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Apogee Software Returns, Brings Duke Nukem to Handhelds
In a surprise move, it appears that Apogee Software has returned to action. As their first move, they are promising to bring Duke Nukem to the handheld market. "Apogee is bringing the King of Action himself, Duke Nukem, to the handheld console market with three new missions, together called the Duke Nukem Trilogy. Apogee Software is producing the Trilogy under an exclusive license agreement with 3D Realms and MachineWorks Northwest LLC. The Trilogy is comprised of three episodes: Critical Mass, Chain Reaction, and Proving Grounds. 'This marks a new beginning for a famous publisher with a history of market-making innovation,' said Terry Nagy, co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Apogee. 'I can't think of a better character than Duke or a better franchise than the Trilogy to usher in a new era for Apogee.'"
I have been wishing for years that someone would do Commander Keen in 3D, with all of the vertically-oriented cartooney pogo-stick-and-floating-platform glory of the original, but in a vertigo-inducing new 3D version, complete with giant slugs and bright green yargs and so forth. If Apogee is coming back, now there's real hope that it could actually happen!
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
The article said "handhelds". Which handhelds have shareware, other than perhaps Pocket PC?
The PSP does. Sort of. The PSP can download games from the PlayStation store, and these can be free demos if the publisher allows it. Due to DRM, you can't share them, so they're not exactly shareware. This requires either a PC or a PS3, unless the built-in PSP browser has been fixed since the last time I tried to download a demo through it.
The DS also allows Download Play which can be used to access demos, although this is even less like shareware since you can't keep these downloads once the device powers off. This restriction is because the demos are downloaded into RAM and not any sort of permanent storage. This means that the demo has even less memory available to it than it otherwise would, so not all games can really have demos made for them.
Downloading DS titles requires either a Wii through the free Nintendo Channel, or a Download Station that most stores that sell DS games have.
So yes, modern handhelds do allow free demos. Sort of. It's not quite the same thing as shareware, but hey, a free downloadable demo is better than nothing.
I should also mention that most of these demos aren't quite the full episode that old Apogee shareware games were. But on the PSP at least, it's theoretically possible to release a single episode as a free download. Not so much on the DS.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
They were never gone, they just dropped the name in favor of 3D Realms. Read the Wiki page on Apogee for details.
(Now excuse me while I dig up that disk of Commander Keen 5...)