Review: 3D Realms Anthology (PC)

Most of what comes packed with the 3D Realms Anthology is a painful reminder of the period in PC gaming when there were many, many stabs at trying to match what consoles were doing.

In a year that saw the release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System along with Super Mario World, PC gamers were saddled with the likes of Arctic Adventure (a sequel to 1990's Pharaoh's Tomb, also in this collection) that starred "Nevada Smith." It was sad attempt at capturing the, oh, I don't know what... FUN! of 16-bit console games. And no matter how bad the games were, we PC gamers, at least around my neighbourhood, stuck it out hoping the playing field would level off. It took more than decade. All through the 1990s Apogee/3D Realms -- the evolutionary line between the two has always been blurry for me -- there were incremental differences and improvements to making a platformer work on a PC with the likes of Secret Agent (1992), Hocus Pocus (1994), Alien Carnage (1993), Dark Ages (1991), Bio Menace (1993), Monuments of Mars (1990), Monster Bash (1993), the horrible Truxton clone Major Striker (1993), Crystal Caves (1991), and even the the first couple of Duke Nukem games. Most of the games from this era are curio items your eyes would scan over at a garage sale and there's this momentary flicker of memory that makes you appreciate today's video games a whole lot more, even the terrible ones.

Like with most anthology collections there are some real diamonds that hold up far better than most, like Stargunner (1996), a left-to-right "bullet hell" type game and Terminal Velocity (1994), which was the first game to come close to giving me motion sickness. These titles are good little distractions, as are Rise of the Triad (1994), Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project (2002), and the Blake Stone games.

A couple of games that stood out to me were Xenophage: Alien Bloodsport (1995) and Mystic Towers (1994), mostly because I'd never played either one and I'm pretty sure I'd never heard of Mystic Towers. 

Xenophage is a fighting game that brought Clay Fighter and The Neverhood to mind in the way the characters look with one important difference: neither featured fatalities. In comparison to modern day fighting games, the controls are clunky and moves are limited but the novelty of it held a certain appeal to me so I probably spent way more time with the game than I actually needed to.

Mystic Towers is something different altogether. The perspective is similar to The Immortal but the presentation is much more light-hearted. (No pulsating brains and exploding corpses here!) Playing as Baron Baldric, this action role-playing game -- that's how I'd describe it -- is simple when it comes to combat but it's charming enough that I actually want to see where it goes, which isn't bad for a game that's 20 years old. I'm not sure if that makes the whole package worth the $40 asking price, but it's definitely on the positive side the ledger.

Lastly, there's Remedy's Death Rally (1996), a game that somehow I've managed to not play even though it's been floating around on the Internet as free download for years. If ever there was a game that needed a proper steering wheel to capture that feel of top-down arcade racers like Badlands and Super Sprint, this is it!

Sitting your kids in front of the 3D Realms Anthology is the digital equivalent of taking them on roadtrip around your old neighbourhood and regaling them with tales of your childhood.

"You said we were going for ice cream, Dad!"

"Not until I tell you about the time we stole Hector dad's cigarettes and snuck a smoke behind old man Benson's place. Look, look! You can still see the vomit stains on the asphalt! And that's where Graham fell into the ravine into a bunch of blackberry bushes."

A slight pause from the back seat. "I could probably walk home from here."

I guess what I'm saying is, it's an interesting stroll down memory lane for players old enough to remember the games the first time around -- and get weird chills up the spine when "Adlib" and "SoundBlaster" are mention in a game's options -- but I'm not sure there's enough meat here for "modern gamers."

- Aaron Simmer

Follow @EmpireArmchair

The Good:
- Large roster of 32 games means there's a little something for everyone
- All the games seem to run just fine with DOS Box
- It's a nostalgia trip!

The Bad:
- More nostalgia that gaming excellence; there are just a handful of games that might hold any appeal for "modern" gamers