Strafe-jumping

Lore & Background

Duke Nukem, working for General Graves, investigates Area 51 after reports of alien infiltration. He learns the aliens need environmental regulators to survive, follows them to the Temple of Amun in Egypt, discovers an army of hybrid creatures in stasis, and shuts down their power source. After destroying the controller alien, he escapes a self-destruct sequence and materializes in Sydney, Australia. He rescues an undercover agent, destroys a doomsday weapon, boards an alien spaceship, rescues four cloned females (clones of agent Jenny), shuts down the ship's coolant system, and escapes before the ship explodes. He declines debriefing, claiming he already debriefed by having sex with Jenny 5.

In Their Own Story

The fluorescent lights of the lab flicker as Duke lines up on the edge of a broken catwalk. Below, a pit of sparking conduit and crawling mutants waits. He taps run, feels the engine's little speed kick, and commits. Halfway across the gap he holds right, feeling the air drag at his jacket, the landing point sliding a few inches further than a dead-straight jump would allow. His boots hit the far ledge with a metallic clang. He doesn't stop. The next gap is wider. He sprints, leaps, strafes, and the momentum carries him just far enough to grab the edge of a steel girder. He hauls himself up, spits on the floor, and keeps walking. The mutants below are already rearranging their plans.

Reader's Guide

Four difficulty levels can be selected at the start. Multiplayer supports up to four players, each requiring a copy. The game offers four control setups for shooting, jumping, strafing, weapon selection, and looking up/down. When paused, the player can view and pan around the level map, zoom in/out, and discover some secrets via the map. Progress can be saved at the end of each level, with five save slots.

Did You Know?

• The game was originally planned for fall 2001 but was delayed by a year to avoid crunch and add polish.
• More than 20 years later, it was released for the Evercade/VS platform via emulation as part of Duke Nukem Collection 2 on November 28, 2023.
• It received generally favorable reviews, with IGN calling it 'the most fun first-person shooter on the GBA to date.'