How Duke Nukem 3D managed to be ahead of its time while trapped in the past

[Administrator]

I've lost track of how many times I've played through the opening chapters of Duke Nukem 3D. It's a game that still delights me today, over 20 years since its original release, and also a game that makes me cringe with embarrassment for the easily amused adolescent twerp I was. It somehow still manages to represent both the best of what games can be, and the worst of gaming's lazy vices.
Back in 1996, when it was still necessary to append "3D" on the end of a title so people knew to expect polygons, Duke Nukem hit the FPS genre like an atom bomb. Following indecently close behind the mould-breaking Doom, it ushered in not only an era of proper solid 3D game worlds, but showed that those worlds could be funny as well as fun, and deserving of exploration for reasons beyond another colour-coded keycard.
Where Doom offered a series of mazes hewn from brushed metal and bright red rock, Duke Nukem 3D offered a recognisable facsimile of the real world. Admittedly, it was a version of the real world populated mostly by strippers and toilets, but those first few levels were an absolute revelation at the time.
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