Old-Fashioned Misogyny: Duke 3D on GoG

It's always fun to hear about what new retro sweetmeat has found its way to Good Old Games' DRM-free servers - to sigh and think of times gone by, to think of how silly our hair was in 1995 and to wonder whether the Manic Street Preachers would be any good today if Richie hadn't gone missing.

Today, it's the turn of Duke Nukem 3D, along with a host of other old Apogee stuff. It's almost odd to think of people paying hard cash for Duke 3D these days - so many FPSes of that era simply haven't aged as well as their less graphics-reliant strategy, RPG and adventure contemporaries. Of course, Duke earned some 21st century stripes last year, with the well-received XBLA port, so it's nice to see him back on his original home too.

D3D was one of those games that personally passed me by entirely - I spent a few years without a decent gaming PC, years which encompassed this. So I have no strong feelings about it whatsoever. I know full well what it is and its place in PC history, but it's more like a museum piece to me. I played it through a few years after its release, and it seemed too crude in both technology and wit for my snooty liking. Yet I've got friends for whom it's an essential part of their growing-up, one they'll forever be as fond of as I am of X-COM or Doom 2. I'm too far on from it to ever be able to appreciate their enthusiasm, which I find curiously saddening. What about you lot? Regardless of that nasty Duke Nukem Forever business, is Duke a figure of legend for you?