Overview
"It's time to kick ass and chew bubblegum... and I'm all out of gum."
You are Duke Nukem, a muscular, wisecracking action hero who battles against alien invaders. mutant creatures, and evil forces threatening earth. Use your pinball skills to save the world.
The first-person shooter game Duke Nukem 3D was released for MS-DOS in 1996 as the third game in the Duke Nukem series, though the previous two games had been platformers. Duke Nukem 3D features the adventures of the titular Duke Nukem, voiced by Jon St. John, who fights against an alien invasion on Earth.
Along with Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake, Duke Nukem 3D is considered to be responsible for popularizing first-person shooters, and was released to major critical acclaim. Reviewers praised the interactivity of the environments, gameplay, level design, and unique risqué humor, a mix of pop-culture satire and lampooning of over-the-top Hollywood action heroes.
However, it also incited controversy due to its violence, erotic elements, and portrayal of women. Since its release, Duke Nukem 3D has been cited as one of the greatest video games ever made, and has left a lasting legacy.
That legacy has extended to pinball, with the game being the theme of an excellent table in the 1997 pinball computer game, Balls of Steel. Furthermore, graphics of a pinball game named Balls of Steel appear in Duke Nukem 3D itself, in the first level, "Hollywood Holocaust", when Duke encounters the table.
The Duke Nukem 3D table released by Ivan TBA for Visual Pinball X in March 2020 features very similar playfield artwork to the table released as part of the Balls of Steel game, but with a more simple playfield layout, as it is a graphical and audio mod of an early solid-state table from 1980, Bally's Skateball.
