Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. The 3D Realms Anthology isn’t new, but its appearance on Steam is a welcome treat to PC gamers of a certain age. I picked up the 3D Realms Anthology when it first dropped on PC –it was a non-steam game bundle which is a rarity these days– and have had an absolute blast with it. If you search for my ongoing “Growing Up Dos” series here on the website you’ll be able to see just some of the games from the anthology that were a huge part of my childhood. That’s the thing, 3D Realms/Apogee weren’t some small thing in the early days of computing -The developer was the big name in computer video games. And now with the 3D Realms Anthology an entire new generation can see where much of what we see today all started.
What you are getting in this pack are 32 complete games that harken back to a simpler time when a keyboard was all you needed to get lost in some truly incredible worlds. For someone like me, who only got a taste of some of these games as a kid, this anthology is like a dream come true. You see, back in the early 90’s full games were hard to come by on the PC. You had no idea what would or wouldn’t work on your machine for one, but as home video game consoles were the big standard, simply finding a computer store that carried PC games was a chore in most places.
Many times the only way you’d be able to find a new game was at software conventions that popped up from time to time. In my case this either meant the yearly fair that housed a pavilion of software/super sweet pogs, visiting the CompUSA when we went to LA to visit family, or by passing around disks on the playground. Shareware was the name of the game back then, and sharing/copying floppies was commonplace. If you really wanted a game you’d have to get it through mail-order which meant you parents would have to shell out money, wait for weeks on end, and then cross your fingers that the damn thing worked on your machine. You kids today have no idea how nice you have it.
Passing around shareware games –glorified demos– long enough would mean that, more often than not, you’d end up with a stack of Apogee titles. Commander Keen, Duke Nukem, Wacky Wheels, Raptor, and on and on. I still have many of those listed titles on the shelf behind be because they were so good that I held on to them for sentimental value. With 32 games in full force in this pack, you can rest easy knowing that you’ll find something classic that will keep you busy for some time. From side scrolling adventures, to first-person frag fests, and all manner of wild games in between, the 3D Realms Anthology is a joy to experience. It’s also a great place to find out where most of these retro inspired indie PC titles draw a lot of their inspiration from.
Still, for all the praise I am laying on this collection it is far from perfect. For how much I wanted to see this thing on Steam, it loses a lot of features that the non-Steam version came bundled with. In the original release the pack opened up in an easy to use menu that showed the box art of each included game, and while I know this isn’t quite possible with the Steam version, I still really miss the layout. Another thing is that you lose –at least I couldn’t find it anywhere– is the included original scanned manuals for each game. But most troubling is the fact that some of the games are missing from the Steam edition of the anthology.
How on earth do you leave of the Commander Keen series from this package? I can only assume it has to do with copyright issues, but leaving out the series that put 3D Realms/Apogee on the map is almost inexcusable. Another thing to I noted is that the 3D Realms Anthology is compatible on Mac, so while I was on vacation last week with only my MacBook Pro on hand, I decided to check this claim out. The results were less than fantastic. While most everything seemed to work okay, there was just nothing I could do to get Duke Nukem: The Manhattan Project from even booting up. The problem lies in the fact the games haven’t been ported to Mac, instead they are running of the WINE engine that seems to simulate a DOC PC environment. The forums on many games are full of users on Mac’s having all sorts of strange problems that have yet to see any responses. I think this is more to do with the fact the 3D Realms Anthology has no dedicated hub on Steam where users can go, instead each individual game has its own forum which can make it a nightmare on users, and the developers trying to make fixes.
So, at the end of the day do I recommended this anthology on Steam? Yes! If you grew up with these gems then you are going to love playing them once again –probably fully for the first time– and you will no doubt find games that you were only lucky enough to know about from ads in the Apogee catalog, or from the purchase screen of another game. Yes, the pack has some problems on Steam, and since the games are scattered all over the place in alphabetical order –I couldn’t find a tab to have them all under a 3D Realms drop down menu– it can be a pain knowing what’s even in the pack after purchase. I really would have loved to see a dedicated hub for the anthology as you are pretty much on your own figuring out each game willy-nilly.
The price sits at $40 which is more than fair for the content at hand, as even if they charged $5 per game –a more than reasonable amount mind you– you’d be paying well over $100 for everything here. Yes, it sucks that some major titles are missing, and the replacement games, while nice, are no real substitution for them, but you are still getting a ton of content regardless. If for some reason this is the only version you can grab, then go for it, but I really recommend the non-Steam version as you are getting tons more content for the exact same price. My final score for the Steam version would be quite a bit higher if only for the fact that I already played/own the original anthology that offers up so much more content than what is given here in the Steam edition.
You can find the non-Steam version of the anthology here.
This is where I would post an embedded link to the Steam store page for the reviewed game in question, but the Anthology is so messy on Steam that I can’t even find a link to embed. Just search for it, or click here.
Final Scores:
3D Realms Anthology non-Steam version – 5 out of 5 Stars 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
3D Realms Anthology Steam version – 3 out of 5 Stars 🌟 🌟 🌟
Included Steam Release Games:
- Alien Carnage / Halloween Harry
- Arctic Adventure
- Balls of Steel
- Bio Menace
- Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold
- Blake Stone: Planet Strike
- Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure
- Crystal Caves
- Dark Ages
- Death Rally
- Duke Nukem
- Duke Nukem 2
- Duke Nukem 3D
- Duke Nukem: Manhattan Project
- Hocus Pocus
- Major Stryker
- Math Rescue
- Monster Bash
- Monuments of Mars
- Mystic Towers
- Paganitzu
- Pharaoh’s Tomb
- Raptor: Call of the Shadows
- Realms of Chaos
- Rise of the Triad: Dark War
- Secret Agent
- Shadow Warrior (Classic)
- Stargunner
- Terminal Velocity
- Wacky Wheels
- Word Rescue
- Xenophage
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