Dynamite Duke/Duke Nukem

[Johnny Black]

Is there any relation between these two? Was Duke Nukem once Dynamite Duke, but then they changed the name to Duke Nukem? Or are they just two different characters all together?

[Gamereviewgod]

Dynamite Duke was completely unrelated. Started as a coin-op while Duke Nukem lived on the PC.

[calthaer]

But then again, Duke Nukem could have gone up to a Dynamite Duke coin-op machine, fiddled with it, and then said:

"Hmm...don't have time, to play with myself."

[Ed Oscuro]

Except Duke Nukem was enough of an egomaniac that it was a Duke Nukem 2 machine. Oh well, DN2 wasn't THAT bad :)

Dynamite Duke and Duke Nukem possibly have less in common than Dynamite Duke and Dynamite Headdy - DDuke was a Seibu Kaihatsu game, so aside from the name you've also got the same region of origin :P

[Arqueologia_Digital]

Strange comparison, but it´s curious, it remembers me the relation between the Contra guys and the main character of Navy moves (Dinamic) for PC...or not???

Matías

[geelw]

hilarious! i had this conversation about a month ago with some guy at a gamestop here who was confused about this ("didn't duke nukem start out as a genesis game with some guy with exploding fists?"). there ARE minor similarities, but they're purely coincidental:

both have blonde flattops and carry big guns,
both games have you going up against huge end bosses
dynamite has psuedo 3D scrolling down corridors
both games are funny as hell (dynamite duke probably isn't supposed to be, but...)
there hasn't been a follow up in ages (the next game should be called duke nukem tookforever)

hell, maybe sega will remake this like they did altered beast- they should track down that same guy on the US cover and get him to pose again for the sequel

[NintendoMan]

Dynamite Duke was completely unrelated. Started as a coin-op while Duke Nukem lived on the PC.

YEP. Yeah, as far as I know, there was NO relation.

[Johnny Black]

Cool. Thanks for the replies, guys. I'd been wondering this for awhie. As geelw said, there are some similarities that got me thinking. Thanks for clearing that up.

[Ed Oscuro]

Another thing of note. While Bad Street Brawler's protagonist (thank god for seanbaby!) looks sort of like these guys, I think it's fair to say he's no relation.

Anyhow. I looked through the manual to the x68K version of Dynamite Duke. The arcade game's original artwork is AWESOME. Not just the cover art/marquee art, but the game sprites are huge and generally awesome.

On the other hand, the guys at Apogee, while supremely talented in many special ways, were not animators of the same caliber as the Seibu Kaihatsu folks...at all. Remember the flying soda can (that you would catch for points) animation from the original Duke Nukem shareware games on PC? As I see it, Duke Nukem 2 was a high water mark of Apogee 2D graphics excellence (or close, but I can't really comment on some of their other platformers), and it just doesn't compa *BAM* - ouch, alright, I'll use a better phrase. Duke Nukem's art isn't nearly as good, and that's actually not saying a lot since I'm hard pressed to think of arcade games that did this well with character graphics.

The Konami behind-the-back run and gun games like Garuka/Devastators, G.I. Joe come pretty close, but Dynamite Duke's details seem more solid to me (judging from screenshots, anyhow - don't have a monitor for the x68K and I'm gonna wait for one to play this game the right way the first time) with helicopters flying by, APCs, and other fun. If anything, Dynamite Duke's sprites are so much bigger (than even these two other games) that they made most of Duke's back transparent so you can see through him to some degree :P