Stories about: Apogee

It's the 20th anniversary of the release of the first Commander Keen game. We thought about sending some fine china to Apogee and id Software, but decided that a tribute slideshow would probably be a better idea.

Chip giant Intel won first place in a ranking of flash memory-based Solid State Drives (SSDs), in which the researcher, DRAMeXchange Technology, pilloried the industry over the wide disparity of quality among the storage devices.

While most feel the possibility of slipping into the alien blasting role of Duke Nukem for next generation consoles is a dead idea, gamers can find plenty of action in the court room, as recently released documents reveal that Take-Two Interactive is accusing 3D Realms of not only negating their contractual obligations, but also withholding "substantial" amounts of money in an offshore account.

To some fans, 3D Realms' closure Friday came as something of a surprise. After spending nearly 13 years planning and producing Duke Nukem Forever, the veteran publisher abruptly shut down.

In 1982, Disney studios released Tron, one of the first films from a major studio to feature extensive computer graphics. The movie is about a programmer (Jeff Bridges) who gets "digitized" and finds himself inside a computer where he is forced to play the gladiatorial games he wrote. (Bridges' character eventually escapes and sets out to topple the despotic Master Control Program, or MCP.) Even though Tron was something of a milestone for computer-generated imagery, it met with little success at the box office and failed to garner a special effects nomination from the Motion Picture Academy. At the time, the Academy considered the use of computers in films as "cheating."