two-player split-screen multiplayer, like Time to Kill, but only two players, and not four (which Zero Hour had). Unlike Time to Kill, Land of the Babes received negative reviews, because it’s bad (at least in my and many others’ opinions).
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| I can't think of a caption. Image Credit: RiotPixels |
And that ends the saga of Duke Raider. I’m sorry if this post wasn’t as good as usual, I kind of rushed it (whoops) because I was focused on the next series of blog posts after Duke Nukem and forgot that I was going to write about this trilogy of games in this post. Also, I’ve just got through a Hellraiser film marathon, so I guess that’s a good enough excuse as to why I’m not at my normal blogging standard. Let’s hope I can fix that next time. Next time, I’ll be talking about something that at least has some interesting story behind it (unlike this, where I couldn’t find much info about development): Duke Nukem’s handheld games. Well, that’s a wrap on THE SITH ARCHIVES OF DARTH FANDOM!
**EDIT 19/06/2022: Forgot to talk about Planet of the Babes**
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