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Apogee Software

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Corporate logo of Apogee Software
Corporate logo of Apogee Software

Apogee Software, Ltd. is a video game publisher and developer, established in 1987. The company is best known for popularizing the shareware distribution model and as the creator of franchises on the PC such as Duke Nukem, and also the publisher of other franchises such as Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D.

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Shareware

Unlike traditional larger publishers that sold games in retail outlets, Apogee (like many independent developers) sold their products using the shareware method, depending mostly on BBSs, such as Software Creations', for distribution of their software. Typically they would provide the first installment of a game trilogy for free and sell the remaining installments by mail order, a method which became known as the "Apogee Model".

Apogee's commercial success led to the wide spread adoption of the shareware model by other major publishers such as Capstone, Parallax Software, id Software, Activision, and Epic Megagames, and also led to a growth of Software Creations BBS, which would become the largest BBS in North America. Apogee later moved to the traditional retail model through distributors like GT Interactive, however still offers its earlier titles via shareware.

Background

Apogee started in 1987 with the release of Scott Miller's Kingdom of Kroz, which used crude extended ASCII characters as graphics. Nevertheless, the game sold quite well and Apogee was born. In 1991 George Broussard joined the company as co-owner, bringing with him several games of his that were previously released under the name Micro F/X. Miller and Broussard run the company to this day.

Apogee published games by other developers in addition to its own in-house titles. One of these developers, id Software, contributed to Apogee's success with games such as Commander Keen and Wolfenstein 3D, but later severed their ties with Apogee with their release of Doom in 1993 (although in its earliest stages, Doom was still an Apogee title).

Apogee to 3D Realms

With the original intent to create a division for every genre of game Apogee produced, the two brand names 3D Realms (formed in July 1994) and the now disused Pinball Wizards were created. Instead of publishing every game under Apogee as it had been in the past, the goal of this strategy was to create a different brand for each type of game genre, making each new game identifiable based on which brand it belonged to. This would enable Apogee to target different markets.

However, many of those varied genres such as platform or scrolling shooter (that were much of Apogee's early releases) were slowly dying out in the late 1990s making this strategy unnecessary in the end. In addition, due to the increasingly lengthy development time in producing a game title, video game publishers were no longer releasing titles at the rapid rate at which they once were. 3D Realms was created in 1994 for the 3-D title Terminal Velocity and is responsible for the latest installments of the successful Duke Nukem and Max Payne series (earlier 3D games like Rise of the Triad were released under the Apogee name). The Pinball Wizards name was created for the 1998 pinball title Balls of Steel but has not been used since.

The last game to be published under the Apogee name was Stargunner in 1996. Since 1998, all the company's games have been using a 3D engine (even if the gameplay is 2D, like in ), and as a result 3D Realms has in effect replaced Apogee as the brand name to publish games under. Also, by the end of the 1990s, Apogee felt their brand name was more associated with old, outdated games and so adopted their 3D Realms brand for all future releases.

Notable games

Developer

Publisher/Producer

External links

 

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